I’m going to make a statement that will at first sound counterintuitive: in a mythos entitled “Transformers,” change for the sake of change is a Really Bad Idea. That’s because we’re not just talking about a kiddie toy line here, though even a kids’ story benefits from clear-cut stability. But the story of the Transformers is a mythology, populated by distinct and recognizable archetypes; it’s just this element that propelled the TFs into the public consciousness and created fans who are still passionately involved with the story 18 years later. When you start tinkering with that, you risk the very core of what made it excellent.
Now, I realize I’m coming at this with some personal biases. I do not easily accept change. My tendency is to seek the ideal, and, once found, I’ll defend it in its perfect state to the end of all time - because by its very definition, once you change perfection, it is no longer perfection. I remember resenting the conehead jets in the second season, because suddenly these guys had shown up without so much as a proper introduction, and were usurping the air time that would otherwise have been given to Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker. They’d intruded upon our perfect first-season microcosm. For years afterward, I referred to the coneheads dismissively as “those new jets,” and it took me additional years to start warming to them as characters and noticing their merits. By contrast I wasn’t bothered by the addition of the Insecticons, Constructicons, Nightbird, the Stunticons, and Combaticons, because they not only didn’t crowd others out of pre-existing niches, but we also got to see how they came to join the group, making it an exciting, positive event - growth, new additions to the family - rather than something disruptive forced upon us out of nowhere.
I hated - hated HATED - the Movie. And still do. In one fell swoop, the entire TF universe in which I felt at home was ripped out from under me and thrown away, in favor of a whole new setting and characters whom I didn’t know and didn’t care about. Worst of all, those characters had replaced the ones I did love, and so they had a black mark against them forever after. We were thrust from the hauntingly compelling scenery of desert backdrops, deep oceans, and visits to the rainforest, into a dark cold space-scape of alien worlds and unsympathetic inhabitants. Had we seen a progression - Megatron and his warriors moving beyond Earth and heading home, then out into the vastness of space to begin conquering their empire - I would have felt “along for the ride,” and would have been fine with it, beyond the occasional wistful longing for the first-season desertscapes. But apparently it was felt, somewhere in the dank dungeons of Hasbro, that change was needed to keep the concept fresh. What absurdity! It’s no accident that the huge popularity of the Transformers in all its incarnations dropped off sharply after the Movie, after everything recognizable had been done away with. The concept limped along for a few more years, Hasbro trying to pull out of the downward spiral by introducing ever more extreme and ridiculous concepts (Headmasters, Pretenders) - but in fact they were compounding their original mistake by making their product less and less consistent, and so it finally staggered to a disgraceful end. The initial death-blow, however, was the Movie. It just took a while for the victim to bleed to death.
So, my own personal biases aside, you can see how change for the sake of change is not only a bad idea from the standpoint of story integrity, but also (to be crass for a moment) for Hasbro’s high-and-holy profit margin. And what they foisted upon us with the Movie didn’t even begin to approach the crimes they would perpetuate later in the name of “keeping things fresh.”
Certainly, in Europe the toy line continued brilliantly with the Predators and Turbomasters. These were wonderful precisely because they returned to the roots of what made TFs excellent - wonderful characters and straightforward toys, rather than lackluster ideas trying to compensate for their inadequacies with gimmicks. And there was for a while a hopeful revival of the pure Transformers mythos in G2. Though there were mistakes made in the launch (most notably a lack of advertising and artifacts), it none the less became a very good toy line, creating brand-new toys and characters, and bringing back old characters in nearly-identical or otherwise acceptable forms. (I will never picture Megatron as a tank, and that mode is now irrevocably Megastorm in my mind anyway - but it was a workable toy version of the character. One must recall that this was also before the sundry desecrations of the character’s name, at a time when I was more willing to accept slight aberrations yet.) And to jump to later years, Beast Wars 2 by some miracle survived in its own little bubble of excellence despite committing some of the crimes I rant against here - because it too got back to the true essence of Transformers, namely neat stories, great characters, and good toys (at least on the Decepticon side).
But with the second wave of “Go-bots,” we saw Hasbro sacrifice the soul of Transformers integrity on the warped altar of greed, and they have never looked back. What possibly could have possessed these idiots to use the names Soundwave, Megatron, and Frenzy (and, okay, even Optimus Prime) on absurd little car modes, I can only vaguely begin to guess. One of the clueless Hasbro reps at BotCon once said something about “needing to have all our recognizable characters available at all price-points.” Price-points. That phrase is nothing short of an insult. It shows that Hasbro had become willing to sell out the very essence of its characters if they thought they might wring some tiny bit of profit out of it.
Machine Wars was a similar debacle. I might once have accepted MW Skywarp and Thundercracker if they’d had their correct colors (amazing that Hasbro cared so little for the characters that they didn’t even bother to get the colors right, though the final cost of the product would have been identical), but never “Soundwave,” “Megatron,” “Starscream,” or the utterly laughable concept of Megaplex. By this point, of course, the honored names had already been sullied by the travesty that is Beast Wars, so I was unwilling to accept anything that diverged at all from the ideal. And this was followed up by Beast Machines, Robots in Disgrace, and of late, Armada.
