Opinion: Bottom 5 Moments of IDW's Transformers Run

[TaZZerath]

Okay this one took a little longer than expected to get to, but here it is.

While IDW's run at Transformers managed to have plenty of highlights (and I highlighter my personal Top 5 in a previous thread) there were also a few moments that really rustled my jimmies in a BIG way. These are moments that either left me confused, annoyed or just outright hated.

So without further ado lets get into it shall we?

5. Don Figueroa's Return
Stormbringer was my first intro into 'The Don'-s art, and by PRIMUS it was gorgeous. Only Alex Milne comes even close in my opinion (Milne I think even surpassed him over time). So to hear that he was coming back for "The Transformers" (when IDW decided to just have an ongoing numbered series) I was excited.

Until I saw the art.

Don had attempted to mesh the Bayverse stylistic choices with the G1 aesthetic, and, well..... yeah. No. It didn't work for me. At all. I mean, the alt modes were fantastic, but the robot modes, especially the faces, were just a slagging mess. These weren't Bayverse comics, they were G1 styled chunky stomping robots with very human facial features we'd all gotten used to.

Admittedly, things did get better, but the damage had already been done. Sorry, Don. This was a plumb LBW for you.

4. The Continuity Conundrum
All Hail Megatron not only kicked off a new period for Transformers and polarised a lot of people, it started a trend which continued for many years within the Transformers IDW universe; a severe lack of continuity for plot, characterisation, and even how the characters looked. From an art perspective, while I get the premise behind artistic license, when you have concurrent series presenting such completely different styles (such as the Bumblebee miniseries and the Transformers ongoing), it becomes VERY jarring and not cohesive to follow. And then when certain plot points just become dropped, change completely, or do a complete one-eighty, you can be left scratching your heads for a long time.

Thank Primus for John Barber. He seemed to wage a one-man war on loose ends and the series as a whole really flourished for it and I for one (and I'm sure other fans) breathed a collective sigh of relief.

3. Mike Costa
Words, words, words. Wordy wordy words. Whole panels filled with words. Whole conversations. And primarily with humans! This is how I remember Mike Costa's take on Transformers.

Okay I get it. Lets work some political undertones in there. Reflect on us as humans with all our flaws and weaknesses. But this isn't a comic just about politics (although I feel that later, when it was split after The Death Of Optimus Prime, the Robots In Disguise comic did this fairly well). Its about big transforming robots. Give them characterisation, give them action. Don't just sit around talking! Please!

There just wasn't enough balance during Costa's crack at IDW. Sorry, Mike. It just never worked for me.


2. Heart Of Darkness
Sometimes a mini-series comes along that expands on the ongoing story, ties in both new and existing much-loved characters, has some gorgeous art, and really resonates with you.

For me, that was Rom Vs Transformers: Shining Armor.

But it definitely WASN'T Heart of Darkness.

For starters, I just couldn't get on board with the art style. It was all rounded and chubby and cutesy looking. The colouring was all bright and almost happy-like. For something called 'Heart of Darkness' this just didn't fit!

Then combine that with some aspects of how they treated the Dead Universe. To me, Simon Furman had given the premise of a large dark expanse of dread which defied logic or explanation, but it managed to corrupt everything it touched from the 'normal' universe. Thanks to Heart of Darkness though we get the D-Void. A massive entity of..... eyes and tentacles? So basically a Hentai monster? Which just wants to feed on everything? Really? Why did we need THIS as an explanation??

I kept reading Heart of Darkness in a hope it might redeem itself. But no. From the way they treated Nova Prime (he got some much better more screentime during Dark Cybertron), to massive plotholes like Thinkbox the Headmaster which had to be sorted out later, and that art and colouring.... it was memorable to me for all the wrong reasons, like a train wreck where all the carriages were cargo containers full of CHUG figures.

1. Hunter O'Nion's Treatment during All Hail Megatron
AHM for me was a very polarising moment. I get that IDW were trying to boost sales and get away from the intricate, interwoven storylines of Furman's -ation series by performing a 'soft reboot', but as later work by Roberts, Roche, and Barber showed, many many fans LOVE intricate detail. So when Shane McCarthy took the reins, the impact was... less than stellar for me. I'd loved the redesigned alt modes of the characters and they'd all been tossed aside. I felt the storyline was reduced to a classic cartoon 'Megatron attempts to win at everything and Starscream is his scheming second in command' role. I continued to read, and SOME parts I could get behind, but how poor Hunter O'Nion was treated was truly abhorrent.

Hunter was to me the 'everyman', a conspiracy theorist closet nerd looking for the truth until the truth found him. Unexpectedly caught up in the transformers Great War when it had made its way to earth, he was the Spike for a new generation. I felt that he was designed to be this way. Later he would develop some Mary Sue like qualities when he became bonded with Sunstreaker after being submitted to the Headmaster process but it worked. Despite their clashing personalities they had some great moments which continued into Maximum Dinobots and I really connected with him.

So to find out that Decepticons had managed to get the upper hand via Sunstreakers betrayal, and that Hunter had been tortured and used by Bombshell as a 'backdoor' into their systems was truly horrifying. And then they just end his life. Snuffed out just like that. They didn't even attempt to save him, say goodbye, nothing, it all happened off-screen.

I hated it.

And THEN they made the situation even WORSE. Later in the AHM Coda story 'Replay', they managed to COMPLETELY alter a scene in which it appears that Hunter FORCES Sunstreaker against his will to participate in the Headmaster process, rather than actually agree to join forces.

In all of IDW's run, through multiple authors' interpretations of certain characters, I don't think I've ever seen another figure treated as badly as Hunter was. And it will forever be my number one pick as the top thing I hated in all of IDW's run.

So, what are your thoughts? Care to share what it is that you hated during the IDW run? I'd love to know, and others may too!

[KELPIE]

Haha, I forgot all about how bad Heart of Darkness was. Yuck... but it still doesn't make my bottom 5.

5. Drift
I absolutely loath the character and the way the fandom reacted to him when he was announced.

4. Unicron
The event that wrapped everything up. What a letdown and what a complete mess.

3. Shane McCarthy
Absolute hack of a writer who was more interested in his own brand than that of Transformers. He was also responsible for point 5 on my list.


2. Mike Costa
Showed little regard towards the Transformers property and openly rejected feedback and criticism.

1. Hasbroverse
This was the single biggest mistake IDW could have made. As if their Transformer stories weren't hard enough to follow with all of their events and crossovers and that was when they only had 2 (at one time 3) ongoing lines. Throw in "Hasbroverse" and the whole thing just became an uncontrollable mess. They also had to sacrifice Transformers to all the other properties which felt cheap every time it happened.

I know it could have been done better but honestly, I hope they don't try to repeat the Hasbroverse.

[GoktimusPrime]

In no particular order...

