The death knell for me of the franchise was the original Transformers movie. “This isn’t MY transformers anymore!!!”

And yes I have heard about this Optimus being different than the real Optimus because it is a different continuity or whatever. Doesn’t make it any better.

Was Transformers Animated the Teen Titans-lite show with the little girl as the sidekick and father that was an Indian stereotype?

Part of the reason, ironically, is the expense of the CGI animation they used for it; it was too expensive to have a sprawling cast, so there were, at most, seven Maximals (Autobot-allied faction) and seven Predacons (Decepticon-allied faction) at any time. This led to some strong character-based episodes, and memorable personalities.

Transformers: Animated would later copy this model in its first season, then gradually add a greater and greater cast as time went on.

You have got to be joking.

Isn’t he in 75 ? There’s a scene in that with a bunch of the original cast jumping out the ark….. the funny thing about it being that all the characters shown there had just been bought back as toys in the UK.

God, that sucked.

Nicely done, Ellis Wyatt.

While I missed a lot of the original cast, I did like the factions and evolving leadership that cast instability created with the Decepticons. Grimlock’s leadership with the Autobots was pretty lame, though. (Although the Blaster storyline was a decent trade-off.)

This really applies to all the characters: Sunstreaker was brutally (and casually) murdered by Shockwave in he fifth or sixth issue of the series, and was never seen again. Blaster had a whole storyline and rivalry with Grimlock that’s brought to a sudden end when Starscream slaughters him and two-thirds of the rest of the cast. The original comic series was never afraid of a high body count, especially when death wasn’t necessarily the end of a character’s story. (Not to say that it was all done well; many issues and plot points were downright silly. But there really is a sense that anything can happen, which you don’t see as much in current Transformer media.)

The return of Megatron and the classic Pretenders (and the earlier return of Optimus Prime) illustrates the formation of what can loosely be defined as the Transformers’ status quo: there are certain characters who stick around because they’re the core of the brand. Part of this was because Hasbro was realizing the branding potential in the “core cast” that they’d cynically written out in the animated movie to make room for new product; the classic Pretenders were the first “new” versions of ’84 characters. Nowadays there’s a new incarnation of Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and Starscream on the shelf every year.

It was a bit of a detriment to the series, because honestly, Megatron was a crappy villain. He was a character who lacked any sense of subtlety or nuance, and was basically a petty tyrant. And then Shockwave came and handed him his hinder. Shockwave had something Megatron lacked: definable character traits. And then you have Ratbat, possibly the most unexpected Decepticon commander ever; he was a beaurocrat who happened to be promoted to the top spot because everyone ahead of him in the chain of command had been killed. Later, the conflicted cyborg Scorponok and the arcane fighter Bludgeon would get the own hands at leading the ‘Cons, but both would eventually be brushed aside for Megatron’s return.

The Megatron and Optimus Prime that Furman writes are deep enough characters, and that’s probably good because we’re essentially stuck with them, but you need to understand that Furman essentially re-invented them for greater utility.

Good times