Lookit all this stuff I bought
on February 17, 2014 at 12:01 amOh, right, a callback to that strip where Danny said his Optimus Prime had no fists. Well, that’s nice.
Joe’s “Japanese toys that transform into dinosaurs” is referencing Beast Wars Neo, a Japanese-only toyline that was running at the time. Many of those guys would eventually find their way over here as redecoes.
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Yeah, I had one or two toys I just ended up buying to replace since I couldn’t get just the parts without paying another $20 for shipping.
Honestly, I never had many transforming toys, the only one I can think of is one from a power rangers show, the spaceship one. It can become the zords, and also something that looks like the millennium falcon.
You’re probably lucky in that. Of all the ones I and my cousin owned as kids, only my ’85 G1 Grimlock survived in reasonable shape. I did a lot of kitbashing of my toys as a kid, though, and he was uber rough on his when playing with them so that may be more a matter of who we were.
That starship flew more missions than any other. It’s still in completely good condition. Also, it also got the drop on sooooooo many bad guys. But bad guys that were really good at fighting back. That ship had to leave, and use tactical strikes.
I may not have made sure all of my toys were used properly, but the heroes winning automatically never seemed fun to me.
Usually in my scenarios, everybody died.
But yeah, heroes winning with no casualties every day of the week was annoying.
I had a couple of Transformers when I was a kid, but they weren’t Optimus Prime or Bumblebee, so I didn’t really know who they were, and I don’t even recall the names now. (Whenever I watched the cartoon, it seemed to be in a constant state of Continuity Lock-Out. If my guys were in it, I was too confused for it to register.)
I had a rock.
And an orange truck. I was told I could choose any, so I chose the truck in the vain hope that my parents would get me the one that had the trailer that came with all the cars as well.
But I mostly remember the rock.
Wish I could come up with a good fisting joke.
To be fair, $35 is a pretty good price for a solid fisting. I think Danny may just be put off because because a fisting one isn’t prepared for can be very uncomfortable.
Of course now there’s the ability to buy a whole new G1 Optimus reissue for the same price.
Yeah, was going to say… $35 seems a bit high. Might want to check ebay first
Willis, I know you’re a Transformer geek. I never was, but I have seen some of the early stuff, and I have a question:
These are supposed to be sentient, fighting robots that (normally) look like something else — helicopters, semi trucks, bulldozers, etc. When they transform into their robot personas, they then have all this extraneous junk hanging off their arms, legs, backs, and wherever else. Seems to me that this shit then becomes a vulnerability, as it would stand to take a helluvalot of damage in a fight and making the robot less effective …. or at the very least unable to transform back to a car, truck, etc. once the fight was over.
So was there some sort of explanation that supposed covered this glaring flaw?
The very premise “sentient transforming alien robots” throws any vestige of plausibility or practicality out the window. Even more than most mecha, Transformers run entirely on Rule of Cool. If you start asking questions like, “Doesn’t all the kibble get damaged in fights?” or “Exactly how does a robot where 90% of the interior is taken up by the mechanisms that allow it to transform even function in either form, much less have any sort of advantage over a single-form robot that can use all that space for useful systems?”, the whole thing falls apart.
Just kick back, suspend disbelief, and watch the transforming robots fight.
Originally posted:
July 27, 1999