Sometimes being too human (and very Anglo-centric ones at that)
This is a weird one. IDW's greatest asset and liability has been in humanising the Transformers. On the plus side it's made them super relatable and given them incredible depth as characters - and that's great. But on the other hand I find that IDW writers often forget that these are ALIEN ROBOTS. Not humans. All too often they say or do things which doesn't make sense for alien robots to do or say... or for non-English speakers to say. I get that what we're reading is often meant to be Cybertronian translated for the audience - that's fine - but there are certain words or concepts that shouldn't be translatable. Then there are the many, many times that the writers forget that the Transformers have alt modes. Making these characters do stuff in robot mode (e.g. running across great distances) where transforming to alt mode would've made waaay more sense. The sheer number of times where I would read entire issues and nobody ever transforms. One thing that Bob Budiansky was pretty good at with G1 was reminding us of the Transformers' otherworldliness.

That time they emulated Bayformers (and blended it with G1)
...and boy did everyone look really ugly. Blegh. And it was only Don Figueroa who did it and the other artists didn't, so we didn't even have consistent visual/design continuity. You know that your designs look ugly when the editor feels the need to label every character as they appear.

Shoe-horning in other Hasbro properties
WHY?!? Is Hasbro making them do this or are IDW voluntarily doing it? Cos I don't see any new MASK or Visionary toys on shelves. :( Yeah, crossovers happened in G1 too, but they were RARE. ROM The Space Knight? Are you even serious? And if IDW are doing Hasbro a favour by promoting these properties, why not counter-negotiate and ask if they can develop more TF toys based on IDW characters, as they've previously done for Drift (and previously Marvel exclusive TFs like Impactor, Straxus, Jhiaxus etc.)? I don't mind if they tweak the design and alt modes to make the toys more marketable, but I'd love to have toys of Rung and the DJD et al.!

Onyx Prime
The evolution of Shockwave up to his sacrifice was beautiful. One of the few times that a TF comic made me want to cry. But then this was all undone with the whole Onyx Prime crap. Gah. Basically because they spent all this time and effort in developing the character to that point, only to hit the reset button and undo it, cos reasons.

Murdering the English language
I'm still not fully convinced that English is their first language. God, don't even start me on this...

[BigTransformerTrev]

I can't really list 5 specific, but I found when considering this thread that I had my opposites come up when I had thought about (but not posted in) the other thread regarding the top 5 IDW things.

Such as:

My favourite comics were 'All Hail Megatron'
My lest fav were the Optimus ones from the last few years

My fav relationship was Rewind and Chromedome
My least fav was Onslaught and Blast Off

Some of the comics had the best art I've ever seen in a TF comic
Some of them had the worst I've seen since the 80's

Some minor characters became awesome like Swerve
Others reached a new level of annoying like Slide

There were great new concepts introduced which I reckon should become lore
Some of the previous lore I loved frankly got spat upon



So yeah, my favourite things about the IDW run seemed to have their polar opposites.

[SharkyMcShark]

To be fair to AHM, McCarthy was originally told it would be a complete standalone run that was an alternate universe take on Transformers.

IDW were being indecisive about what to do with the -ation series and decided late on in the process that AHM would actually serve as the next part of the main continuity.

Also the DonFig Ongoing Bayverse G1 mashups were absolutely epic. I'd love a toyline done in that style.

[i_amtrunks]

To each their own but I think there will be few general things we can get a consensus on as pretty bad, the constantly delayed books and disorderly releases (and re-releases) of grade collections that collected multiple arcs or series together.

As for a bottom five, I won’t go into too much detail as I have already done that numerous times over the years.
5:The Don Figueroa / Transformers soft reboot era. Art was a shambles, too many names being dropped because no one looked right in robot mode, too many characters acting out of character and a very hard read most times. It wasn’t till Nick roche have a hand that we started to get back on track.

4: AHM: As Sharks alluded to, as a stand alone this would have been a fun little mini series like Hearts of Steel. As a pseudo retcon reboot (sensing a theme?) after all the ground work had been set by the Furman “-ations” and Spotlights this was just a massive backwards step that the Coda and numerous other titles kept trying to fix with very little success. Plus Drift... who may have ended up half way tolerable by the end but again needed a lot of work and that terrible Stone miniseries that was so boring I can’t even remember the tile to get him to a point where he became more than a joke...

3: Unicron or dead zombie planetformer... meh what a massive boring letdown that really told a mediocre small story that did nothing but allow them to wipe the slate more or less clean. Sadly another theme coming...

2: Events: Bar “Death of Optimus Prime” IDW failed every event they tried. Either they were bloated and silly like Dark Cybertron, were used to tie into the hasbroverse like Zombies/dvoid, were just plain useless like Megatron Origins or were a massive disappointment like Inicron and all the other Hasbroverse stories.

1: Hasbroverse: when it started by killing Kup in the zombies “combined universe” then they tried it again in Action Man... every new series that was part of the forced Hasbroverse needed a transformer in it that they then wasted or made useless. Then they ruined the main stories incorporating all the other mini series events (visionaries anyone???). All ending in the death of the entire universe and series. It was a slow sinful death Brough about by a boring event that also made the last year of the Prime book full and difficult to read (to the point where I no longer bought the issues) killed off the decent Windblade series and just generally left a bad taste in the mouth.

Sadly it is good bye to the IDW verse, Furman had an intriguing and different story to tell that Jame Roberts and Nick roche lovingly continued with Barber doing a most commendable job trying to tie it all Back together after McCarthy and Costa had done their best to kill it off.

I won’t be buying the new series but I’ll give it a read, it will have to be more Wreckers or Lost Light in style and not have any “big hasbro events” in the near distance.

[BigTransformerTrev]

To be fair to AHM, McCarthy was originally told it would be a complete standalone run that was an alternate universe take on Transformers.

IDW were being indecisive about what to do with the -ation series and decided late on in the process that AHM would actually serve as the next part of the main continuity.



4: AHM: As Sharks alluded to, as a stand alone this would have been a fun little mini series like Hearts of Steel. As a pseudo retcon reboot (sensing a theme?) after all the ground work had been set by the Furman “-ations” and Spotlights this was just a massive backwards step that the Coda and numerous other titles kept trying to fix with very little success. Plus Drift... who may have ended up half way tolerable by the end but again needed a lot of work and that terrible Stone miniseries that was so boring I can’t even remember the tile to get him to a point where he became more than a joke...

Well there ya go, its interesting to read that pretty much my fav comics were disliked by so many others. Shows we've all got our own tastes :)

I think I just fell in love with the AHM series when the Decepticons first invaded a city and you got to see both the 'Robots in Disguise' concept with the Constructicons rumbling into the city square and Skywarp transforming into a robot and scaring the hell out of a pilot who thought he was chasing another jet. Also the scale, like with the office furniture shaking as Megatron strode down the street and all you could see was his chest through a 3rd story window. Plus it is always good to see the humans get their arses handed to them :p

Gotta admit I didn't care much for the Autobot side of the story with them stuck on Cybertron. The only cool bit was Omega turning up and decimating the Insecticon swarm.

