Hypothetical - Factions Re-Imagined

[Dan]

Imagine that it is the early 80s in some parallel universe and _you_ have been given the job of deciding which toys from Takara and other companies, intended for release under the Transformers banner, should be good and which should be evil.

Would you do exactly what was done in the reality we know? Or would you have allocated toys to the Autobot and Decepticon factions differently? If so, what would prompt you to make these choices?

[dirge]

The Brestforce as Cybertrons (Autobots). Awesome toys but the Japanese G1 cartoons spent so much time giving personsality to the Cybertrons over Destrons. So yeah. Hellbat & co as Good Guys™️

[Paulbot]

I'd have made the original 1984 line more balanced kind of like a modern assortment with several of each side in each size class. Many of the swapped names would have different names but the same decos. I'd add in a second new deco like Skywarp or ditch Skywarp.

Autobot Tapes
Frenzy and Buzzsaw

Autobot Mini Vehicles
Bumblebee
Gears
Windcharger

Autobot Cars
Ratchet
Prowl
Sideswipe
Mirage
Jazz
Wheeljack

Autobot Jet
Thundercracker
kinda-Ramjet (a white seeker but with the original wings)

Autobot Commander
Optimus Prime

vs

Decepticon Tapes
Rumble and Ravage

Decepticon Mini Vehicles
Brawn
Cliffjumper
Huffer

Decepticon Cars
Ironhide
Bluestreak
Sunstreaker (red deco)
Hound
Trailbreaker

Decepticon Jet
Starscream
Skywarp

Decepticon Communicator
Soundwave and Laserbeak

Decepticon Leader
Megatron

[BigTransformerTrev]

Maybe would interesting to see every G1 toy from both the G1 Hasbro and Takara toylines done with all the Earth Modes being Autobots as ‘Robots in Disguise’ in order to protect the planet without causing panic, and all the toys with Cybertronian/Giant Metal Animal modes being Decepticons who are based on the moon or something and keep trying to invade.

Could make things interesting - for instance the Constructicons, Combaticons & Stunticons would be Autobots and the Technobots, Dinobots and Monsterbots would be Decepticons

[Deonasis]

Great thread idea. Something to think a bit more about..

[BigTransformerTrev]

Maybe would interesting to see every G1 toy from both the G1 Hasbro and Takara toylines done with all the Earth Modes being Autobots as ‘Robots in Disguise’ in order to protect the planet without causing panic, and all the toys with Cybertronian/Giant Metal Animal modes being Decepticons who are based on the moon or something and keep trying to invade.

Actually, thinking about it more it would cause a lot of faction changes! Even among just the Hasbro G1/G2 universe:

Now Autobots
*Megatron
*Soundwave & the cassettes
*The Seekers
*The Reflector Trio
*Constructicons
*Stunticons
*Combaticons
*Triggercons
*Double Targetmasters
*Decepticon Triple Changers
*Clench
*Dirt Bag
*Exhaust

Now Decepticons
*Rodimus Prime
*Dinobots
*Technobots
*Monsterbots
*Large Headmasters
*Targetmasters
*Autobot Clones
*Jumpstarters
*Powerdashers
*Omega Supreme
*Fortress Maximus
*Metroplex
*Springer
*Cosmos
*Jetfire
*Sky Lynx
*Windmill

Probably lots more but that's all that comes to mind right now

Quite the double duo leaders on either side: Optimus & Megatron vs Rodimus & Galvatron, like it was meant to be

Great thread idea. Something to think a bit more about..

Yeah, a very thought-provoking thread - nice one Dan

[GoktimusPrime]

Hasbro have obviously gone with the thematic product POV where it was initially all the automobiles as the good guys and the military vehicles and hardware as baddies. They repeated this with Beast Wars where it was warm blooded goodies vs cold* blooded baddies. If I wanted to go with this kind of thematic product approach then I wouldn't change anything with Year 1 and if anything maybe rearrange the subsequent years to maintain consistency. So Constructicons would be Autobots (probably keep their Diaclone colours).

