(JULY-2013) Armada Era characters - Best and Worst

[griffin]

Armada in 2002 was the beginning of a new era in Transformers, starting a long-term project from Hasbro, jointly with TakaraTomy in Japan.
It was a fully launched (or re-launching) of the brand, in all mediums - toys, cartoon, comic, and even a video game.

After an era of a cute yellow Bumblebee, and then an era of a cute yellow Cheetor... the fandom would now be subjected to an era of a cute yellow Hotshot. Perhaps there was a psychological element in that colour and character role.
When Armada came around, we started seeing a lot of (classic) Gen1 character names being re-used, after more than a decade... a combination of Hasbro looking to protect and re-secure iconic names from the 80s that were now regaining popularity (from the Gen1 DVD and Comics), as well as a greater level of interaction with the online fandom that gave them real-time reactions to every decision being made, especially when it related to including certain characters and what form they were given.
Armada was also a chance for Hasbro to finally use a Gobots character name, after acquiring Tonka a decade earlier and just using the name "Gobots" randomly. A decade later, it is still the only Gobots character name that Hasbro has released (other Gobot names were done as toys by FunPub and TakaraTomy).


Details of this series can be read up here.

Who are your favourite characters in this era, and why?

Which characters were disappointing or over-used?

Who would you have liked to have seen more of in this Series for being under-used?

[GoktimusPrime]

Favourite character would be Starscream in Micron Legend; the heroic Decepticon. Though sadly I felt the nobility of the character was not translated well in Armada (and I found his Armada counterpart to be more annoying than likable :/).

Most disappointing characters - Fred, Billy and Carlos. Someone please step on them.

[Trent]

I only ever read the comics, so that's all I can comment on and my memory of the series isn't that great, but I don't remember the Autobots/Decepticons getting much character development. From my memory the little character development to be had all went to the humans and minicons.

Dunno, like I said my memory of the comics is rusty at best.

Oh, but I do remember Bludgeon had a brief but very cool appearance

[GoktimusPrime]

I only ever read the comics, so that's all I can comment on and my memory of the series isn't that great, but I don't remember the Autobots/Decepticons getting much character development. From my memory the little character development to be had all went to the humans and minicons.

The Mini-Cons also had better toy development too! I remember when Armada first came out -- I found the Autobots/Decepticons to be incredibly underwhelming, but I was absolutely amazed at the engineering/design behind the Mini-Cons! The first Mini-Cons I ever handled was the Air Defence Team and I was most impressed!

Oh, but I do remember Bludgeon had a brief but very cool appearance

Yep, that was in the Worlds Collide Saga written by Simon Furman. My favourite story arc in Armada. (^_^)

[BigTransformerTrev]

Who are your favourite characters in this era, and why?
Demolisher and Tidal Wave, simply as they were new and interesting.

Which characters were disappointing or over-used?
I know they were not supposed to be counterparts of the G1 characters with the same name, but Cyclonus and Blurr were very distinctive characters and it was a shame the way that their namesakes were used.

Who would you have liked to have seen more of in this Series for being under-used?
Some of the Mini-Con teams (if they had been given fully fleshed out personalities)

[KalEl]

Who are your favourite characters in this era, and why?
Optimus and starscream. SS was a badass.

Which characters were disappointing or over-used?
many characters had a lot of potential that were under used.

Who would you have liked to have seen more of in this Series for being under-used?
Overload, badass design.