[KELPIE]

Not included in my list but probably should be included somewhere, would be how difficult this series was to catch up on, will be to re-read and will be to recommend.

With all the constant soft reboots, miniseries, starts and stops of ongoing, splits across titles and then the eventual hasbroverse.

What to read when and in what order is just way to confusing for anyone not reading at the time of release.

Also, for the people asking about hasbroverse, that was Chris Ryall going to Hasbro and pitching it. Hasbro loved the idea, so IDW went with it.

Basically it was a way for IDW to bump up other series sales and get more use out of their Hasbro contract. Oh and Ryall is a massive ROM fan

[i_amtrunks]

Well there ya go, its interesting to read that pretty much my fav comics were disliked by so many others. Shows we've all got our own tastes :)

I think I just fell in love with the AHM series when the Decepticons first invaded a city and you got to see both the 'Robots in Disguise' concept with the Constructicons rumbling into the city square and Skywarp transforming into a robot and scaring the hell out of a pilot who thought he was chasing another jet. Also the scale, like with the office furniture shaking as Megatron strode down the street and all you could see was his chest through a 3rd story window. Plus it is always good to see the humans get their arses handed to them :p

Gotta admit I didn't care much for the Autobot side of the story with them stuck on Cybertron. The only cool bit was Omega turning up and decimating the Insecticon swarm.

AHM was actually a good comic in terms of switching things up and the art was nothing but pure nostalgia and fan love. The story itself was a nice twist, the reason it made my list was because it was shoehorned into what already come before and made absolutely no sense with what came before or really the tone and vibe of what came after.

Pull out the twelve issues of AHM as a stand alone maxi series and it would be fine. Minus Drift of course! :p

[KELPIE]

Also, for the people asking about hasbroverse, that was Chris Ryall going to Hasbro and pitching it. Hasbro loved the idea, so IDW went with it.

Basically it was a way for IDW to bump up other series sales and get more use out of their Hasbro contract. Oh and Ryall is a massive ROM fan

Well, now that Ryall is back and in charge of IDW, we can probably expect some kind of Hasbroverse attempt again?

[FatalityPitt]

If no one minds, I might just share my thoughts about the IDW comic run in this one post (save myself from answering two threads).

Be warned, there's some spoilers!

Things I liked:

Breaking down Autobot/Decepticon stereotypes - One of my favourite things about the IDW comics was that it really emphasized that not all Autobots are good, and not all Decepticons are evil. A character can be a Decepticon and still be good and honorable. One of my favourite moments was during the All Hail Optimus arc where Soundwave read the minds of the humans and surrendered because he realised his actions were doing more harm than good. It was a simple moment, but it really drove home the point that Soundwave was not a loyal Decepticon because he wanted to kill Autobots and rule the universe, but more because he thought he was doing the right thing, and he never intended to be evil. Then of course there's characters like Getaway - who demonstrated that just because you're a white Autobot car who hates Megatron (who, like Soundwave, never set out to be evil in the beginning); doesn't mean you're incapable of betrayal and murder. Even Optimus Prime himself had flaws (he tricked people into believing in the Matrix, which was really just a pulse generator).

Character depth and development - There's way too many examples to name, but some of the characters that really stood out to me were Starscream, Megatron and Slag. Starscream started off as Megatron's untrustworthy lackey (typical of G1 Starscream), but he got given what he wanted (became ruler of Cybertron), and after that he got put in interesting situations that taught him the error of his ways. In the end he sacrifices himself to stop Unicron, and doesn't complain about Optimus Prime taking the credit when he visits Bumblebee in ghost form. Then there's Megatron, which I can talk about until next Sunday, but I really like how IDW decided to make Megatron into an Autobot (unthinakble right?!) and the way it was justified. I thought it was well-done. As for Slag, we usually stereotype him as being a short-tempered delinquent, but in the IDW comics they show him as not only intelligent, but they provide some pretty compelling reasons as to why he doesn't trust authority (especially Optimus Prime).

To sum up, there's a lot of complexity and depth in each character, and after reading their backstories, it's easy to understand why they behave the way they do. Also, they're not simple black and white characters; there's varying shades of grey.

Things I disliked:

Forced social progressiveness - The Chromedome/Rewind relationship was quite touching and well-done, definitely a high-point of the series. But then they later introduced more same-gender relationships (Onslaught/Blast Off, Lug/anode, Ratchet/Drift, Arcee/Aileron, etc.) which started to come of as cliche and unnecessary. I felt some of them we're out of character; like the Onslaught/Blast Off affair. G1 Blast Off to me is someone who's aloof and arrogant, and doesn't seem like the sort who'd want to get romantically involved with anyone, let alone someone who transforms into a land vehicle. think the story could have been written just as well without the romance.

Very WORDY DIALOGUE - Especially in MTMTE/Lost Light, I thought the dialogue was too long. Because of my short attention span, I found myself needing to re-read almost every sentence.

Artwork - Was a a bit hit or miss for me. I like a clean and simple manga style, but sometimes the character proportions looked too cartoon-ish for my taste. Sometimes the artwork and designs of the characters looked too busy.

[GoktimusPrime]

Yeah. The thing about Chromedome x Rewind and Tailgate x Cyclonus is that their relationships felt more organic. These characters fell in love with each other but it just so happened that they are same-gender because 99% of Cybertronians are masculine. The same-genderness was incidental and thus felt unforced. They didn't make a deal of it.

Subsequent ones as you've mentioned have not been so subtle (although I personally never noticed Drift and Ratchet as a couple; I thought that they'd just become good mates). I also didn't mind Blast Off's thing with Onslaught so much, as it explored the realm of unrequited love and the fact that they were both masculine was, again, incidental. While Blast Off is aloof and arrogant, he never had a disdain for ground-based modes (unlike Powerglide who pities anyone who can't fly). But remember that Blast Off's G1 profile, as written by Bob Budiansky, also states:
"But his happiness is an act, a disguise he uses to hide his long-distance lonliness. His aloof and superior manner is a front that prevents the other Decepticons from knowing his true feelings."
So... yeah, IDW Blast Off's persona is pretty G1 accurate. :)

[FruitBuyer]

I agree that Ratchet X Drift was too forced for me. I never saw anything other than a well developed friendship there.

I still enjoyed Lost Light/MtMtE overall but I can definitely feel like Roberts started catering for the shippers too much by the end

[GoktimusPrime]

I agree that Ratchet X Drift was too forced for me. I never saw anything other than a well developed friendship there.

I still enjoyed Lost Light/MtMtE overall but I can definitely feel like Roberts started catering for the shippers too much by the end
I wonder if that decision came from him or the editor. I also noticed that Roberts' English started getting sloppy like Barber's, which led me to wonder if it's the writers or editor who keeps on screwing up on spelling and grammar. Either way it still makes IDW look bad (literature should be literate!)

