When should it have stopped??

[Luisito]

Reading through everyone's posts on this board and because it's a point I strongly agree with, I thought of something interesting. We all know that the death of Optimus and the influx of toooooo many characters are the key points that killed the Transformers.

The first season of Transformer characters, everyone seems to agree were the best. So when should hasbro have stopped bringing in new characters?

It seems that after the arielbots and protectorbots etc etc things started going downhill, but what about Kup? I always thought Kup was a cool character, and he would not have appeared had the arielbots been the last.

In my opinion I would have stopped after Blaster and Warpath and this period in the cycle. I liked some of the later characters, but the Headmasters and Pretenders were a step too far for me.

What do you guys and girls think, as I would like to hear your opinions.

[Kaylee]

IMO new characters isn't necessarily a problem- Transformers in the end is meant to be a huge war and that scale isn't achieved without numbers and it's not feasible to give everyone their 5 minutes of fame, it does mean tho that you can dip in and out and occassionally bring a new character to the fore.

I think the biggest problem wasn't that they brought new characters in, but the way they were brought in. The cartoon gave absolutely no reason for this at all, they just generally turned up as if they'd been there all along (Perceptor and Blaster for example).

[spiderfrommars]

Sheer volume of new characters was a problem, as was moving further and further away from traditional Earthen vehicle disguises. But at no point would I say they should've stopped. Just a bit of quality over quantity perhaps?

[Dead Head]

The first season of Transformer characters, everyone seems to agree were the best.

Speak for yourself.

[Brendocon]

We all know that the death of Optimus and the influx of toooooo many characters are the key points that killed the Transformers.

... we do?

... when the hell was Transformers ever "dead"?

It's been going non-stop in one form or another since its inception...

[Best First]

i think the volume of toys and the radical change post movie probably hit the cartoon as a sales tool, which may have in turn dented the popularity of the toys in NA...

...however if anything the slow decline in the original line's popularity lead to many of the best stories in the comics, Furman was pretty much left free to use and abuse whoever he liked during the end the US run, so while there was some unfortunate comic fattness with things like the PretenderTargetHeadMaster intro's once we got past that the quality output generally went up.

So, as has been said, it shoud like, never, ever stop, but the focus needs to remain on quality of story and not be toy sales driven to the point that undermines that (which doesn't seem to be an issue at present, Movie adaption aside maybe)

[Impactor returns 2.0]

It makes u wonder if the franchise could have survived by remaing with standard earther forms, and keeping the story on earth?

Probably not, toys need gimmicks I suppose, TF are essentially just one big gimmick, and they u introduce more via combiners, Masters and erm, pretenders... ah yes, I can see where it fails now.

In a way, i think I knew in my heart, or felt it around the playground at least, that with the release of TF:M, the popularity reached its peak.

and to think, we were only on what, issue 50'ish of the UK comics at the time of release?

[Hot Shot]

We all know that the death of Optimus and the influx of toooooo many characters are the key points that killed the Transformers.

... we do?

... when the hell was Transformers ever "dead"?

It's been going non-stop in one form or another since its inception...

I think he means OP's death and replacing all of the season 1 characters killed the popularity of TFs in the 80's.

I'm glad OP died actually, because if it hadn't shrunk the franchise to a low-power state, TFs would've most likely fizzled out completely after the market got tired of it. Sure, an american season 4 and 5 would've been nice, but it's not worth sacrificing Beast Wars for.

[rusty_herring]

Sure, an american season 4 and 5 would've been nice, but it's not worth sacrificing Beast Wars for.

I dunno why but I was never a huge fan of Beast Wars. Nice series though and I did watch it on TV when it came out. Guess I just liked cars and planes more.

I dunno as a kid if I ever would've stopped watching as long as the show was on in some form but eventually it would've fizzled out naturally as all kids shows do.

I agree that in some way the way the original show 'went down in a blaze of glory' with the original movie and might've helped spark the return of G1 after all of us grew up into a market where we could buy our own things again and the original series could be re-released on DvD.(At least speaking of myself)

What I love so much about the TF universe is there's so much out there you can almost jump in and do whatever you want and it'll fit. The problem of course is that with that and so many characters you'll never please all of the people all of the time.

[Legion]

Reading through everyone's posts on this board and because it's a point I strongly agree with, I thought of something interesting. We all know that the death of Optimus and the influx of toooooo many characters are the key points that killed the Transformers.

I don't think killing Prime in the movie had that much of an effect on sales to be honest. I mean, he was back what, the following year? as a Powermaster...

Certainly, i think that had something to do with the decline in the Comics and Cartoon, but the core of the franchise - the toys shouldn't have been affected by that... what did affect it was the fact that the production quality was falling, the gimmicks were getting too gimmicky... oh and they took away the biggest selling point about Transformers... their ability to Transform...

What killed off Transformers (G1)? Pretenders and Actionmasters. IMHO of course.