How critical was the first death of Optimus Prime?

[DELTAprime]

After reading the interview with Ron Friedman today I'm left wonder just how bigger blow to the brand was the first death of Optimus Prime? I was born in '84 so I don't remember what the brand was like in the earliest years. My first exposure to the brand came from rented VHS tapes, and the first time I saw Prime die was traumatic.

I've heard different things over years from his death not making any change to sales and viewership, to it nearly killed the brand. Just how bad was Hasbro's mistake?

[griffin]

From what I read somewhere some time ago, it was bad enough for them to rework the Movie when it was later released in Europe and here, to include the narration at the end to say that he would return.
Or maybe it was an overreaction to both TFs & GIJoe movies killing off their lead heroes... and getting a lot of bad press over it.
There was even a claim that a kid was going to kill himself or refused to eat (or something) over the death of his hero Optimus Prime.
There's probably some articles online with a google search about the controversy (or on tfwiki.net).

[Sky Shadow]

I've heard different things over years from his death not making any change to sales and viewership, to it nearly killed the brand. Just how bad was Hasbro's mistake?

It wasn't a mistake in terms of the Movie itself - it's still one of the most iconic stories in the history of Transformers. And if it was a mistake the first time, why would they have kept killing him again and again for the past twenty-seven years? Do you think the Bible would have been better if Jesus hadn't died? Or Romeo and Juliet? Or Hamlet? Or Julius Caesar? If you found Prime's death 'traumatic,' that's because it was effective storytelling.

If there actually was a diminishing of popularity after the Movie, then what really happened was that for the first two years of Transformers, Hasbro didn't have to make new toys - they already had all these awesome toys from Diaclone, Microchange, Takatoku, Toy Box, Toy Co, etc. Then by the time of the 1986 line they had to start inventing their own toys, and generally, they weren't as good as the toys that they got to cherry-pick for 1984 and 1985. It could be argued that the absence of Optimus Prime hurt the popularity of Season Three of the cartoon. But it would be difficult to argue that it's empirically any worse than the first two seasons. And Season Three is in many ways about why Rodimus Prime isn't the leader Optimus was and why he had to return. (The exact same thing happened in the comics, except it was about why Grimlock wasn't the leader Optimus had been.)

Basically, kids have short attention spans and they age. But let's face it, there are those of us who have been constant fans since the beginning, and this is one of the few toylines other than Lego and Barbie that has had a toy on shelves for every single year since 1984.

So Optimus's Death? I wouldn't have had it it any other way.

[Wheelie]

Whilst i was upset with the death of Optimus Prime, I think I was more traumatized when I found out that they were canceling the Marvel comics.

[MayzaPrime]

If it wasn't for the death of Optimus Prime I would have never got an Optimus Prime toy and thus would have never started collecting Transformers toys

28 yrs later and over 1600 figures I for one am glad he died

[Sinnertwin]

As a child watching the movie, I was more frustrated with Hot Rod. Megatron has absolutely no qualms in slaughtering a shuttle full of Autobots, yet he just casually tosses Hot Rod aside.

Yet here we are almost 30 years later discussing it. Safe to say Prime's first death has made quite an impact

[GoktimusPrime]

Note: I haven't seen the Ron Friedman interview yet. Following comments are based on my own personal experience and observation.

In 1986 I had the plot of TFTM spoiled for me before I watched it. At that age I didn't care about spoilers, and another kid at school had seen the film before me -- and in the playground I listened eagerly as he told me what happened. So I knew that Optimus Prime would die and that Hot Rod would become Rodimus Prime to replace him etc., and when I first heard about it my thought was, "Cool!", because to me it suddenly "matured" the story. Because as a maturing audience member, that's what you want from your story. You want it to "grow up" as you do, rather than continually appealing to that little child in you when you started. And this is clearly a direction that Sunbow writers took with the G1 cartoon after Season 2, not only by killing off a lot of characters, but also by setting it in the future and taking the story off Earth in Season 3.