I would also release all of the Macross Valkyries plus Dorvack Gazette Oberon (Whirl) together as a single sub-group (Deluxe Decepticons). This would help flesh out the Decepticon ranks and compensate for the loss of a gestalt. Mind you, my idea would be far more expensive than what Hasbro actually did! As awesome as having all of the Valkyries as Transformers would be, few kids would be able to afford to complete the set, unlike the inexpensive Constructicons which were cheap and easy to collect the whole set. I would include other smaller and cheaper military vehicles as Decepticons, so obviously Powerglide and Warpath would be shifted over as Decepticons. Oh, and if I were a Takara exec I would release the revolver Gun Robo as a Decepticon.

Deluxe Decepticons


Okay - now that's if I were approaching it from a thematic product POV. The other approach I could take is what I might call the "action figure ethics" approach, and by this I mean deliberately doing the opposite of the product approach in order to mix things up to avoid any even suggestion of racism in the product line. What do I mean by racism? There's a thing in education that we call the Hidden Curriculum, which are messages or lessons conveyed in literature that were not intended by the author, hence why it's "hidden." To avoid this in the toyline I would complete ignore trying to build a theme where automobiles are goodies and jets are baddies. I would mix it up. Have good and evil cars as well as good and evil jets. Now of course, Transformers did do this pretty quickly starting from the 2nd Year with heroic jets like Jetfire, Cosmos, Omega Supreme and Powergliiiiiiide. And they also had evil automobiles like the Constructicons. Subsequent years would mix it up even more -- Aerialbots, Stunticons, Battlechargers, Triple Changers etc. Even having devices as baddies was soon dropped as we got Blaster and the Autobot Cassettes. So honestly, it's not too different from what we actually got, the only difference is that I would've started it in 1984, not 1985. Heck, in Europe Jetfire was the first Autobot commander, not Optimus Prime (due to conflicting legal issues with Diaclone Battle Convoy which was still licensed to Joustra in EU at the time). So European fans were used to having a jet Autobot as leader from very early on. But basically kids wouldn't see cars or military vehicles etc. as being good or evil -- there would be all kinds of alt modes on either side which shows that both good and bad people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and that you can't just assume that one type is collectively any better or worse than another.

Year 1


To further enforce this in the G1 cartoon I would insist that Sunbow avoid giving heroic and evil eye colours. I'd make it more like the Beast Wars cartoon where characters on both sides can have any eye colour. You aren't born good or evil, you choose to be. Heck, I might be so bold as to do something that Hasbro never did - throw in a purple Autobot! Not a secret double spy - just a regular heroic Autobot who happens to be purple.

[Dan]

Deonasis

Thanks. What made me think of it was reading TF Wiki and discovering, for instance, that in the development stage the Predacons might have become ‘Anibots’, and so on.

Trev

The ‘considerate and disguised’ versus ‘blatant invaders’ concept is cool, placing ethics and strategy at the centre of the story, and resulting in lots of surprising re-alignments. The ‘deceptive’ part of the name ‘Decepticon’ would no longer make sense, but inventing different names is never a problem. What does ‘Destron’ mean anyway?

Goktimus

The ‘hidden curriculum’ of the 1984 Transformers did make an impression on youthful me, with the evil side as military and surveillance, and the good side as basically civilians resisting oppression. That may have played into the hands of my parents, who had anti-authority tendencies.

But Transformers moved away from that pretty quickly (with some exceptions like Protectobots and Combaticons). Change was probably for the best, as it is more interesting to mix things up and, as you say, less likely to get us thinking too rigidly about identity.

Still, it influences how I look at Transformers, and as such I was a bit rankled by the new Protectobot, Rook, as I felt that armoured vehicles like that shift the image of the police from emergency service to paramilitary.

