(SEPT-2013) Cybertron Era - Rate it

[griffin]

After the high of Armada, and the low of Energon, the third chapter in the "Unicron Trilogy" was Cybertron.
The Cybertron series went from mid 2005 to the end of 2006, just before the first of the Live-Action movie toys came out.
In Japan, Cybertron was called Galaxy Force.

Details of the Cybertron series can be read here.

The Entire Era/Series as a whole (you can include the Japanese version if you want), how does it rate in the world of Transformers:

- Best Ever
- One of the better ones
- Average
- Not very good
- I refuse to have anything to do with it

[Gouki]

Honestly, Cybertron to me is one of those Toy Only lines, like RID. Haven't seen more than maybe two random episodes of Galaxy Force.

But!

The the toy line? One of my all time favourites. It was damn good. It was a step up from the previous UT lines and I think that our Classics/Generations/United would look very, very different if we didn't have the chunky Cybertron aesthetic before.

[Megatron]

I'd been debating between choosing "Average" or "One of the better ones" for this series, but finally settled on voting "Average".

The reason? While there were some surprisingly good moments in this show, especially pertaining to characterizations and storytelling, it was paradoxically these very things that also contributed to the series' small failings. Along with a visual display that was often flat and repetitive, despite the CGI, the entire series falls just short of my vote for "One of the better ones".

Despite my personal disappointment with Cybertron, however, it was this show that properly introduced me into the world of Transformers, helped to make me a fan of the franchise in general, and nurtured the very beginnings of my journey as a Transformers toy collector.

It was this show that gave me my first proper insights into the world of Autobots and Decepticons... Optimus Prime and Megatron... and large sentient robots that fight and transform with a growing, and often tedious and repetitive, array of Modes and gimmicks. My first thoughts about many of these things when I first saw the show back in 2006 have vastly changed since then, so I will try to present my review of this series with the wisdom of hindsight, rather than with first impressions.

[Lint]

Ahh Cybertron... The first series that I seriously tried to 'collect'.

In Japan this was Galaxy Force and was a completely new continuity to the preceding Micron Legend and Superlink series. It was Hasbro that awkwardly tried to tie Cybertron to the previous two series hence forming the 'Unicron Trilogy'. It was impressive that the cartoon models were completely based off the toy designs so toy-accuracy was extremely good. The Cybertron story was not especially notable and most the characters were pretty 2 dimensional however the constant planet hopping, meeting new Transformers and upgrades kept the interest there.

The toys are what makes this line. I reckon Cybertron strikes closest to the optimum balance between beautifully sculpted design, sufficent paint apps/decos, toy sturdiness and articulation, cartoon accuracy, gimmickry and simplicity/pleasure of transformation. The scout-class toys are probably the weakest of the line however it strikes gold in the deluxe-class range.

The gimmickry in terms of Cyber keys/Force Chips were very well done. Most integrated very well with the design of the toy and were unobtrusive unlike many of the minicon, energon weapon or powerlinx gimmicks from Armada and Energon. However I have to note that Cybertron is one of the worst offendors in electronic sound gimmickry: Heavy sound boxes that add very little play value and often unnecessarily bloat the toy or put it off balance.

If the cartoon were better I would say we would owe a lot of our future membership to Cybertron since the toys were brilliant. However it takes a successful fusion between cartoon and toy to generate nostalgia and I think (as much as I dislike that toyline) that award would have to go to Animated

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I agree with most of what Lint says.

I thought the toyline was great with a nice selection of varied figures and they were very well designed toys. This series also provided me with my Favourite Optimus toy and Primus as well, so we got some good stuff from it really. The cartoon wasn't bad, but not all that fantastic, so I put it at one of the better ones.

[Trent]

Never watched the cartoon. Really have no desire to. By the toy line was one of the better ones we've had. They mixed fun and playability with good aesthetics and a mostly unobtrusive gimmick. If Hasbro approached all lines like that, we would have a lot of great toy lines.