When Did One Continuity 'Drop The Ball' While Another One 'Caught' It?

[Geminii]

OPTIMUS PRIME: Robot dinosaurs might be useful. You have my authorisation.

What? That's it?

To be honest, many of the 80s episodes were kind of cranked out without a lot of time and effort put into what might make deep and abiding logical and narrative sense to a bunch of 30-something nitpickers (e.g. yours truly) 20 years later. As long as it suspended a kid's belief for the two seconds it took to move on with the plot, they ran with it.

These days, they might, I dunno, have some Autobot protoforms or old laser cores turn up and have an accident occur during the scanning process, like the scanner locking onto a TV show or Skyspy flying over a Jurassic animatronics display.

[TheDirtyDigger]

I think everything should be retconned into one continuity and all the stories we find cringe-worthy written off as dream sequences.

[Sky Shadow]

These days, they might, I dunno, have some Autobot protoforms or old laser cores turn up and have an accident occur during the scanning process, like the scanner locking onto a TV show or Skyspy flying over a Jurassic animatronics display.

Actually, I can guarantee that these days the Autobots would go to an animatronic dinosaur theme park and one of them would break three exhibits. Megatron would rebuild the dinosaurs into attack drones and on their unveiling these 'Dinobots' they would attack the Autobots. Then a MacGuffiny Deus Ex Machina would give these Dinobots sparks.

[Paulbot]

I think the UK comics did "post-Movie" better than the US cartoon. In the cartoon the small Autobot army hiding on the Moonbase and on Earth suddenly had complete control of Cybertron again once the battle with Unicron was done which never made sense to me.

[GoktimusPrime]

Heheh, yeah I agree that Masterforce's Pretender origins is much better than the G1 comics' - it's something I've been saying for about 18 years now, but don't mind me.

Oh, and there was that story where Cloudburst just happened to find a planet of thirty-foot9m humanoids and almost got to make out with a hot alien chick until he blew it.

Cloudburst nearly suffered Death by Snoo-Snoo!



While I agree that Kaneda succeeded over Budiansky in terms of utilising the long-standard tradition of mass-shifting to make Pretenders human-sized, I don't necessarily fault Budiansky for later placing Cloudburst and Landmine on the planet Snoo-SnooFemax... by that stage he'd already established that the Pretenders were giants, so it was impossible to make the Pretenders interact as convincing robots disguised as humans - the next best thing was to place them on a planet with giant humans, well giant women (Femaxian men are human sized), and have them interact with those giants. It would've been awesome if they could've crossed over with Macross/Robotech and interacted with the Meltrandi... but legal issues would make that impossible.

"What is Snoo-Snoo?"

"Allow me!"

I think Furman tried to make the best out of a less than ideal situation with Pretenders. Knowing that they couldn't function as disguises, he focused on making their shells more like suits of armour that could also work as personal reinforcements - but of course with the massive weakness that if the shell is destroyed it fries the owner's brains.

(The second-generation comic Pretenders who show up have no origin, they just appear. Bludgeon? Longtooth? Thunderwing? Why are they Pretenders and when exactly did they get their shells?)

Yeah, their Pretender origins aren't explained - nor are the origins of the second-batch Headmasters and Targetmasters (e.g.: Nightbeat, Needlenose etc.). Although I've always assumed that after Scorponok developed Pretender technology that he would've shared it with the Decepticons on Cybertron so they would've been able to replicate it - and in the case of Mega Pretenders, improve on it.

To be honest, many of the 80s episodes were kind of cranked out without a lot of time and effort put into what might make deep and abiding logical and narrative sense to a bunch of 30-something nitpickers (e.g. yours truly) 20 years later. As long as it suspended a kid's belief for the two seconds it took to move on with the plot, they ran with it.

The G1 comics were also aimed at kids too.

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I think that the G1 comics did a better job of explaining the origins of Micromasters than the G1 animé/manga. In the animé/manga, Micromasters were basically used by Autobots to help humans. Their small size made human environments more accessible to them for search and rescue operations - and not surprisingly the most prominent Micromaster group was the rescue patrol.

In the G1 comics, Micromasters were introduced as a technology created on Cybertron that made Transformers more fuel-efficient. This was something that would in turn become linked with Beast Wars' Maximal Upgrade and Beast Wars Megatron's reference to G1 Transformers as "archaic Energon guzzlers."

[Sky Shadow]

(Sniff sniff) "Hmm... do I have bad BO? Come on, guys - you'd tell me if I smell, right?"

[GoktimusPrime]

...now I'm gonna have to sniff you next time we meet you know. That's right, I have to!

[FFN]

To sell toys.