![]() The comic issue " Pretender to the Throne!" suddenly introduces a dozen Autobots and Decepticons that we've never met before, and follows their adventures. ![]() One episode even hinges on this idea.Īpparently, the Triggerbots didn't make much of an impression on Prime. Season 2 of the cartoon introduced many new characters/buyable toys with no explanation despite never having been seen before, the story treats them as though they have been there the whole time.The Hasbro-induced need to show all the toys can also cause stories to suddenly focus on a new character, sometimes dropping ongoing plot threads about older ones. In one example, #17 brought in nine new toys in eleven pages only one of the five Decepticons got any real focus or dialogue. From #9 onwards, Titan's movie-based Transformers heavily bumped up the cast with new toys.In the first four episodes of the 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon, eighteen characters are introduced in quick succession.In both cases, this wasn't helped by the fact that the nature of Headmasters and Targetmasters meant every new toy had to effectively get two introductions. The cartoon episode trilogy " The Rebirth" likewise abruptly introduced well over forty of the 1987 toyline characters, mostly the same ones seen in Headmasters.The 1987 Headmasters Limited Series, which introduced over sixty characters in the course of four issues, including all the first waves of Headmasters and Targetmasters, all their Nebulan partners, the Technobots, Terrorcons, and Monsterbots.Granted, four of those are the combined forms of the other twenty, but that's still a lot of new names to remember. " The Special Teams Have Arrived", a free mini-comic given away with issue #54 of the Marvel UK comic, notoriously introduces the reader to twenty-four new Transformers in just three pages.The first issue of the Generation 1 comic, " The Transformers", in which twenty-eight different robots appeared and introduced themselves, even though only a handful are important to the plot.This can force writers to bring in vast numbers of characters all at once, sometimes with awkward results. Hasbro makes a lot of toys at once, and they generally want all of them to appear in their fiction. Sideways on the concept, Ask Vector Prime. Your species characterizes the infinite wonders of the churning, whorling, chaotic cosmos through the lens of. For the 2010 Transformers: War for Cybertron game franchise, Ironhide himself opened letters pages by telling readers how awesome the game was and how you should buy it. This led to readers being told how great Optimash Prime was. For its first year, it had a specific four-page feature every week called Top Gear, which existed solely to promote the newest Transformers merchandise. ![]() The UK movie-based Transformers comic took this to more blatant heights. Japanese shows are normally the worst offenders, because Transformers doesn't take itself very seriously over there. Sometimes ( Mini-Cons) this is relatively easy, while other times it requires a lot of imagination on the part of the writers (the in-comic explanations for the Headmasters and Targetmasters are kinda wonky). Older characters (whose toys are no longer being sold) are shoved aside to make room.Īnother effect of "to sell toys" is when the toys have gimmicks which must be explained in the fiction. Primarily, since you can't ( usually) sell someone the same toy twice, Hasbro and Takara constantly introduce new toys, and often require the creators of the fiction to introduce the new characters into ongoing storylines. ![]() The "to sell toys" effect often distorts the fiction in interesting ways. To be sure, they normally make a profit in their own right, but this is regarded as mere gravy. The cartoons, comic books, etc., mostly exist to make this happen. Hasbro and TakaraTomy are toy companies, and they are primarily interested in continuing to sell toys to children and adults. To understand Transformers fiction, it is important to understand that it exists to sell toys. Hasbro wasn't quite sure whether to advertise this expensive toy until the fans forced their hand. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |