Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
Depends on which G1 Starscream you're talking about, wouldn't it? Sunbow Starscream is pretty much incompetent and useless - nothing more than just a recurring nuisance. But Marvel Starscream was waaaaaaay better where he was an actual credible threat.
Yeah, that's true. The cartoon version was weaker (tamer) than the Marvel Comics version. In the cartoon, Starscream was a comedy relief character, but instead of laughing WITH him, you were laughing AT him . In the comics, he was still somewhat comedic at his lowest, but at his strongest he was a monster. At one stage he literally killed almost everyone. Even if he is a powerful character, it feels a bit strange to root for a monster like that. That's one of the interesting things about Starscream; his patriotic colour scheme makes him look heroic, but he's one of the biggest villains in Transformers.

A couple more examples of toys that I liked, but didn't like the characters (or was just plain indifferent); lots of Beast Wars characters. When they were first released, outside their tech spec bios, there was little to no supporting fiction for Terrorsaur and Razorbeast (who was basically a pig) and yet I still looovved their toys. Even after the cartoon came out, Terrorsaur did nothing on the show to really wow me, but I still enjoyed fiddling with the toy.

Example of liking the character but hating the toy; RiD Prime Knock Out (Deluxe). Knock Out was my favourite character from TF Prime, but his deluxe toy was lacking. It looked like it'd been painted by a crack addict (I ended up buying the reprolabels set to make his look more palatable), the transformation was a pain, and the robot mode was flimsy. I like TFP Knock Out, but can't really say the same for that deluxe. I hope Hasbro revisits the character in Generations and gives him a better toy.