#it's the microchanges guys

[skidblast]

Transformers Earthspark is doing something new when it comes to starting off a story.

I've been seeing some complaints that the Earthspark series, while sticking to established lore and characterisation, they are not showing anything. The biggest complaint is about Starscream's ark in episode 21, where Starscream's fear of Megatron is simply alluded to, once in a short exchange between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and when Hashtag confronts Starscream about it.

The thing is, Earthspark doesn't need to say anything. It's already there. The only thing that's in the way is that it is not in the Earthspark series.

Back in 2005-2006, where the news of a new Transformers movie in the works was about to happen, but now it was life action! Despite my ignorance of the franchise, I could name most of the characters. I knew that the blue blocky guy was Soundwave, I recognized Optimus Prime, Megatron and Starscream by sight, I knew that Starscream was a treacherous idiot.

I have no idea where that knowledge came from. I never consumed any other Transformers media, my brother had a total of four transformers, tiny microchangers none of which are any common guys, and we didn't know the names of, it was just a car that if standing up and pushing the hood over, it was a guy now. I have to reiterate, I have no idea how I came by that knowledge. Was it somehow absorbed through the various websites and media I saw online? I still remember having to download actual .avi files in order to watch videos from the internet, and with a limited connection anything I did online had to be measured carefully, so I had to tread on known grounds since it was highly risky seeing anything unknown because it took time and bandwidth away from the internet.

But still I knew it. And then Transformers Animated was released, where the opening scene even referenced the cartoon that came out before I was born, and then zoomed out to show that this new cartoon would be far different than its predecessor, even introducing a new main character while heavily rewamping an old one. That's where I started really consuming Transformers media, but still with the knowledge from unknown sources that it was drawing from a history older than I was.

And that is what Earthspark is relying on. It is using the fact that Transformers has become a very recognized brand where the knowledge of it passes easily. You don't need to watch any Transformers media to somehow know, that Starscream is a bumbling fool that tries to take over the Decepticons. And even if there is some unknown, the series makes it very clear that you can learn more about the Transformers, just read the comics! Or watch the old cartoon! I as a european can watch The G1 cartoon, Beast Wars and TFP for free on the official transformers channel on youtube even.

And that's how they rope you in. Earthspark is doing something new in how to reach audience, alluding to the bigger picture that's already there, waiting to be bought and consumed, while the older generation can enjoy a new storyline and little easter eggs without having to go through all the slog of reintroducing every single character that they already know.

#tfe #transformers earthspark #earthspark #maccadam #brand awareness #marketing talk #transformers #brand talk #advertising #advertising talk

[siphersaysstuff]

So I'm (slowly) rewatching Transformers: Victory...

And Zod have mercy, I'm having to power through it.

See, when I did the pictures of the Dinoforce toys for @tfwiki, I saw how their fiction sections were massively empty, and I thought to myself "self, these guys are major characters in Japanese canon who are VERY VERY LIKELY going to get new toys soon (the Legacy Core Class Dinobots are blatantly Dinoking pretools), and they pretty much always appear as a big group, you can do a lot of copy-paste once you get team leader Goryu's section done, plugging another big hole that's been on the wiki for nearly two decades." So I dug up a subtitled run of Victory and...

It's incredibly, suffocatingly dry.

It's in this kind of awful middle ground where it's too simple and repetitive to be GOOD, but that lack of ambition means it never dips into the depths of ludicrously ridiculous/poor/careless writing that would make it BAD. It's just... there. A workmanlike product, inoffensive but also largely uninteresting.

The first six episodes are all basically the same story: Decepticons (mostly Dinoforce) attack a place, extended carnage and a few scenes of Kakuryu bungling, oh no some humans are in danger, Autobots show up, extruded fight sequences which typically lead up to a combiner sequence, Star Saber shows up to basically no-sell and win the day by just being super-powerful. It's only come episode seven that the formula changes. The stories don't necessarily get more complex, but they are at least different.

The Autobots are incredibly rigid and formal and it's hard to tell what most of them have got for personalities. It's not helping that, not being familiar with Japanese accents, they all sound incredibly similar and characters' faceplates don't move when they talk, meaning sometimes I literally can't tell who's talking. The Decepticons fare slightly better, thanks mainly to Leozack and Hellbat being super-duplicitous assholes and Goryu being a big proud lug, but the rest of Dinoforce are mostly childish idiots and the rest of Breastforce (yes, yes) are as flat as any Autobot, only evil.