[bowspearer]

Things I disliked:

Forced social progressiveness - The Chromedome/Rewind relationship was quite touching and well-done, definitely a high-point of the series. But then they later introduced more same-gender relationships (Onslaught/Blast Off, Lug/anode, Ratchet/Drift, Arcee/Aileron, etc.) which started to come of as cliche and unnecessary. I felt some of them we're out of character; like the Onslaught/Blast Off affair. G1 Blast Off to me is someone who's aloof and arrogant, and doesn't seem like the sort who'd want to get romantically involved with anyone, let alone someone who transforms into a land vehicle. think the story could have been written just as well without the romance.

I'd actually describe it more brutally:

Woeful universe building in favour of patronisingly misogynistic, racist and homophobic tokenism!

And yes, when a writer decides that female characters, same-sex characters and characters from racial minorities don't deserve the universe building required to make them fit within established cannon, then they are essentially treating characters from those groups as nothing more than their genitals, the genitals of their partners and the colour of their skin.

So much for MLK's famous remark of:


I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

This was what turned me off IDW in the end: forced social progressiveness, which I consider to be blatantly shallow and tokenistic and utterly devoid of any kind of the quality universe building required for representations of any kind of quality. What really highlighted that for me was Mairghread Scott's disgusting and baseless "misogyny" attack on Simon Furman and the way universe building took place under the initial Furman run as opposed to how later stories in the run completely contrasted it in quality.

I loved the Dead-Furmanverse; ok, so Revelations was a bit rushed and the pacing should have been handled better, however from a universe-building perspective, there appeared to be a clear and concise bible there, whether one was actually written down on ink or not. I especially loved the way Arcee was handled as such a tragic and idenitifable character. Furman realised that with how he was approaching Cybertronian xenobiology, female Transformers weren't a natural fit, so of course, he makes gender one of the experiments of the Josef Mengele of the IDWverse Cybertron - Jhiaxus. That then profoundly affects Arcee in a way where you both want Jhiaxus to die a bloody death and want Arcee to find her peace. It was something which drifted more into harder science fiction and was a fascinating idea. In fact, the interesting flip side was that the only reason that the rest of the Transformers were male, canonically speaking is because Arcee's RNA was modified to female, which by point of difference, automatically made every other Cybertronian male; had Arcee been made male for example, then it would have made every other Cybertronian, including Optimus Prime and Megatron, female.

Likewise the whole Gorlam Prime idea was brilliant regarding the Dead-Universe and I honestly think it's some of Furman's best work ever.

In fact one of my criticisms of Bayformers has been that it would have been much better had it adapted the Dead Furmanverse.

Sadly what we got under Scott and Roberts was a massive drop in the quality of universe-building and the baseless nastiness from Scott towards Furman was a dark foreshadowing of that.

Scott's criticism of Furman was essentially that in making Arcee an experiment gone wrong, he was somehow treating women as "abominations" and thereby being misogynistic. The fact that the Transformers weren't even human to begin with and had a radically different form of reproduction to humans (making her entire criticism of Furman both baseless and unintelligent), didn't even seem to register with her.

I'd argue that one of the big danger with writing for alien races is that people anthropomorphise too much, to the point where the author forgets that they are writing about an alien race and whether the interactions and events happening to those characters even makes sense. A great example of this being done right was way back in Marvel Issue 1, when Bob Budiansky had the Autobots having the lightbulb moment that it was humans, and not machines which were alive on Earth. A romantic scene between men and women on the big screen was a complete anathema to the Autobot scouting party observing the drive in was another great example of this.

Contrast that with IDW as of around the end of Dark Cybertron. It's all well and good to want to give certain groups representation and discuss certain issues, but it needs to fit with the race or established universe you're dealing with; we have the issues around gender and sex we do, because were a species which is bisexual and bisexually reproduces.

A species which androgynous, for example is going to have different sexually based social issues than those we do and in fact an interesting question science fiction has posed and has done well with posing, is what happens when two species with entirely different biological sexualities and therefore sexual norms and customs based around those sexualities interacts; a great example of this is the Star Trek TNG episode "The Outcast" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29), which though not seeming to please either side (some attacked the way Soren was treated at the end of the episode while failing to recognise how unfavourably it was portrayed, while others such as Jonothan Frakes felt it didn't go far enough).

Therein lies the problem. It's almost like the whole thing came about the egos of the writers first and universe building and respecting existing stories dead last. There was no credible attempt at universe building which made the Transformers being a bi-gendered species a possibility (which by the way, puts the universe building of the IDW comics at a level which is inferior to the continuity nightmare which is the Sunbow G1 cartoon), and therefore makes all their attempts to address issues like gender representation, same-sex relationships, marriage (heterosexual or same sex), etc essentially a square peg they've tried to ram into a round hole. Heck even the introduction of a multiverse with different versions of some characters, would have been sufficient universe-building to make the issues and representations they wanted fit with the IDW-verse.

Likewise when they redid M.A.S.K. they wanted racial minorities more represented so they rewrote the character of Matt Trakker, rather than simply having this be a "sequel" set 30 years later after the original M.A.S.K., which could have been one of the earliest initiatives off-shooting from the Skywatch program and have "Matt Trakker" be a codename at this point, which now belonged to the son of Hondo MacLean. Heck, if you really wanted to make things interesting, you'd have had something horrible happen to Scott Trakker and in a massive fall from grace and stab to the feels with a serrated knife, have him become the new "Miles Mayhem".

And yes, I am saying that minorities deserve to be given quality representation as opposed to tokenistic representation; any argument to the contrary is simply patronising bigotry.

Skillful writers build universes which fit the stories they want to tell and the issues they want to raise like a glove to the extent that they feel inevitable when they do arise. Ameteurish writers ignore universe building and the existing source material and much like a child terribly failing at putting a puzzle together, they try and mash issues and characters into a universe they they simply aren't designed to mesh with. Sadly, with IDW in the later half of its run, universe building was very much amateur hour.

That's not to say that there weren't some interesting ideas in there - the ideas about hotspots, natural vs "aided" birthing of transformers (ie forged vs constructed cold) and functionalism were brilliant ideas - in fact I don't think the whole functionalism issue was ever used to its full potential (ironically to make many of the social commentaries they were trying to make).

However it is abundantly clear that either the writers storytelling ambitions exceeded their universe-building abilities or they were unable to get far enough out of the way of their own egos to make use of the universe building abilities they had.

[Paulbot]

It’d be okay for “same-sex” relationships to exist in these made up stories as long as there’s an explanation for it that you feel is good enough? This is pretty insulting.

[FatalityPitt]

@ bowspearer

I wrote a longer response to your comment, but the site failed on me and I lost it, so here's a short re-written version:

One aspect I didn't enjoy about IDW's take on Transformers is that I felt like it shoe-horned a lot of current real-world politics into the stories. I didn't feel like it needed that, especially since it's a science fiction story about shape-changing alien robots from space. I wasn't sure how to express this earlier without offending anyone (there seems to be a lot of lefties on this site).

