The Energon Pub

Is there a site with any images or info about the great animation in the old toy commercials? Besides YouTube. A lot of those are so grainy. What company did the animation? What happened to those masters? Such a shame they didn't do the actual episodes. Quality was better.

omarvance wrote:Is there a site with any images or info about the great animation in the old toy commercials? Besides YouTube.

for Transformers commercials in general - http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Commercial
For G1 commercials specifically - http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Commercial/Generation_1

omarvance wrote:A lot of those are so grainy.

I recall reading somewhere that the reason they're all so grainy is simply because the original companies didn't think about archiving the original masters at the time since there was no way of knowing how big the series would become, and so they didn't think there would be any serious desire in the commercials several years later, so saving them wasn't of interest back then. Ergo, they're probably long gone by now.

omarvance wrote:What company did the animation?

Toei Animation Co., Ltd.

omarvance wrote:What happened to those masters?

Like i said before, they most likely weren't saved and are very likely gone forever.

omarvance wrote:Such a shame they didn't do the actual episodes. Quality was better.

But Toei did do the episodes (seasons 1 and 2 and the movie, specifically). Only reason the commercial animation looks so good was because it had to be quick, action-packed, and fast-paced all at once. If it didn't look as good as it did, it wouldn't have looked so appealing.

As for why the episodes weren't as crisp-looking as the commercials, it's simply cheaper to put out high-quality animation for a few seconds of commercial airtime than it is for a 22-minute episode.