Things do start changing up and getting slightly more character-driven after a while but really, it's all so rote. Also, six of the thirty-eight episodes are clip shows with no framing device whatsoever. The NINTH episode is a clip show, followed by another at episode 13. Yikes.

And stock footage. So, so, so much stock footage.

Supposedly, after the weirdness that was the Masterforce anime, Takara wanted to get "back to the roots" of Transformers, which had taken Japan by storm when it first released there in 1985. But by all accounts, a hefty part of what made TF so appealing o'er there to the point where re-releases of toys that had been on the market two years prior (in Diaclone and Microchange) suddenly sold like deep-fried crack was how it was so different from other "mecha" shows. It had a real goody-dumb to downright chaotic charm a lot of the time. But Victory is incredibly straight-laced, even to the point where the comedy relief bits are super predictable.

I was talking about it with @therobotmonster and he looked up what else was on "kids" TV in Japan (1989), and... whoof. Dragon Ball Z was ramping up to the first big fight with Vegeta. SD Gundam. Ranma 1/2 was hitting its stride. Never mind what was going on in the realm of Super Sentai and Masked Rider style action shows. And apparently, while Victory toys sold well, the show basically bombed.

Can't say that's surprising.

It's just kind of impressive the dull thud it's landing with, given I very distinctly remember the early days of online TF fandom in the 90s, when people swore up and down how amazing the anime were, especially Victory. Of course, by and large, nobody saying that actually understood Japanese and subtitles were out of the question, plus simply seeing the show was an endeavor all its own. You got a 9th-generation VHS copy from someone you didn't know on super-long-running speed (aka "worst fidelity") and just guessed at what was being said.

Ah well, I'm'a keep with it. I can't say I'm having fun with it, but well, it IS the wiki's purpose to catalog all this stuff, and Victory, dry as the cartoon is, DOES have nostalgia behind it and IS pretty much "The" Japanese Transformers Show.

And really, there are so many pieces of TF media that are so underwhelming compared to the toys they exist to advertise, and honestly, most of those are harder to watch than even the worst of Victory (looking at you, Prime Wars/War For Cybertron trilogies).

#transformers #transformers victory #star saber #deathsaurus #transformers anime

[tundrainafrica]

the fact that people refuse that levi and han had a bond (even if it’s not romantic) is insane imo... like there’s the parallels between different relationships? and when you point them out there’s always someone who will say “eww don’t compare xx with levihan”

for example? ymir and historia??? there’s so many similarities, wanting to live for themselves, wanting to be together, the fact that one of them had to leave to protect the other one and they never got to tell each other how they felt? but the bond was there? the tall, more energetic one that wants to protect and show the short, seemingly jaded one that not everything has to be hopeless? their friendship? there’s no power imbalance, just pure love, understanding. they really loved each other...

oh and the bird with one wing, it’s as if han couldn’t fly anymore without levi (but i may be looking too much into it) and then levi fell too ahhh poetic cinema 😩 we’ve been getting a lot of hate recently...

This is like way up in my asks but a lot of it has been bothering me. I’ve seen a lot of antis on twitter denying Hange and Levi’s bond because lmao apparently what has been going on in 126 and 132 aren’t enough to make something canon. 

But as a fan, regardless of what antis say, regardless of what other shippers say I will stand by this ship, rain or shine, and I will fucking scream ‘LEVIHAN IS CANON.’ 

It just doesn’t make any sense really? Like what do people need for something to be canon? A gaudy verbal declaration of love? Love letters? Kissing? Fucking? 

I don’t believe we need a declaration of love to deem something canon. Yes, people won’t agree but the fact that we have been called delusional? Levihans on twitter have been called delusional for seeing canon on this? I didn’t just look at Levihan and the scenes in 126 and 132 and go ‘YUP ITS CANON,’ I actually did have a slow burn towards this because I just thought the way I see Levihan in canon is pretty much how I appreciate a lot of the relationships in real life. 