Anyway, one reason why I like science fiction and fantasy is because it's a form of escapism for me. When I read comic or watch a movie, I don't like being reminded of real-world problems or issues because that's what I'm trying to escape from when reading the comic or watching the movie.

There were a lot of LGBTQ themes in Transformers towards the end of the run, and even though I am supportive of LGBTQ causes; I didn't need to see so much of it in a comic. It's good that it was acknowledged via Chromedome/Rewind, but beyond that, I felt like IDW editorial were flashing it in my face.

Just my 2 cents. Enough about the comics!! It's over... until the relaunch later this year... It never ends, does it?

[bowspearer]

It’d be okay for “same-sex” relationships to exist in these made up stories as long as there’s an explanation for it that you feel is good enough? This is pretty insulting.

So demanding that representations of minority groups respect them as people rather than dehumanise them as characteristics, is "pretty insulting"? Last I checked that was the soft bigotry of low expectations, so you might want to check your own bigotry - internalised or extrernalised.

Ultimately storytelling representations which treat groups and issues with the respect they deserve, work from the basis of an internalised or externalised dialogue of "What group or issue to I want to represent? Is the existing universe and are the existing characters a natural fit for these groups and this issue? No? Ok, so what do I need to do to make them a natural fit as opposed to making them shoehorned into it?"

The ST:TNG episode I cited was an example of doing this the right way; the IDW comic series as of Scott and Roberts was an example of completely failing in that process.

Here's the thing - no matter how much you might what to shut your eyes, plug your fingers in your ears and scream out "lalalalala I can't hear you!" the fact is that genre exists and writing in genres has certain requirements to make something work in that genre. Pure fantasy has completely different requirements than science fiction for example and even in the Sunbow Cartoon, with the continuity nightmare that it was, there were countless examples of there being a science fiction approach - be it the Cosmotron which needed replacing to save Prime's life in Divide and Conquer, the crystal and the artificial fix for it in Fire on the Mountain, Cybertonium in Desertion of the Dinobots, the entirety of The God Gambit, the origins and original functions of the Transformers in The Five Faces of Darkness, and so the list goes on. With the comics, even when you had the fantastical like Primus and Unicron, there was still a passable, quasi-scientific explanation for Cybertron and Unicron's physical actions after their Astral Plane battle, being either a psychic phenomenon or the result of it. Beast Wars ratcheted this up another level yet again, with the way things like shell programs were handled and even the Vok were portrayed skillfully as a a race of highly advanced beings engaging in high science, who felt no need to explain their actions to the Transformers, any more than we might feel the need to explain our actions to an ant or a fly.

Like it or lump it, the Transformers has always been scifi and so that means that there are certain requirements there in terms of genre and an objective means of judging something within that genre.

The fact is that IDW comics fail as Sci-fi. Same sex relationships and heterosexual relationships would, and, in the case of the later, did work in the Sunbow Cartoon, Beast Wars and Beast Machines, because the Transformers' biology and/or their base psychology which directly resulted from that biology, was organically conducive to and compatible with it. Nothing about the physiology or psychology of the Transformers in the IDW-verse is even remotely organically conducive or compatible with such representations and neither Scott nor Roberts was even remotely successful in putting in place things to change that - presuming that any serious effort was even put into doing so to begin with.

What the IDW comics under Scott and Roberts have shown is that some writers shouldn't be allowed to touch stories on alien races in a science fiction genre - with even a 10 foot barge pole, to borrow that old turn of phrase.


@ bowspearer

I wrote a longer response to your comment, but the site failed on me and I lost it, so here's a short re-written version:

I always copy and paste what I type before hitting send for that reason now, so I can completely empathise :).


One aspect I didn't enjoy about IDW's take on Transformers is that I felt like it shoe-horned a lot of current real-world politics into the stories. I didn't feel like it needed that, especially since it's a science fiction story about shape-changing alien robots from space. I wasn't sure how to express this earlier without offending anyone (there seems to be a lot of lefties on this site).

Anyway, one reason why I like science fiction and fantasy is because it's a form of escapism for me. When I read comic or watch a movie, I don't like being reminded of real-world problems or issues because that's what I'm trying to escape from when reading the comic or watching the movie.

There were a lot of LGBTQ themes in Transformers towards the end of the run, and even though I am supportive of LGBTQ causes; I didn't need to see so much of it in a comic. It's good that it was acknowledged via Chromedome/Rewind, but beyond that, I felt like IDW editorial were flashing it in my face.

Which is sadly the problem with bad storytelling and why it does more harm than good. Good storytelling should be able to impart something without someone feeling like it's being forced on you. Good story telling should be able to speak about issues, while not only doing it in a way where you don't consciously know it at the time, but you still feel like you're getting that escape.

Bad storytelling will make you feel like you're being hit over the head with a sledgehammer to drive the lecture into you.

The first people to notice are always going to be the ones who are heavily into a genre. Those who will notice after are those are more casually into a genre or tend to be quite forgiving when it comes to bad writing to genre and/or have a tendency to heavily anthropomorphise. The last to notice and who will probably always defend it, even after they are the only voices defending it, are the ideologues pushing that very agenda and the fans who treat said properties like the way hardcore fans of sporting teams treat those teams. The irony of course, in the case of crappy writing, is that those very ideologues become guilty of the soft-bigotry of low expectations in response to attempting to combat that very bigotry, and so their entire position becomes quite hypocritical, which they are sadly blind to.


It never ends, does it?

Ironic that you paraphrase that line when responding to me, given my past actions lol. :D

[FatalityPitt]

Ironic that you paraphrase that line when responding to me, given my past actions lol. :D

The irony is totally unintentional. Apologies if it came off that way. I was actually referring to the comics :)

It never ends. When one G1 continuity reaches its coda, another one starts. Like an endless loop!

Personally, I'd prefer Hasbro/IDW to move onto something beyond G1 - like the Beast Era, or perhaps the Unicron Trilogy (without the cheesiness of the anime).

But at the same time, who can blame them? Everyone seems to love G1 and Hasbro needs IDW to continue printing out the 32-page toy commercials, to get readers to buy characters that they might not have liked before reading the comic.

[bowspearer]

The irony is totally unintentional. Apologies if it came off that way.

No need for apologies. :)


I was actually referring to the comics :)

So was I, specifically the G2 Marvel comic - specifically the letters page of it and how I'm sure it'll never end for other readers ;) :p

[Lint]

My opinions are a bit biased towards recent issues as I can barely remember the early stuff.


Drift - While I applaud many of IDW's in-house characters. Drift, never really jelled with me. He's not terribly interesting, he's a living macguffin/magical negro and in later issues as a 'core' character seems to occupy space on pages without adding much to them. I'd much rather he just disappeared after his original story arc.

