Transformers questions by newbies, and not-so-newbies

[Ravagecat]

Ahhh, memories...

The last BW figure I bought off a shelf was a TM2 Blackarachnia from Target in Launceston. My little hands were shaking as I went to the counter - I couldn't believe I'd found her.

nice...I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw Tigerhawk for the first time man I love that toy

[Verno]

nice...I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw Tigerhawk for the first time man I love that toy

He's an impressive mess of metal, fur and feathers to be sure!

I miss being excited about toys

[SuspectimusPrime]

He's an impressive mess of metal, fur and feathers to be sure!

I miss being excited about toys

Ahhh, I missed saving up my lunch money for WEEKS to slowly acquire BW Cheetor, Rhinox and Wolfgang. Would race to TRU every day or two to make sure it wasn't sold out yet (sometimes suspiciously hiding it in the board games section, behind really obscure games, to make sure nobody else gets it). The worst days were when I was dollars and cents away from the $18(?) I needed to make the purchase.

[Verno]

Ahhh, I missed saving up my lunch money for WEEKS to slowly acquire BW Cheetor, Rhinox and Wolfgang. Would race to TRU every day or two to make sure it wasn't sold out yet (sometimes suspiciously hiding it in the board games section, behind really obscure games, to make sure nobody else gets it). The worst days were when I was dollars and cents away from the $18(?) I needed to make the purchase.

Haha, I wasn't clued in to the 'hiding' of them. I put a TM Optimus Primal on lay-by -- my goodness it took forever to pay off but he was worth it!

[UltraMarginal]

There was a certain amount of satisfaction saving up for/laybuying back in the day when income was just meagre pocket money.

I remember I had a laybuy at my local Toyworld, I had the protectobots on it and a few other items, all transformers. over the course of the laybuy there were a few more come into the store and, I really wanted them so I tacked them on the end of the laybuy.

I was worried that it would get cancelled though as I was approaching the 3 months that it had to be completed by but was no where near paying it off. I was going in once a week and putting a couple dollars on.

the store people told me not to worry about it, they knew I was good for the money if not a little slow in paying off. I found the reciept role at Christmas when I was looking through some older stuff, I'll have to take a photo and post it up.

as an aside, I must have been one of their best customers, when i visit home these days and stop past the store, the owners still know me by name...

[Verno]

That's a great story, UM.

[GoktimusPrime]

Ratchet's signature catchphrase is something that I'm curious about how to correctly transcribe.

Is it just, "Yep yep" or "Hyep hyep" ... because Ratchet seems to speak with a sort of voiceless 'y' which sounds different from the standard voiced 'y' that one would hear with a normal, "Yep" (e.g. when used as a colloquial synonym for "yes"). The standard 'y' sounds like /j/ (same as how Australians would pronounce 'y'), but the voiceless 'y' that Ratchet uses in this particular catchphrase sounds more like /hj/, which is more like how 'h' sounds like in words like "huge" (/hju;dʒ/). Ratchet frequently uses the voiceless 'w' (/ʍ/) in words like "what" which instead of pronouncing as /wɔt/ ("wot") he pronounces as /ʍɔt/ ("hwot"), etc.

So yeah, I'm trying to think of a way to best spell Ratchet's "yep yep"/"hyep hyep" that he uses... "yep yep" doesn't look right because it looks like he's concurring with something, but we all know that he uses this expression to express quite the opposite, more of something along the lines of, "Not so fast," or "Oh no you don't."

Thoughts?

[Sinnertwin]

I'd be inclined to use Yep Yep as Hyep Hyep might confuse people. If we were to look at it from a script point of view it may read something like:

Ratchet turning to Prime:
(Sarcastically) Yep Yep.

Often the tone of the message being conveyed gets lost if a word like "sure" for instance doesn't have some form of emotional message conveyed - like an SMS without the smileys.
As for his use of the Hyep as opposed to Yep, it may be a deliberate emphasis by Jeff to inject some extra character into his voice work. I may be wrong, but i don't recall him using that phrasing as The Leader/Samuel Stern

[GoktimusPrime]

I think it's part of that brand of "Southern gentleman" American accent that Coombes gives to Ratchet. It's not uncommon for speakers of that dialect to use voiceless consonants that are voiced in other accents, e.g. pronouncing "what" and "when" as 'hwot' and 'hwen' instead of 'wot' and 'wen' which other English speakers do. So I think as part of that, Ratchet also devoices the 'y' in "yep" when he gets sarcastic. I'm not familiar enough with this particular accent to know if it's normally done, but I assume it is. Some English-derived words in Japanese are also based on this hyper-corrected voiceless pronunciation, e.g. "White Day" is called ホワイトデー ("howaito dee"), and Polar Claw's name in Japan is White Claw, pronounced as ホワイトクロー ("howaito kuroo"). I'm thinking about making a meme with Ratchet doing the "yep yep," but I want to ensure that the meme can still convey that sarcastic wit intended by Ratchet when read in isolation and not misinterpreted as him expressing agreement.

[blackoptimus]

If you own a G1 that just has Takara Japan stamped on it does it just mean you have a japanese version not hasbro?