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Thats a bit harsh. Shane McCarthy said in an interview (I'm sorry I didn't book mark it so I can't share the link as evidence) that they actually gave him two options. 1. Use a pre-existing G1 transformer for the role or 2. Create your own transformer. Now who here if given this chance to create your own piece of G1 and watch it come to life would opt for option 1?:rolleyes:
McCarthy does not appear to have created Drift to fulfill some desire or dream of making his very own TF. He himself has said that the idea came about because his room mate was into Japanese drift cars and he thought it would be cool if a TF did that - That's it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bartrim
So he created Drift more out of a whim with characteristics which he thought people (and Hasbro) would consider to be cool. Then he and IDW decided to persist on it and the IDW bigwigs do seem to like these superficial 'kick ass' over the top characters.
There is no 'great fan passion' behind the creation of Drift. It is clear that McCarthy does not have more than a geewunner's level of understanding of the franchise (along with the stereotype misconceptions) to have such a passion. Drift appears to have come about in a not to dissimilar way to Poochie the dog and marketed that way. This is why people make all the satiric comparisons to that Simpsons character.
However Drift exists and he is here to stay and there isn't much anyone can do about it. The best one can hope for is for Drift to have better character reimplementation/development in which the current caricature personality is written out and then replaced with something with a bit more cleverness and depth within the writing.
I agree with what kup's said.
Having writers create new characters for fiction is nothing new. We've had plenty of them for ages like Xaaron, Alpha Trion, Impactor, Rack'N'Ruin, Straxus, Spanner, Scrounge, Maccadam, Dion, Hauler, Sentinel Prime, Sunstorm, Acid Storm, that-blue-Seeker-that's-not-Thundercracker, the female Autobots etc. - and even in Neo-G1 we continue to have new characters like Zeta Prime, Piston, Fasttrack, Borehole, Wingblazer, Spin-Out etc. - but none of them were Munchkin-esque Poochies like Drift.
Also, back in the days of G1 you had restrictions that prompted the wider use of invented characters like:
+ Limited number of toy characters to draw from - especially in the early days of G1. Neo-G1 writers have the luxury of retrospect and can draw from a massive pool of existing G1 characters... _many_ of whom have never seen the light of day in canon (beyond toy tech specs/packaging/catalogue stuff). Look at Last Stand of the Wreckers... the principal characters in that story were drawn from existing G1 toys who were previously under-represented in existing canon. Time Warrior's just begging for some action!
+ Hasbro dictated which toy characters you could insert and remove from continuity - because at the time G1 canon's primary objective was to sell toys. Want to kill the leader of the Wreckers? Can't be Springer, cos he's a toy that's currently on sale that Hasbro wants marketed... create Impactor - he's a non-toy character and therefore can be killed when Furman wants to kill him (and not when Hasbro tells him to).
Writers of Neo-G1 stories have much greater freedom over characters and stories compared to G1 writers of the 1980s-90s.
As kup also said, what's been done's been done... and no amount of complaining about this character is going to change what's happened - but we can only hope that writers will salvage Drift into a better character.