Spotlight Ramjet - an early IDW sin (and not the only) but arguably the most irrelevant. It adds nothing to the universe/narrative and takes away a valuable character. Was basically made to sell the Classics Ramjet toy. A pretty poor ad if you ask me.

Maximals - with the dismantling of the Autobots vs Decepticons the Maximals were pulled out of a drawer to be nameless and disposable baddies. We got some cool art, but also had to suffer zero characterisation and a ridiculous backstory. Hopefully they get some justice in the reboot.

Cyberutopia - there was always going to be a twist to this and MTMTE/LL was more about the journey than the destination but by hell this was rushed, nonsensical and ultimately lame end to a major plot point.

Hasbro Universe - Shoehorning a whole bunch of Hasbro properties into a Transformers storyline in the final quarter of the game just ended up being messy and a waste of panels overall.

[GoktimusPrime]

Hasbro Universe -- the crossovers that nobody asked for!

[TaZZerath]

I must admit, the shared Hasbroverse was a bit of a pain in the decepti-butt, and I was really tentative at first about reading them. But I gave them a go, and for me, it was just a bit of a sidestep, a bit of 'anime filler' as it were; nothing which had hugely far-reaching consequences (apart from the awakening of Unicron of course)

Okay so Transformers Vs Visionaries was a serious misstep, but I thoroughly enjoyed Rom Vs Transformers (especially Alex Milne's gorgeous art) and Kup/Action Man's team-up (while it lasted). Also the ability to establish that Hearts of Steel DID happen in the same universe, and fill in some contiunuity gaps with it, was quite pleasing to me.

[GoktimusPrime]

I don't even understand why they're doing it. Are Hasbro planning on relaunching ROM, GI Joe, Visionaries, MASK, Micronauts, Battle Beasts etc.? Where are the accompany toy lines? If not, then why bother doing this?

It felt like a lame way to try and market their other toy property comic series by riding on the coattails of the Transformers' success, but then once everyone jumped on the Transformers' coattails it ended up dragging the TF series down. And people complain about a handful of human characters in the Bumblebee movie... they've got nothing compared to Transformers: Hasbroverse! And why develop a character like Stardrive if there isn't going to be a toy of her?!? Damn it!

Actually, that's one of my beefs with IDW overall (long before the Hasbro shared universe thing) -- making us emotionally invest in characters not based on an existing toy. Rung, the DJD, Tyrest, Pharma etc. WHY? It's annoying because one thing I've really liked about IDW is how a lot of TF toys that have previously had very little if any canonical appearances have appeared in IDW! Hubcap! But with so many other TFs out there that are still underused, why not tap into them instead of just throwing new characters that we cannot reenact with our action figures!?!

Okay, G1 did give us non-toy characters too (Xaaron, Impactor, Alpha Trion etc.), but these were characters that the writers needed to have total freedom with. Often to kill off or remove (your "hi then die" characters like Scrounge, Crosscut, Ferak etc.), but also because toy-based characters were introduced and removed according to Hasbro. Typically out of production toys had to be removed or omitted from stories and new toys had to be introduced. So unique toyless characters were created so that they could do stuff without requiring Hasbro's permission. Impactor was the first leader of the Wreckers and killed off because he wasn't a toy. Springer then took over but they couldn't kill him off because Hasbro wouldn't have let them.

IDW, by and large, aren't under this restriction. With only a few exceptions, most IDW TFs aren't introduced/removed from the story because of Hasbro. IDW have a level of creative freedom that Marvel writers could only dream of. You could introduce a character as obscure as Hasbro's Overlord (not Takara's Masterforce Overlord, Hasbro's!) and get away with it. Heck, IDW even managed to get one of their original characters later made as a toy - Drift! Who's even expanded beyond the IDW universe. Why couldn't the DJD have been comprised of lesser known Decepticons that they could've written up the same personalities for? IDW have been known to disregard a toy's G1 bio in favour of something completely different (e.g. Swerve, Tailgate, Dai Atlas, Star Sabre, Whirl etc.). Clench, Fearswoop, Calcar etc. -- they could've had their moments to shine instead of being forgettable background characters as they were. :(

[BigTransformerTrev]

Things I disliked:

Forced social progressiveness - The Chromedome/Rewind relationship was quite touching and well-done, definitely a high-point of the series. But then they later introduced more same-gender relationships (Onslaught/Blast Off, Lug/anode, Ratchet/Drift, Arcee/Aileron, etc.) which started to come of as cliche and unnecessary. I felt some of them we're out of character; like the Onslaught/Blast Off affair. G1 Blast Off to me is someone who's aloof and arrogant, and doesn't seem like the sort who'd want to get romantically involved with anyone, let alone someone who transforms into a land vehicle. think the story could have been written just as well without the romance.


Yeah. The thing about Chromedome x Rewind and Tailgate x Cyclonus is that their relationships felt more organic. These characters fell in love with each other but it just so happened that they are same-gender because 99% of Cybertronians are masculine. The same-genderness was incidental and thus felt unforced. They didn't make a deal of it.

Subsequent ones as you've mentioned have not been so subtle (although I personally never noticed Drift and Ratchet as a couple; I thought that they'd just become good mates). I also didn't mind Blast Off's thing with Onslaught so much, as it explored the realm of unrequited love and the fact that they were both masculine was, again, incidental. While Blast Off is aloof and arrogant, he never had a disdain for ground-based modes (unlike Powerglide who pities anyone who can't fly). But remember that Blast Off's G1 profile, as written by Bob Budiansky, also states:
"But his happiness is an act, a disguise he uses to hide his long-distance lonliness. His aloof and superior manner is a front that prevents the other Decepticons from knowing his true feelings."
So... yeah, IDW Blast Off's persona is pretty G1 accurate. :)


It’d be okay for “same-sex” relationships to exist in these made up stories as long as there’s an explanation for it that you feel is good enough? This is pretty insulting.


Without wanting to cause any kind of heated debate by bringing this topic back up, as I really really don't and it's not my intention, this debate has come up yet again on one of the more popular TF social sites.

Anyway, that debate made me look up the statistics for the romances in the IDW run before it came to an end:

Malebot-Malebot Romances: 12
(A couple of these were in the history of the bots like Chromedome/Pivot)
Fembot-Fembot Romances: 3
Malebot-Fembot Romances: 3

So anyway, interesting statistics. People can discuss whether it's active social progressiveness or simply because there are way more Malebots in the TF universe or whatever. I just thought it was interesting to note.

[i_amtrunks]

Malebot-Malebot Romances: 12
(A couple of these were in the history of the bots like Chromedome/Pivot)
Fembot-Fembot Romances: 3
Malebot-Fembot Romances: 3

So anyway, interesting statistics. People can discuss whether it's active social progressiveness or simply because there are way more Malebots in the TF universe or whatever. I just thought it was interesting to note.

