sto_vo_kor_2000
Sidekick
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2006
- Messages
- 3,037
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 31
In late 1993, Hasbro released a Generation 2 line of Transformers, largely just reissuing the already-nostalgic toys from the decade before with some different weapons and accessories and a few new toy mold's. Along with various other changes, Megatron went from a gun to a tank.The toy line lasted two years and expanded to include such new Takara designs as Dreadwing, Laser Optimus Prime (all of which were also part of the continuing Japanese toy line, which was always a year behind Hasbro in releasing toys), but most of the toys from this series simply couldn’t compete with the originals. The Generation Two cartoon was the most disappointing aspect of the series. Instead of launching a newcartoon, the decision was made to re-air the original American cartoon with disorienting high tech special effects that interrupted the cartoon at the most inappropriate times. Neither the cartoon nor the toy line ever achieved the popularity of the original series. Generation Two came to an end in 1995. After two years, Generation 2 slowly faded away, even before some planned toys were released. The only high point to this line was the Marvel comics a twelve-issue series story based on the Generation 2 concept, but, just like the toys, it never took off.
In 1996, the entire Transformers concept was overhauled.hasbro lanuch 2 toylines based on the Transformers brand name, Beast Wars and Machine Wars were released alongside each other but without a cartoon to help it
Machine Wars was very short-lived toy line may have been Hasbro's attempt to "catch up" with some of the toys it had missed out on between 1987 and 1993. The toy line consisted entirely of Transformers toys that were produced in Europe, Australia, and Canada after Generation One had failed in America. Optimus Prime, for example, was a recolored version of the UK Turbomaster “Thunderclash”. “Starscream” had previously been a UK Micromaster base. The success of the new Beast oriented Transformers may have been responsible for the demise of this potentially succesful toy line.
The Beast Wars concept, where robots no longer turned into vehicles, guns, or tanks, but rather animals. The Beast Wars eventually became a very popular CGI animated series, and the Transformers (sort of)
returned for a whole new generation. The idea of animal's transforming had been tried many time's before in the toy line, but this was the first time that the animals actually looked real. For America, it was the first real success Transformers had since Transformers The Movie back in 1986. The American cartoon used sophisticated computer animation and a complex story line to gain fandom, while the toys gradually became more and more complex, both in transformation and appearance. Beast Wars brought in a whole new generation of American Transformers fans, and offered a very different product (both on screenand in toy stores). For a while, plans were being made for an American computer animated Beast Wars movie, though it never came to be.
At the same time in Japan,Takara was releasing their own Beast Wars show's,Beast Wars the 2nd and Beast Wars Neo, with a toy line to match that bosted new figures such as Big Convoy,Magmatron,Lio Convoy and a new Galvatron.Beast wars 2 had a animated movie made.The U.S. Beast Wars was also exported over sea's to Japan but there are a few story points that differ from the original script, Fore exsample it was beleaved by Takara that BW"s Optimus Primal and BW"s Megatron were just new bodys for their G1 counter-parts so it lead to some script changes.
Even with the success of Beast Wars, there was still an allure for transforming machines. Beast Wars gradually evolved into the Transmetals, transforming animals that looked partially robotic, and then into the Transmetal 2s, which took these toys another step further and made the animal forms look like highly sophisticated robots, themselves. In America, Hasbro finally made the jump to Beast Machines, the first and only Transformers line released by Hasbro but not by Takara. The line consisted of toys that were exactly what the name implied: part beast and part machine.But the toy line suffered from poor sales most likly based of the fact that the toys had little resemblance to their characters cartoon counterparts.Many of the characters created as toys never made it on the television series, if that was'nt enough,the transforming plant Botanica from the television series was not made into a toy for any of the related toylines.
Meanwhile in Japan, Takara had lost a substantial amount of money on it's more recent Beast Wars toys, and while Hasbro was releasing Beast Machines and getting mixed reactions, Takara went back to the
original crowd-pleasing formula of transforming vehicles and objects with Transformers 2000. Due to financial constraints, only fourteen new toys were produced (the Autobots and Megatron), and the rest of TF2000 was made up of older, repainted Transformers (the Predacons from Beast Wars, the Spychangers and Laser Optimus Prime G2, Ruination and Brave Maximusfrom G1).
Still, the toys had changed. For better or worse, the fourteen new toys beared little resemblence to the bulky, die-cast Diaclones and Microchangers that first came to the states under the Transformers name. Beast Wars had influenced the making of these toys, yielding believable vehicles that converted into muscular, human-like robots.
In the U.S. ,plans were being made for a new series that would follow Beast Machines....it was to be called Trans-Tech, and would have featured the returns of old favroits such as G1's Optimus Prime,Megatron and Starscream amoungest others from both G1 and the Beast erea. But the idea of a new and original Transformers cartoon was declined in favor of dubbing over the Japanese Transformers 2000 series, calling it Transformers:Robots in Disguise , limiting Hasbro’s ability to depart from the Japanese toy and story lines. This was the first time such a decision had been made by Hasbro since this was also the first time Japan had produced a Transformers cartoon series before them. It was the first American Transformers cartoon that (at least in the American translation) had absolutely no connection to the original 1984 one.
t: I hadnt put much thought on that tpoic at all so I thank you.