As for the franchise itself, as Sky Shadow said, I'd look at the toy line. Another thing they did w/ the toys was to start introducing more fantasy alt modes instead of licensed vehicles (i.e. the core of the "robots in disguise" element). e.g. Bluestreak transforms into a Datsun (Nissan) Fairlady Z, a recognisable vehicle that you can see on the streets. Hot Rod transforms into a fictitious sports car with Michael Bay lovin' chopper flames and massive pipes on the sides, plus a huge spoiler on the back that puts modern aviation to shame. Then he becomes upgraded into Rodimus Prime transforms into a Space Winnebago(TM). The Decepticon jets were F-15 Eagles, or at least a modification of that... I honestly thought that Scourge was a boat when I first saw him. I didn't realise that he was meant to be an aircraft until after I watched TFTM! Then as G1 progressed they kept on making more fantasy alt modes (re: Targetmasters, Headmasters etc.). However by 1988 they went back to making more licensed vehicles; e.g. Porsche 959 (Nightbeat), AH-64 Apache helicopter (Spinister), Leopard 2 tank (Quake), Porsche 962 Le Mans racing car (Backstreet), B-1B Lancer bomber (Windsweeper) et al., but of course, the Anglophone G1 cartoon had already been cancelled the year before then, although the comics did continue for a good couple of years after that.

G2's attempt to revive the franchise in 1993-95 didn't work well. I think a large part of that problem was that it was too much like G1 -- bringing back old toys in weird colours? Okay. G2 did produce some good toys later on, and maybe if they'd just _started_ G2 with those kinds of toys it might've fared better, but sadly that wasn't the case. Market research in the mid 90s indicated that animal toys were more popular than vehicles with kids, and so Hasbro (via Kenner) released Beast Wars, which as we all know was incredibly successful (it became the third best selling boys' toyline in the US behind Toy Story and Star Wars). So when I look at the "fall and rise" of the Transformers franchise with G1, G2 and BW, it all boils down to the quality of the toys. And this is what displeases me with Hasbro's current direction in making Transformers a "screen first" franchise, allowing animators instead of engineers dictate the design of toys.

As a child watching the movie, I was more frustrated with Hot Rod. Megatron has absolutely no qualms in slaughtering a shuttle full of Autobots, yet he just casually tosses Hot Rod aside.

Answer: Because the Autobots in the shuttle were no longer in production, whereas Hot Rod was a new toy that had to be marketed. Oh wait, you mean an in-canon explanation? A wizard did it.

[Gofigure]

I was a hardcore fan as a kid until 1986 when two things happened

1. Hasbro Aus sent me a catalog in the post showcasing the 86 series of G.i.joe figures and vehicles. I assumed that was a message that TF figs were not going to be a priority for them. So I 'moved on' to modern military soldiers' like a good little consumer

2. The 86 movie poster had none of my favourite characters. I'm not going to see a movie without prowl or bumblebee or ratchet. Who were these weird looking autobots? And where was optimus prime? As a 9 year old I knew something was amiss. So yeah for me personally the death of optimus really impacted me and my interest ie collecting

We'll done 80s hasbro

[liegeprime]

As the Friedman ( tempura anyone ) interview said.... when executives signing the checks behave in a way of thinking they are doing something creative then things go wrong...Hasbro never knew what they had with Optimus, they never realized that it's more than just a toy to their buyers. But this is basically a good description of how decision making and how the buyers are viewed in the Hasbro top brass' mind.

We are just but numbers anyways in their accounting sheets, piechart percentages which is why their decision to kill Prime got passed. Yup, we have a new toy, don't worry we'll back it up in the cartoon promotions, the kids will love it as it says here in our survey 88% will so on and so forth.....only in the end yeah, um big mistake.... The "salvage" efforts in the voice over - "he shall return" in the newly mastered versions is more of a lesson learned the hard way after negative media feedback.

As for me personally, I guess since Prime never was my favourite character, him dying in the movie was kinda a , oh... ok, so now what? moment only for me. I was more upset that they killed off Starscream. Really. I was more upset when Cobra Commander mutated into a snake and had a petulant spoiled brat like Serpentor lead Cobra unopposed (or so it seemed for a while).
I looked at Prime's death at the time and actually thought... all that equipment they have around and there's a guy there (Perceptor) who supposedly has fixed a whole lot of really broken stuff before and now he can't even fix a side cut on Prime.... what a weak death IMO. He was barely even damaged, no torn off limbs or anything sputtering and leaking and yet a side cut kills him... weak.

[GoktimusPrime]

As the Friedman ( tempura anyone )

Dude it's pronounced "Freedmun" - it a Franco-Germanic surname meaning "man of peace." So naturally a perfect name for a person writing stories about warring alien robots.
http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Friedman