You mention the Beast Wars distinction of warm versus cold blooded. That reminds me of something that annoyed me even in youth – why did warm-blooded G1 Ratbat have to be a Decepticon just because horror movies tell us bats are ‘eeeeeevil’? I imagined him as a companion for Blaster, giving the Autobots a purple winged spy, and replacing Ramhorn, who I felt was too bulky a beast to be a cassette (admittedly, I have opinions on cassettes - I feel that Buzzsaw was superfluous, and would have rather seen Soundwave packaged with the Auto-Scout).

Another way of factionalizing beasts would be carnivores versus herbivores. It seemed odd to me when the Zoids toys were factionalized, with the good leader a T-Rex and the evil leader a Triceratops. I would have reversed that!

Paulbot

A balanced mix involving cross-faction categories seems like a cool way to go. Apart from anything else, it would give kids access to both factions at all price-points, and result in less over-balanced collections dominated by Autobots. And there are plenty of ways discussed here of assigning to factions.

Another, rather subjective method I’d suggest would be to ask who looks stereotypically good or evil. Bumblebee has a mean face. Tracks looks mean all over. Starscream has rather ‘patriotic’ colours (like those red-and-blue Autobots who are too many to mention). Razorclaw is just too cute to be evil, and so on.

Dirge

Brestforce toys also look a bit too cute to be Decepticons.

[Paulbot]

Another, rather subjective method I’d suggest would be to ask who looks stereotypically good or evil. Bumblebee has a mean face. Tracks looks mean all over. Starscream has rather ‘patriotic’ colours (like those red-and-blue Autobots who are too many to mention). Razorclaw is just too cute to be evil, and so on.

I had this in mind - but 35 years of Autobot propaganda means I don't think of Bumblebee as looking evil! I thought he, Gears and Windhcharger seemed the less like bad guys of the six. Then split the tapes and jets by the lighter colours ones being good, the dark ones being evil. The Autobot cars are the rescue vehicles and racing cars - the rest the bad guys.

[FatalityPitt]

Interesting question/thread topic.

Hmm, it's a bit challenging for me to answer because I can't really imagine G1 being any other way The alignments and their compositions always made perfect sense to me because in 1984, all the jets were Decepticons and all the cars were Autobots. Jets trump cars in terms of size and power, so that makes the Autobots out as the underdogs while the Decepticons are the big imposing threats. Megatron turned into a gun, and there's no way a gun transformer could be seen as a good guy (let alone a WWII Nazi-German one). Soundwave would look out of place among the Autobot cars, and also the fact that he's an evil robot that turns into a walkman that could be in your house right now makes him more impactful as a villain.

Keeping in spirit of the thread, I'd probably make Sunstreaker and Omega Supreme into Decepticons, the Constructicons into Autobots, and Metroplex into a faction-less transformer; and you'll understand why by the end of this post...

If I re-imagined G1 Transformers without knowing anything about them (putting myself in Bud Budiansky's shoes), I would have given the characters different roles like such:

Autobots:
Windcharger - Main character/narrator of the story. Mainly because he seems the most "normal-looking" Autobot (a red car with a simple transformation).
Prowl - Autobot Leader, because he turns into a police car, and police officers are symbols of authority who are generally suppose to be trustworthy and protective.
Optimus Prime - The Powerhouse/Living Weapon/Strongman of the Autobots.
Mirage - I would have given him Blurr's personality because he's an F1 car.
Sunstreaker - It would be the white police car version of Sunstreaker instead of the yellow one, and he would have been Prowl's second-in-command... who is actually a DECEPTICON SPY/mole/corrupt cop. He'd be like the Starscream to Prowl's Megatron.

Decepticons:
Mostly the same, except Megatron would be more like an underworld mob boss than a tyrannical warlord (gangster is opposite of cop, i.e. Prowl), and the seekers would have been mindless brutes.

Omega Supreme would be a Decepticon because he's the one character who looks like he could beat Optimus Prime (the "Living Super-Weapon" of the Autobots). The Constructicons would be re-imagined as Autobot builders and engineers who are pacifists. Metroplex (who would appear later in the series) would not be an Autobot nor Decepticon, but the God-king/ruler of Cybertron.

Yeah, like I said, it's a bit hard for me to imagine G1 as anything other.