A lot of people wait for declarations of love, kissing, fucking, embracing and making out. Yes, those are conventional ways to prove that maybe those two can be together. But those types of bullshit are only as valuable or as meaningful as the subtle domestic actions that follow. We’ve seen relationships we deem canon before, then suddenly the guy cheats on the girl or the girl hits the guy or vice versa, or they just alternate between make ups and break ups until they get tired. So what? Do they still love each other? Even after allowing themselves through go through all that shit? 

I’ve never been in a relationship like that? I wouldn’t know what runs through people’s heads when they go through those? Stockholm? Hope that maybe their toxic lover will change for the better? I don’t know so I won’t comment about this. 

But I sincerely believe there is more to analyze, there is more to appreciate and there is more to emulate in a relationship grounded in mutual trust, bonds, and a relationship that has proven the test of time and challenges (aka Levi and Hange)

I don’t believe in kisses, sex scenes or verbal declarations of love. Just because those are the socially accepted ways to ‘show that love exists.’ They are inherently flawed proofs and evidences that there exists a relationship between people. And maybe the fact that these proofs are what people wait for before they something is canon, maybe that’s the reason why it’s so hard for people to recognize that people can have bonds without it? Maybe that’s why people figuring out they love someone is so hard? Because they wait for the urge to kiss or the urge to have sex? Or the urge to write a long ass love letter?

But really love and the drive to enter a committed relationship are so much deeper than intimacy and verbal declarations. Intimacy and Verbal Declarations are only as valuable as the intentions and the implicit messages that accompany them. 

I’ve never been a words person, I’ve always been an actions person and maybe that’s why I never did keep a lot of the old love letters and the old gifts people have given me. I don’t want verbal declarations of love or commitment, I want actions. Words are easy. Intimacy is easy. If people really meant it, they would constantly strive to change for the better. If people really meant it, they would hold their breath and listen even when they were angry. If people really meant it, they’d listen to feedback and constantly try to open up. 

If people really meant it, they’d stay true to commitments, acknowledge mistakes and constantly reach out of their comfort zone to make an effort to constantly improve. 

You know where I see love? Giving up your daily routine to save some extra cash so you can drop it for a partner who’s in need? You know what’s love? Changing how you go about your life, actively changing your bad habits so you can constantly be a better partner to the person you committed to. You know what’s love? Staying by someone’s side, completely trusting them and trying at least to know them like the back of your hand? 

You know what’s love? Actively abandoning your post to save your dying friend. 

And some people might go… This is just a ship. No, because personally how I ship is how I view relationships in real life.

I do not admire relationships  for their ability to display affection in public or their ability to write long letters to their loved ones. I admire relationships for their openness. I admire relationships where couples are able to keep their problems behind closed doors because they trust each other so well they can resolve everything together. I admire relationships where couples are complete opposites yet somehow manage to make things work because you know they made the effort to adopt microchanges to their personality to make that relationship work. 

I have friends in real life who are actively in a relationship, say they genuinely love their partner yet break up and make up every week. They call their partners such vile names when they’re angry, they fucking hurt each other yet a declaration of love every week somehow makes it okay. 

I have friends whose only proof they were ever together with their partners were the fact that they lived together, maybe co-owned five cats. And when I talk to them about their partners, they know everything about their partner from the back of their hand. “She wouldn’t do that. She won’t wake up that early.” They know each others habits and despite how different they are, they adjust. They have never said anything wrong about their partner. They have never talked shit about their partners to me. Sometimes, they would talk to me when they’re concerned or when they’re emotional, but they have never called their partner asshole, bitch, fucker in the heat of the moment. I have never heard them wish ill of their partner. 

BUT THEY HAVE NEVER PLAYED VICTIM. (And holy crap the amount of relationships I’ve seen where someone is willingly able to rant and say such horrifying things behind their partner behind their back is fucking terrifying. And the way they pull a 180 in public and around their partner?? That’s a relationship???  I have seen friends call their partners cruel and abusive, only for me to find out through message receipts that they’re both assholes.)

And I will live my whole life, advocating for relationships grounded in mutual bonds and a strive to grow with their partner, whether or not they have expressed the societally acknowledged, conventional romantic connotations of love or not. 

In the end, love is love. And love is manifested not in the romantic declarations of love but in the trust, sacrifice, the effort to change for the better, the commitment to stay with the person and grow with them. 