Considering how few fembots there are in total, I'd say percentage wise, the fembot-fembot and fembot-malebot romances are overly represented! :D

[GoktimusPrime]

Considering how few fembots there are in total, I'd say percentage wise, the fembot-fembot and fembot-malebot romances are overly represented! :D
☝This so much! I would guesstimate that about 3% of Transformers are female, whereas Trev's stats show that 33% of relationships involve a female TF. Yes, very much so over-represented! That's actually even more than the number of LGBTIQ people IRL (approx. 4% of the population).

[KELPIE]

I agree with Furman that Fembots don't make sense.

That said, I have no issue with them in my TF lore.

The Blastoff/Onslaught and Ratchet/Drift ones were the only ones that left a sour taste.


Side note:
There is a line of reasoning that every species action/reaction (and by extension, evolution/progress) is directly tied to needing to impress the opposite sex and procreate. Without either, where is the need for Cybertronian's to anything?

[BigTransformerTrev]

There is a line of reasoning that every species action/reaction (and by extension, evolution/progress) is directly tied to needing to impress the opposite sex and procreate. Without either, where is the need for Cybertronian's to anything?

There is no similar theory that a species action/reaction can be directly tied to being brought to life by a living planet in order to one day fight another living planet so as to save the universe from being devoured? :confused::p



The Blastoff/Onslaught and Ratchet/Drift ones were the only ones that left a sour taste.

Yeah, I pretty much felt the same. Think a lot of others did too. I still think the Chromedome/Rewind romance is the most well developed romance the Transformers franchise has ever seen.


I agree with Furman that Fembots don't make sense.

That said, I have no issue with them in my TF lore.

Yeah but I spose by the same token Malebots don't make sense either.

But from the perspective that Transformers are a toyline and all the related media such as comics and cartoons are to sell those toys, having malebots and fembots makes perfect sense. It really opens up a plethora of options for both new toys and storylines, and increases the range of the franchises appeal to various markets. For instance, my daughter took all my Autobot Fembots the other day and made them have a tea party. She loved the fact that they had working knees so she could make them sit on her dollhouse chairs! It was so cute! She wouldn't have been remotely interested in playing with my Transformers if they were all boys that turned into tanks. And because she loves playing with my Fembots, I have at least a half-dozen different ones stashed away to give her when she gets older. So ergo, having Fembots means more sales for Hasbro :)

[GoktimusPrime]

Transformer genders exist for the same reason why most robot modes look humanoid -- to help the human audience relate to them as characters.

The canonical reality is that Transformers don't have biological genders, they only have gender identities. People have both biological genders and gender identities (and while most of us have the same bio and ID genders, some people don't). Transformers purely have ID genders, no bio genders. Seemples.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Transformer genders exist for the same reason why most robot modes look humanoid -- to help the human audience relate to them as characters.

People tend to forget this and get caught up in the whole idea that Transformers is this whole real thing, devoid of the pressures of appealing to the public and selling toys.

Yup, there are female Transformers and bipedal Transformers because they appeal to toy buyers. If Transformers existed simply as fiction devoid of market pressures, then there would be no reason every TF couldn't look like they were out of the Movieverse or something, with 4 legs and 3 arms and their head in their chests and one big eye with no discernible gender and speaking in binary. But toys like that might freak 5 year-olds out rather than enticing them to buy, and would make animation for tv cartoon shows a nightmare.

[Sinnertwin]

Transformers are real for me, damn it!
Ooh, bright lights!

[KELPIE]

There is no similar theory that a species action/reaction can be directly tied to being brought to life by a living planet in order to one day fight another living planet so as to save the universe from being devoured? :confused::p

Sadly that wasn't their history in the IDWverse :(


Yeah but I spose by the same token Malebots don't make sense either.

Agreed. If they didn't have voices in the cartoons they likely would all be gender neutral.


But from the perspective that Transformers are a toyline and all the related media such as comics and cartoons are to sell those toys, having malebots and fembots makes perfect sense. It really opens up a plethora of options for both new toys and storylines, and increases the range of the franchises appeal to various markets. For instance, my daughter took all my Autobot Fembots the other day and made them have a tea party. She loved the fact that they had working knees so she could make them sit on her dollhouse chairs! It was so cute! She wouldn't have been remotely interested in playing with my Transformers if they were all boys that turned into tanks. And because she loves playing with my Fembots, I have at least a half-dozen different ones stashed away to give her when she gets older. So ergo, having Fembots means more sales for Hasbro :)
Is that an association with them being fembots, colour or alt mode? Did you tell her they were the female ones? What does she think of Missfire?

[BigTransformerTrev]

Sadly that wasn't their history in the IDWverse :(


True - got so caught up in the discussion I forgot the original purpose of the thread :o


Is that an association with them being fembots, colour or alt mode? Did you tell her they were the female ones? What does she think of Missfire?

Fembots. I never open new toys without my 6 year old son, and my daughter always questions me if any of the new toys I got are girls. She has gotten pretty good at spotting them independently though and holding up the box going 'this is a girl one Dad!'. Sometimes its the colour that clues her in (Arcee, Elita-1 etc) and sometimes its their body shape, such as she was able to tell straight off the bat that Novastar was a girl. If she is unsure she asks. For instance she didn't know if Slash was a girl so asked.

[Jellico]

Agreed. If they didn't have voices in the cartoons they likely would all be gender neutral.


My view is based on the Gobot Spay-C.

I owned the toy and barely watched the cartoon and for 30 years thought she was male.

These are toys that for the best part of 35 years been marketed at boys. There are civilians out there who don't know that female Transformers exist. The kids who play with them for the most part are boys. And because of wish fulfillment and self insertion they associate with the male characters. Plenty of boys out there think Prime Arcee was awesome but they will pick a male character first as toy sales showed. And if the character isn't overtly female the assumption is that it will be male until told otherwise.

To me that is the reality. Adding more female characters is good but I don't know if it will help. It may even hurt if they don't sell as well.

I love this article on the subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/

If Lego are right the old Japanese trope of Arcee staying back at base might be the way to go. Of course not as a maid. But if boys play patterns are about the vehicles and girls play patterns are about interacting with an environment like a playset it would be interesting to see how Transformers would have to be modified to facilitate it.

[BigTransformerTrev]

I love this article on the subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/

If Lego are right the old Japanese trope of Arcee staying back at base might be the way to go. Of course not as a maid. But if boys play patterns are about the vehicles and girls play patterns are about interacting with an environment like a playset it would be interesting to see how Transformers would have to be modified to facilitate it.

Well, my daughter:


took all my Autobot Fembots the other day and made them have a tea party. She loved the fact that they had working knees so she could make them sit on her dollhouse chairs! It was so cute! She wouldn't have been remotely interested in playing with my Transformers if they were all boys that turned into tanks.

