Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
One of the best things that Hasbro did was to commission Marvel Comics to create the back story and individual bios for the Transformers. And this included the characters' names, which really sound more like comic book names. Toy company execs just don't seem to have the same level of creativity as a comic writer...
Indeed, Marvel were the house of ideas back then. Some of the best Transformers fiction, to me, were the earlier comics by Simon Furman and Bud Budiansky. Some of it was pretty dark, especially the Generation 2 stuff, but the stories had more depth compared to the cartoons. It's a real treat knowing that it's those same people who wrote the original G1 bios.

Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
... I remember when I first got Tailgate back in 1986, I'd pretend that he was driving around human towns and freaking out over the apparent enslavement of his fellow machines and was conflicted over why they had to fight to defend human slavers.
Reminds me of a time in my childhood. Back when I was kid, my friends and I would sometimes go to another kid's house with a transformer each and play mock battles. There was this one time when I had Soundwave, and this other kid had his Blot attack my Soundwave, and I asked him "Why you attacking me? We're on the same side." To which he replied "You must die. You know our secrets. If you get caught by Optimus Prime over there, and you get interrogated; they'll know everything about us." Haha, priceless!