Love is abandoning one’s comfort zones. Love is staying by someone’s side, supporting them through the thick and thin. Love is supporting one another, keeping the dynamic balanced yet constantly moving. 

Love is facing life together and making sure the person you committed to, never feels alone or unloved. 

Do not reduce love and relationships to kisses and hugs and declarations of love.

And for the people who say, “Chill this is just a ship...” I ship because I believe in the dynamic and I believe in the depth that is hidden underneath the dynamic that was shown in the big screen. It’s the reflection of what I see in relationships in real life and it’s the model of what I’d want to see in my own relationships. 

So yes, please let the Levihans enjoy things thank you. 

#levihan #meta #rant im sorry

[talenlee]

Henry Orenstein

I'm going to tell you a story. It jumps around a little, to future and past, and it has a big twist in it that I'm going to need you to trust me on. Because of that, the fold - and content warning - is coming later than you'd expect.

This story, started, for me, on the Transformers wiki.

This is a Rubsign. It's a small piece of plastic that's heat-reactive. When Transformers started out as a brand, there was an immediate push to make cheap knockoff toys with similar ideas. In order to 'protect' the brand and ensure kids only wanted to buy the genuine Transformers, they developed something that they could pretend was part of the play pattern: a small symbol on the robot's body that had the silhouette of either the Decepticon or Autobot faction, and you wouldn't know for sure if you didn't heat it up, usually as a child, by rubbing it with your finger.

Transformers, and their gimmick of 'transforming', is essentially, open source. You can't copyright it or even copyright the techniques of a mould. This is one of the reasons there's so many knockoffs of those toys — the actual technique of a transforming toy is pretty much uncopyriteable method.

The rubsigns, however, were made with patented technology; not only weren't other people allowed to put them on their toys, but even worse, they simply couldn't make them because the method for their creation was proprietary. What I thought as a child was a clever way to represent a disguise, for a moment of tension in the narrative, was really just a corporate control collar, a thing that meant they could draw a hard line between their version of the idea and the other, shitty ones, so I could ensure my collection of second hand transforming robot toys was properly branded.

Rubsigns are a cop is what I'm saying.

But, they had to be invented.

This is Henry Orenstein. Learning about the origin of the rubsign meant learning that to my surprise, the patent for them is not held by The company per se, but is instead partially owned by Hasbro, and partially owned by this one dude, Henry Orenstein.

When I found his name in the Transformers wiki, the wiki stated, perhaps boldly: His life is more interesting than Transformers.

Bold claim.

This is professional Poker. It's a well known game that involves players playing for extremely large sums of money, often with similarly large sums of money involved in the buy-in. It's grown in popularity over the past twenty years, in part because of improvements in presenting the game to an audience. Back in 1995, a patent was filed for a device known as a hole camera, which let the broadcasters collect the information about the players' hands without doing anything that disrupted the natural flow of the game. The hole camera was used in 1999, and that's about when poker started to pick up in public discourse.

And the patent for the earliest hole camera (which isn't used much any more) is to a guy named Henry Orenstein. So important was this - and his winnings and his achievements lifetime - that he's been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

This is a Johnny Seven OMA, which were made by Topper Toys. And that's a company Henry Orenstein founded to make his toys after being annoyed at how expensive dolls and toy guns were for poor kids. Topper Toys eventually folded into another brand, Deluxe Reading, which I understand if you are a hardcore toy collector, really into things like barbie accessories and cross compatibility, is very important to the hobby.

This background was how Henry got the attention of Hasbro, and wound up working with them on acquiring new toy properties. That meant he was in position to be in Japan, looking at Takara and Microchange toys, and come back with the idea of acquiring both toy sets, and rebranding them as Transformers in 1980.

Interesting dude, right? He should write a memoir.

Except he did already:

And now, when we jump back in the story, I have to say: Content Warning: Nazis.

Henry Orenstein was born Henryk Orenstein, one of five Jewish children to a Polish family, born in Hrubieszów, Poland, 1923. That is to say, when he was 16 years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied his country. This was obviously not ideal, and the Orensteins first hid themselves in their house through secret passages and hidden chambers between the walls. When the food and water ran out, the parents made the painful decision to surrender to arrest, in the hopes of keeping their children alive.