Beast Wars was irredeemable any way you turn it, of course. Even had Megatron’s name not been besmirched by the presence of the Pretender, even had the series not spit upon everything that was ever excellent about Transformers, there were no worthwhile characters in the mix. I’m told there’s practically no Usenet discussion at all anymore about BW characters. They failed to capture the imagination and incite the passion that the multi-faceted, compelling, and awe-inspiring G1 characters were capable of. Beast Machines was an amusing side-trip into the back alleys of obscurity, serving only to invalidate Beast Wars further, and with that I have no complaint - but there were certainly no merits of characterization to be found. For all the clamor the Beast-series caused, no sooner were the shows off the air, than the flash in the pan sizzled out. It is a most fitting journey into extinction.
I was told that RiD “Megatron” was actually a good leader. That may well have been so. But I was so offended by yet another mis-use of the name, that I wanted nothing to do with the concept. Likewise with Armada. Not only are names like Megatron’s and Starscream’s being dragged through the muck again, but now they’re even trampling upon Cyclonus. I’ve seen pictures of the toy. A helicopter?? Had there never been a unique and brilliant character named Cyclonus, the name might have made sense for such a form. Cyclone, rotary blades. Sure. But that’s not the case. This hideous and entirely unsuitable toy can only stand as an affront to the very distinctive personality that is Cyclonus. Perceptor’s name, I’m told by one of his fans, has been applied to a dirt bike! Now, even if I don’t care about the character, even I can see how utterly wrong that is. Not only does it fly in the face of the character’s nature, but even if we know nothing about the real Perceptor at all, the name makes no sense to the form. And of course, the ultimate insult is Laserbeak, having been applied to an Autobot toy in the Armada line. Yet more proof that the “official sources” have no honor - or no brain.
The excuse for all of this travesty, I keep being told, is that Hasbro is protecting its trademarks. “Would you rather see some godawful wrestling toy named Soundwave, if Hasbro loses the trademark?” I keep being asked. And yes, of course I would! Because that hypothetical wrestling toy would have nothing to do with the Transformers mythos, and I’d know that the real essence of Soundwave could never again be desecrated in the TF universe by using his name on an inappropriate form, by juggling his allegiance, by painting him in unsuitable colors, by writing absurd tech specs, or any other transgression that Hasbro is willing to commit against character integrity in the name of sacred profits. I don’t collect wrestling toys. What do I care what they’re called? No one will claim that Soundwave transferred his consciousness into the body of a wrestler in some other toy continuity. But as long as the name exists in the Hasbro universe, such garbage is not at all beyond the bounds of the probable. I should love nothing better than to see Hasbro lose the trademarks to the original names! Then they might actually have to get creative and come up with a new generation with all-new names and characters, as the Japanese series did for a long time with great success. And as even Hasbro did in the beginning. Think back to the toys of the 80’s, and you’ll realize that each new wave got a new set of leaders or significant characters, rather than a re-tread of the original names in inappropriate new forms. We’re long past the point of the Movie days where a whole new set of names would be a bad thing. Because we’ve seen the alternative, and the alternative is worse.
The ironic thing is, Hasbro’s own current thoughtless approach will be their undoing. They are, once again, killing the goose that’s laying their golden eggs. In attempting to safeguard “name recognition,” they’re destroying the very name recognition they’re trying to preserve. The famous names (Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, etc. - even add some Autobots here if you wish) should each evoke one particular image, a very clear mental and emotional picture, and no other. That’s what makes the names powerful and recognizable. That’s what appealed to the kids who were Hasbro’s target market in the 80’s and remained fans to this day. The only reason Hasbro was able to revive the Transformer line in any form at all, is because of these fans. And our thanks is that now a mindless corporation is mocking what remains of the archetypes and dissipating the very thing they’re supposed to stand for.
If Hasbro wishes to homogenize Transformers into something generic, something that no longer evokes a mythos, because it’s cheap and easy to do it that way and requires no strain on their very minimal collective brainpower - well, that’s unfortunate, for them as well as for us. They’ll even lose their target market that way. TFs will become just another of many toys on the shelf, in interesting designs and pretty packaging, but essentially indistinguishable from any other toy line that can say the same. Each new line of Transformers bearing vaguely recognized but meaningless names becomes disposable, evoking no emotional resonance, and will flare up briefly only to be dismissed again. Hasbro has shot itself in the foot a second time.
The positive note to all of this gloom and doom? It just so happens that the real, original Transformers are alive and well and cherished by those who refuse to allow the latest tripe to dampen their love for the characters who truly bear the names. Part of the excellence of characters such as Soundwave and Megatron is in the absolute certainty that their essence is so well defined that it will never change. They will never become someone unrecognizable. You can always trust them to be exactly who they are. The universe will not be ripped out from under you. And this, I will never give up on. Despite Hasbro’s outrageous mis-management - despite any and all pathetic attempts to re-write the tale in comic form which has already been told in fan consciousness in a thousand variants - the essence of the great characters is untransformable. You don’t water down the archetypes. You don’t mess with perfection.
--Raksha the Plumed Serpent
|