So just make sure the Fembots have knees so they can sit down with each other for a nice chat :D

Jokes aside, I've often used Transformers to try and show my son there is nothing wrong with, as he terms it, 'girl stuff'. Like he has an eversion to the colour pink so I will dig out my Seacons and say 'Well these are pink and they combine into a giant killing machine!'. I quite liked Strongarm in RID as she really got away from the Fembot stereotype, both with her attitude and her alt-mode. I was really pleased when my son complained the other day the only Strongarm he has is the Happy Meals one.

We really tried not to steer our kids towards gender-specific toys and when they were little made sure the majority of their toys didn't make them conform to the stereotypes. But it soon became apparent when they started daycare at around 18 months that those were the toys they wanted. There were tons of different toys on offer but my son never showed interest in the dolls, he liked the trucks. Conversely my daughter made straight for the dollies and wasn't interested in playing cars.

We are really liking the Marble Run set we gave my son for Xmas as they both play with it and both really enjoy it. It's got a ton of different colours so there are as many pink connectors as blue and it encourages creativity and understanding of the basic principles of cause and effect. It's a brilliant example of a fun non-gender specific toy.

As for how the Japanese treat Fembots, I think they make the best toys by far, but they still market those Fembots to males rather than girls. For instance I love my Megatronia but the comic that came with her showed the rest of the female team soaping Megaempress up in the shower (http://www.bigangrytrev.com/toy-review-unite-warriors-megatronia/):eek: Definitely aimed at male collectors. :rolleyes: Likewise Legends Blackarachnia is a great toy, but considering how busty they made her on the boxart, it made it apparent that it was a Fembot once again marketed to males.

How you would market Fembots specifically to girls I don't know, the most I have bought my daughter so far was the My Little Kitty/Transformers crossover toy an I intend to get her some Bot-Bots this Xmas.

[FatalityPitt]

How you would market Fembots specifically to girls I don't know, the most I have bought my daughter so far was the My Little Kitty/Transformers crossover toy an I intend to get her some Bot-Bots this Xmas.

I'm probably generalising a bit, but I think a lot of younger girls like princesses and plush animals. Maybe if Hasbro wanted to market Transformers to a female audience; they could make fembots who transform into cute animals (bears, cats, rabbits, etc) and give them these princess-themed accessories like tiaras, magic wands, etc. I don't have kids so I'm really just guessing.

In the spirit of the thread, one thing I found underwhelming with the IDW run was the Titans Return arc. I thought it was going to tie in with the toy line but the only Titan Master characters I saw during that arc were Infinitus/Sentinel Prime, Sovereign, and that guy who's head turned into a cat who got killed by Galvatron. Besides Chromedome, Brainstorm, Misfire and Krok; I thought a lot of the characters in the toyline like Blaster, Highbrow, Weirdwolf and Mindwipe were underused in the comics. Since most of the Autobot Headmasters (except Hardhead who was dead at the time) were on the lost light, it maybe would have been good if James Roberts did a 2 or 3 issue arc that focused on those characters back when Titans Return toys were still on the store shelves.

[GoktimusPrime]

Agreed. If they didn't have voices in the cartoons they likely would all be gender neutral.
As much as I dislike the Machine Men, I gotta admit that gender balance was something that they handled much better than the Transformers. As you've rightly pointed out, Tonka/Hanna Barbera drew upon a good number of existing toys and designated them as female, and there was nothing that really physically differentiated them from the male Gobots. And later canon would explain why the Gobots have genders; they're cyborgs, not robots. Let's face it, Arcee was basically the Smurfette of the Transformers. She was really just a token female character and deliberately designed to be overtly exaggerated feminine in design (whereas characters like Megatron and Shockwave had their trigger sections reduced to avoid making them look too masculine ;)). Although Japan was a bit more progressive as they did have Minerva. And while Clipper was still pink and never had a toy, she wasn't given a buxom female body type but was basically a repaint of Hyperdrive/Detour with a different head.

There were very few Transformer toys that fans could pretend were female because many canonical sources, including the tech spec bios included with the figures, would use masculine pronouns. But one example from Generation 2 was Dreadwing and Smokescreen.
https://i.ibb.co/NWx3zTr/temp.jpg
Note the absence of any gendered pronouns, this means that for a brief time when this toy was first released, you could choose what gender you wanted these toys to be. But then ancillary canon like the G2 comics came along and assigned male gender pronouns so... bleh. :p

Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward were more proactive in this regard as they wanted to, as has happened with Machine Men, assign existing toys as females. They initially convinced Hasbro (well, Kenner) to allow the repaint of Tarantulas, Blackarachnia, to be written as a female character. Then for the Maximal side they managed to get hold of Kenner early enough so that female pronouns could be inserted into Airazor's tech spec bios, making her the first female Transformer that wasn't a repaint of a male character. And yeah, we all know that Blackarachnia's body proportions were greatly tweaked in the cartoon to make her look much more buxom than the toy; but to be fair, it wasn't unusual for the animators to "retool" characters based on existing models to make them look more distinctive (Tigatron has "retooled" features from Cheetor). The first true female Transformer toy - one that was conceived to be female from its inception, was of course Transmetal Airazor in 1998... and given a distinctively feminine body shape in robot mode.

Beast Machines was somewhat more progressive with Strika; the first female Transformer also conceived to be female but not given a remotely feminine looking body type. She's just given the same design aesthetic as any other Vehicon and not physically treated any differently from her male counterparts. It's only her voice and other characters referring to her with feminine pronouns that tells you that she's female. Some G1 toys that never had their gender previously specified have since been retroactively established as being female, such as the rather unfortunately named Windy and Discharge.

I personally felt that the gender issues in IDW were initially handled quite well; it was just matter of fact and they didn't make a deal of it. Until they made a deal of it, then it sucked. Part of me also thinks that it's weird that the first female Transformer was called Solus Prime as "Solus" is masculine. The feminine is "Sola Prime." But then again, "Ultra" is also feminine and we have male Transformers called "Ultra Magnus," so... yeah. :p The masculine for Ultra is "Ulter" (which is where English gets words like "ulterior" from).

[Jellico]

I sometimes wonder how the world would have been different if Ratchet had gone the full Ratched as originally intended.

The Chick in the Five Man Band was a pretty established trope by the mid 80s. Transformers is near unique in not employing it. I can only assume that the sales of Baroness were relatively poor establishing the commercial incentive to go all male.

[GoktimusPrime]

See... toy companies assumed that boys didn't want to buy female action figures but this wasn't necessarily true. I had Princess Leia figures as a kid, as did a lot of other boys that I knew. Ditto Teela and Evil-Lyn. She-Ra might've been more appealing if she were an actual action figure and not a doll. And yeah, plenty of 80s kids had female Machine Men.

[Jellico]

I found a cheap Sqweeks a day ago and gave it to my 5yo daughter. She is loving it.

Obviously there is a cute factor at play but the standout had been the repair bay. It took me a bit to realise it but it is a house/dressing room. She is swapping out Sqweeks arms like dresses on a doll.

This is a girl who loved the headmasters last year. I am starting to think accessories matter.