(SEPT-2013) Cybertron Era - Rate 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.

[BigTransformerTrev]

I was never much of a fan of the cartoon (like the 3 previous ones before it) but have watched a fair few and I kinda liked the idea of the various themed worlds, though for the most part the characters didn't do much for me. Remember being very happy Thundercracker got his own unique toy, then watched the cartoon and he was some dumb hillbilly character which was off-putting. Was more of a fan of the toyline which brought us some great figures - I remember being very excited when I first picked up Primus and brought him home

[GoktimusPrime]

Not a fan of the cartoon.

But Cybertron canon's greatest impact/legacy on Transformers would be the establishment of the concept of "multiversal singularities." This has been a fairly contentious issue among some fans; some would argue that Hasbro should never have done this and just left disparate continuities to exist separately; but for whatever reason, they decreed that certain events, characters etc. are now multiversal singularities that exist in EVERY Transformers universe. So now apparently Primus exists in the G1 cartoon continuity... yay, multiversal continuity shoehorning!

The toys were fantastic! (overall; there were some duds like Leobreaker <shudder>)
On the whole, Cybertron gave us the best toys in the Unicron Trilogy series. It seemed that Hasbro finally got the hang of balancing having a common gimmick' across many of its figures (i.e. Planet Keys) without having it significantly compromise on engineering. Because that's something that plagued Armada and Energon, giving rise to the Armada Hot Shot inspired expression, "WhY mY ShOuLd3Rs HuR7?" Because your engineering has been compromised by an overwhelming Mini-Con gimmick, that's why ya yellow cup cake... <ahem> The Planet Key gimmick was much less intrusive than Armada's MiniCon gimmicks and Energon's Powerlinx gimmick. Worse case scenario if you really hated that gimmick, just toss the Planet Key away and enjoy the rest of the toy for what it was; which was often still quite good regardless of the gimmick.

I did like how Optimus Prime's face was a homage to Optimus Primal, even with the faceplate that could slide and down; and worked a lot better than Animated Voyager Optimus Prime's faceplate since it would be concealed when the mouth was exposed (whereas Animated Prime's faceplate sits in front of his throat, still plain as day). The removable Matrix was also neat gimmick and the trailer base is a lot of fun. Sadly Megatron was a mess of a toy that didn't quite work out nearly as well. Yet I still bought the Galvatron repaint, didn't I?

But another great thing that they did with the Cybertron figures was the character bios! Cybertron is one of the few post-G1 series that gave us really interesting character bios! Shortround is my favourite. He's a Transformer who obsessively collects transforming robot toys! Now _this_ harkens back to something that made G1 great, quirky characters! It gets boring and unimaginative when every toy bio just tells you about how "awesome" that character is; every Autobot is great at smashing 'Cons, every Decepticon loves destruction and being evil etc. blah blah blah. Boooring. Something that made G1 memorable was all the weird and wonderful quirks they put into their characters; Trailbreaker feels insecure about his fuel inefficiency, Breakdown is paranoid, Silverbolt is an acrophobic jet, Broadside suffers from air and sea sickness (so it sucks for him whenever he's not in robot mode!) et al. I really liked how Cybertron went back to giving us interesting characters in their toy bios! It meant that I could totally ignore the lacklustre cartoon and play them according to how their tech specs portray them! (just like in G1!)