Transformers. One of my greatest loves.
While I was a little too young for the very first iteration of Transformers toys and cartoon by Hasbro, I was around for the first round of re-runs of the show, as well as 2nd Generation (buffs of the original). I owned A LOT of transformers: 1st waves, 2nd waves, MicroMasters, Terrorcons, the Gestalts (Superion, Predaking), even the non-transforming Headmasters. When I was in Grade 8, having only been able to remember parts of the 1986 animated blockbuster movie, Transformers: The Movie, my friend Chris and I acquired our first copy of it for our own, and watched it a lot. I loved them, and they loved me.
The Greatest Story Ever Told...oh wait.
Ok, that last part is a bit over the top, but I say this all for a purpose I’ll get to in a minute
In the last few years, I’ve been getting my hands on the original cartoon’s DVD boxed sets, with the obvious intention of watching them. Was I in for a surprise! Transformers, the first cartoon, is brutal. The plot has more holes than Swiss, the voice acting is blasé at best, and the animation is re-hashed at every possible point. Like He-Man (though not THAT bad), it was a cartoon designed to push toys on stupid kids. The movie, in point of fact, was actually designed to introduce an entire new line of toys, as well as to give a semblance of why they won’t make any more Ironhide toys. Luckily, despite the first 2 seasons, that movie is still AWESOME, and the subsequent seasons had a lot more to do with storylines, with plausible introductions to new toys..er..Characters, superceding season 1 and 2′s piece of cinematographic mastery (“Hey Reflector, get over here! Yes Sir!” *Cue Reflector, done)
My point is, sometimes memory is better than reality. But, sadly, we can’t live in memory, only in reality. So take it as it is, and enjoy some really bad cartoons.
And check out Teletraan-1, the Transformers Wiki.
And the new cartoon is actually great.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on January 26, 2009 at 8:47 am, filed under Life and tagged memory, Nostalgia, transformers. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
We had a Transformers game on our Commodore 64. As I remember, it’s kicked some major butt.
But as you say, “memory may be better than reality’
Everything on the Commodore 64 is completely and objectively awesome. Bar None.
Fun Fact: I programmed my own video game in QBasic circa grade 5.
I had an emulator on my PC a few years ago in which I could play Commodore 64 games…The music was soooo bad, but yes, the games were great!
You know what another awesome cartoon is?
Scooby Doo.
Freaking amazing.
I’ve become quite a fan of SpongeBob SquarePants lately. It’s my kids influence. Really it is.
Scooby Doo sucks. Conversation over.
Spongebob is pretty funny.
I like Spongebob too, very funny. We will have to agree to disagree on Scooby Doo though. I’ll never back down.