DinobotSix wrote:Mindmaster wrote:I wish Frenzy (Rumble!) came with Ravage instead, I'd much rather have those two over Rumble (Frenzy!) and Buzzsaw.
Gotta agree 100% with this. Maybe if Hasbro releases these here in the US they'll put the blue one with Ravage.
Until this mp, I wasn't familiar with the fact that the US/Japanese casetticon warrior characters were reversed.
Could someone familiar with the Japanese version of th G1 cartoon explain this to me...if "Frenzy" is the blue casetticon in the Japanese version, does his Japanese name actually remain the same, or differ to something that means "quake" or "rumbling" since clearly the blue casetticon is the one with the pille drivers causing the ground to "rumble" or shake...which the name "frenzy" would have no relation to.
Kinda confusing. Or was there an edit to the animation itself reversing their colors for some reason?
I imagine that most every US collector would want BLUE rumble more than RED rumble/frenzy, as the blue rumble is the most featured and memorable of the two in the G1 anime. Nothing against red frenzy though! =)
This page explains it best -
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/FIRRIBBasically, the original Generation 1 toys from Hasbro had the blue/purple one released as "Frenzy" and the black/red one released as "Rumble".
This was reflected in the Marvel comics and children's storybooks releaed at the time, with them each depicting Rumble as the red/black one and Frenzy as the blue/purple one.
Then, along came the cartoon which, according to its production bible (which refers to Rumble as the "red robot"), was going to follow in suit. However, somewhere along the way of production, their names got swapped around for some unspecified reason, resulting in the cartoon portraying Rumble as the more often seen blue/purple robot and Frenzy as the less often seen red/black robot.
No one is really certain what happened to lead to their names getting switched, but mistake or not, due to the widespread recognition the cartoon got, many viewers took it as gospel and became of the mindset that Rumble was/is
supposed to be the blue/purple one and Frenzy the red/black one, instead of vice-versa as their toys and comic/book appearances (which came
before the cartoon) had them be.
And since then, there has been an ongoing debate over which colors which character fans believe to be the "correct" ones. Complicating this matter is how different post-1980s G1 media (mainly comics) have been switching around their colors on and off due to different artists having grown up on either the original cartoon or the original toys/comics and having different preferences for each.
As such, this has led to the fan terms "FIRRIB" (meaning "Frenzy is red, Rumble is blue!") and "FIBRIR" (meaning "Frenzy is blue, Rumble is red!"), as well as variations like "RIBFIR" and "RIRBIB", which have all been used in such debates as these.
For the longest time, the Hasbro toys had remained with original "FIBRIR" style with every new G1-based Rumble and Frenzy toy having Rumble be red/black and Frenzy be purple/blue.
However, 2010 revealed to us a new Reveal the Shield "Demolition Rumble" toy that was surprising colored in the "FIRRIB" style! Though this toy wound up being canceled (dueto it coming so late in its toyline when stores were wanting Dark of the Moon toys instead), its existence was the first sign of things to come.
When the Transformers: War for Cybertron game debuted, the game's iterations of Rumble and Frenzy were in FIRRIB colors. Then the Transformers: Prime toyline released a blue-colored Rumble toy just last year. And an unreleased prototype of a Prime Frenzy toy was revealed to be red. This, combined with the canceled Demolition Rumble toy, seems to indicate that, for Hasbro's new Aligned Continuity, they've settled on FIRRIB and have thus far had all portrayed of Aligned Rumble be blue and Aligned Frenzy be red. As such, the newly-released Generations Fall of Cybertron Data Disc toys have had a blue Rumble and a red Frenzy.
But, then again, since these are the Aligned continuity version and not the G1 versions, the "FIRRIB vs "FIBRIR" argument kinda doesn't work since the Aligned versions had always been FIRRIB in every format (save for the Japanese Prime toys, but I'll get to that).
In 1985, when the Transformers brand came to Japan, Takara released their toys of Rumble and Frenzy with Rumble being red/black and Frenzy being blue/purple, just as Hasbro had done.
Noticing that their names were switched for the English version of the cartoon, Takara did not want to have the same confusion between the show and toys that Hasbro had with their versions. so, to remedy their situation, They switched Rumble's and Frenzy's names
back around for the Japanese dub of the cartoon, making, in the Japanese language version of the cartoon,
Frenzy be the more often seen purple/blue one and
Rumble be the less often seen black/red one.
And ever since then, Japan has always had Rumble be the black/red one and Frenzy be the blue/purple one. So, these Masterpiece toys (as well as the Japanese Prime toys*) are just following the standard that Takara's had since 1985.
* - Regarding the color difference between Hasbro's blue Prime Rumble and Takara's red Prime Rumble and blue Prime Frenzy, Japanese toy bio author Andrew Hall has hinted at some reconciliation being written into the Japanese toys' bios to explain this, so we'll hopefully get this sorted out when their bios surface.