Henryk's parents were taken, shipped to a camp, and shot. The children were then sent to a camp, where Henryk dedicated a plan to keeping moving. If they were being moved around, transferred from thing to thing, if the person in charge of them was different from time to time, nobody would have the time to really make a protracted plan to execute them. That, hypothetically, was the idea. This meant that he and his siblings were in five different concentration camp - including the camp run by Amon Goeth, the villain of Schindler's List.

They end up in the camp in Budzyń. A few days after arrival, a report comes over the loudspeaker that 'Any Jews with math or science training must report to front office' and Henryk signs himself and his brothers up.

... they did not have math or science training

See, as things were Getting Worse towards the end of the war, the Germans were trying to maximise the resources they did have. This is part of the grouping of things you'd possibly hear as the wunderwaffe — the preposterous weapons of the later days of Hitler's aspirations. You may know these as a sequence of History Channel tv ads, like Hitler's Greatest Tanks or Superboats or The Cannon That Shoots Time Frozen Chunks Of Hitler's Future Brain or whatever. Nowadays, wunderwaffe is a German word primarily used sarcastically, in case you're curious. The Nazis were desperate, because they were a bunch of sucky losers who couldn't make anything good on their own —

And never did

— they instead tried to turn their prisoners to the task of solving their problems with the finest of Nazi Bullshit Magic. At this point, Henryk is maybe nineteen years old, and he and his brothers are signed up to the camp's equivalent of the Shed they dump the A-Team in. The scientists in charge of the lab are scared: if this fails, they're just wasting manpower, and while the Jewish subordinates may fail, if they fail, they're going to get shipped to the front and treated like meaty bullet catchers.

Henryk, recognising the situation, proceeded to run cons on the Nazis with his brothers.

They made bullshit devices that wouldn't work, but did look like they worked. They stole from the labs. They crafted things that could be faked to working but wouldn't work for real. They entertained the scientists with the finest of hokum. And then the researchers, full of relief that they wouldn't become a statistic on a Soviet soldier's bayonet, started to talk about how great their progress was of Doing Science At Shit to their command.

Command released an order to demand that these Jewish Science Wizards produce a tank paralysing gas.

Which was a problem.

Look, the Nazis were fond of demanding things that couldn't be done. Then they could shout at their subordinates who were fucking up, or they'd deliver and you looked great. Again, this is not an environment for refined science, this is a shrinking circular firing squad where everyone is trying to just not be the next person shot. But nonetheless, Tank Paralysing Gas was demanded.

Henryk and his brothers did what they could, they made something they assured the Nazis would work, and the scientists, sweating bullets, sent it off to another base to be tested.

Where it didn't work.

Obviously.

Okay, so now for a moment, consider the situation. Consider what this looks like. These scientists have sent a giant pile of reports about how great a job they were doing, and there's a big trapdoor labelled Actual Bullets on it underneath them. They just put together their wunderwaffe and sent it off to be tested, and it didn't work, so what do they do?

Blame the prisoners?

Uh, that's going to go poorly, because they were saying the prisoners were doing a great job just a few days ago.

Come clean?

Fuck off.

Okay, so what else do they have as an option? Well, they did the only thing a fascist can do. They posted through it, Nazi style.

They sent infuriated reports to the other camp. WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR TANK-PARALYSING GAS THAT MADE IT NOT WORK!?

And... you can see how this goes.

Right now, nobody wants to be the person who admits something is wrong. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the circle of who gets shot even closer. You don't want to tell your superiors you fucked up handling the Tank Paralysing Gas, or if you made the Tank Paralysing Gas, you don't want to tell them that the Tank Paralysing Gas didn't work.

And so back and forth they go. Testing things that won't work and demanding ever-increasing test protocols to try and make it the other person's problem. I don't have proof of it, but some accounts of the story include the two camps getting infrastructure projects like new roads to make sure the transport of the Tank Paralysing Gas works and is good and proper and anyway, the war ended before they got this resolved.

But there is paperwork, recovered during the fall of Berlin, with Heinrich Himmler's signature on it, ordering the mass production of the Tank Paralysing Gas made by Henryk and his younger brothers.

