The kinds of Transformers I don't care for anymore are as follows, and some of these do go against the grain, so you've been warned:
* Dinosaur alt-modes in the present day. Seriously, the Dinobots were a great idea on paper, they make for awesome toys, and it made for an awesome visual element in the original cartoon and comic, but it's a total slap in the face of the whole "robots in disguise" premise. It's only good if they're going into heavily-populated hot zones to scare off the locals and thus minimize civilian casualties, but in most cases the Dinobots don't care all that much about humans to begin with.
* Now that I've probably already ticked off most of the G1 groupies, I may as well go the full nine and admit that I'm not a big fan of die-cast TFs anymore, either. The paint chips like a runaway Frito-Lay truck. The limbs almost always wear quickly, 'specially if they're half metal and half plastic. I was ecstatic when I learned that Hasbro was finally going to produce transforming War Within toys...I was not so ecstatic when I picked them up for the first time, though.
* TFs with immobile alt-modes. They're no fun anymore, IMO. It was great back in 1984 when you had a robot that could turn into a handgun or a tape deck, but now you can't have them look realistic as guns, nor do you see a lot of people roaming around with old-school boom-boxes anymore. So again, the "robots in disguise" thing comes into question here.
* Any sort of TF that requires a 'plug-in' gimmick - i.e. binary-bond partners, Minicons, Cyber Planet Keys, etc. Because what happens when you lose the Cyber Key or the Minicon? I remember being a kid and almost having a heart attack when I lost Hi-Q, 'cuz having to press in that little white notch to transform Powermaster Optimus every time was a pain.
* Transformers that don't transform. This is self-explanatory.
* White (Magnus) and black (Nemesis) Optimus repaints. This is old now.
* Half the Alternators. Never mind that some of them had almost NO leg articulation. Grimlock deserved something so much more bad@$$ than a car alt-mode. They waited until the line was on its deathbed to create a semi-faithful Alternator version of Ravage. Decepticharge just has the worst name of any of them. And with Anniversary Optimus being released, I don't understand why Hasbro had to push so hard to have the one pickup in the whole line be another Optimus, when it could have so easily been somebody else.
* Half the Beast Machines toys. I didn't mind the show, myself, but a lot of the toy line just seemed really weak. There were very few large figures; none of the Maximals were remotely made to be in scale with each other, and given that the only semi-show-accurate figures showed up at the end of the line, and then the Vehicon drones got more love than their generals (Although I think Tankor is still a pretty cool figure). We didn't even get a decent-looking Primal figure again until the very next line...WTF???
* All the RID repaints except for Ruination, who I thought looked even better than Bruticus (or the show version of Ruination, for that matter - yellow! GAH!).
* Sunstorm. Never cared for him. In ANY incarnation.
* "Cybertron" Tank Unicron. Why? Even the TFCC comic didn't really take advantage of this enough to make it justifiable, IMO.
At this point, I also may as well come right out and say that I like female robots and metal beards. I never was a conformist.
) seriously?
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