"The whole tale about the scam they pulled on the nazis is... instructive, too"

#Transformers #Tricks Month

[dancitron-days]

1984 French TV commercial for Turbo Magnum by Ceji Revell. Legend has it that this was what Hasbro was keen to license from Takara at Tokyo Toy Fair in 1983, and the Microchange / Diaclone toys that would become Transformers were simply there to sweeten the deal. Evidently Hasbro quickly reassessed things. Between how successful GI Joe had been, what Tonka was doing with Gobots, the addition of the designs acquired from Knickerbocker, and Joustra/GIG introducing Diaclone to Europe, the building blocks for TF were all there. Takara managed to secure licensing deals for Turbo Magnum with Hasbro, Ceji Joustra and GiG but Hasbro never did never did produce them for cost reasons. As a means of making it up to them, Takara was given the rights to use the Transformers IP in Japan. There's a great blog post by Maz on this if you want to learn more, which helped me fill in some of the blanks (like why no Hasbro Turbo Magnums exist!) It's mind-boggling to think so much of TF as we know it has its roots in this silly little car.

One last observation based on the George Dunsay TF Archive excerpt: the reason Takara started working with Hasbro in the first place (initially on Turbo Magnum) was because Mattel "did not treat [them] well". i.e. It's kinda Mattel's fault Transformers exists. THANKS GUYS.

#Transformers #Pre-Transformers #Pre-TF #Hasbro #Takara #Turbo Magnum #Imagine inadvertently leading to the creation of your rival's most enduring product #We'll discuss Takara Barbie another time

[sternerstufftoys]

The Smart One

Like Grimlock, Perceptor is another character that had been around since before the movie (based on a Microchange toy that had slipped through the cracks of the initial wave) but still managed to command principal-cast privilege in season 3. In a way, this helped bridge the wildly disparate aesthetics, with the earth-based shenanigans of shrinking down into Megatron's body one year, and blasting your arse across the galaxy the next. And there was Percy, still using that 'let's-be-charitable-and-call-it-English' accent. It certainly helped his star rise that Wheeljack, Skyfire and Ratchet were out of the picture, and he could take the throne as generic science-guy.

So, we've had the Fast One, Old One and Dumb One, now let's make way for the Smart One. Hallo smartypants. I don't remember the toy for Perceptor ever registering in my infant brain back in the 80s, despite his frequent appearances in the show and occasional cameos in the comics. I knew the character existed, but never even gave it a moment's thought if there was a microscope robot out there for real. Sorry Percy.

And here's a thing, in almost any other line his Titans Return toy would have been hailed as an absolute triumph. It is, after all, a near-perfect rendition of his G1 self, removable head notwithstanding. And yet on release he was largely greeted with a resigned shrug. Not terrible, not great, just another one for the shelf. Why? Well, two reasons I reckon. First, TR had so many stunners that being merely average like Perceptor means you tend to get overlooked. Second, plenty of collectors already had his Reveal The Shield version, which was apparently pretty good too, and didn't have a good reason to upgrade.

Percy does come with a sort of rendition of his IDW sniper rifle, but doesn't have the cool little targeting monocle thingy sadly, so there's not really a whole lot of IDW in there overall. A shame, because his battle-hardened nature was one of the better things to come out of All Hail Megatron, called back to in his MTMTE days when the ship came under attack and he suddenly reminded everyone that yes, Perceptor was still a hell of a tough guy. It doesn't help that, as with all the weapons with TR figures, it needs to seat a titan master and therefore has no actual sight. Not a deal breaker, but a disappointment. Otherwise Perceptor is a pretty expressive figure in his stiff uprightness. He looks far more at home in an awkward upright stance than taking on any awesome action poses.

There's a third mode in there, a sort of mobile artillery thingy? But let's be honest, you only put him in that mode once and so did I. It's rubbish, based on a G1 third mode that was also rubbish. His microscope mode isn't exactly dynamic either, but it's a better fit. Problem is that there's too many hinges for his chest piece to make it the slide tray, and it gets a bit fiddly and awkward. Plus it doesn't extend far enough away from the body of the thing to make it easy to use. But you can use the microscope, with a working lens that can be focussed, although the zoom isn't up to much. Nice that these traditions can be kept up. Plus you can mount his rifle on the side and sit the titan master in there, for a battle-ready microscope. And who isn't into that?

#transformers #maccadam #toy review #titans return #perceptor #season 3 autobots