Post by chrisl on Jul 17, 2008 8:52:24 GMT
While googling some TMUK stuff I found an article I'd written almost exactly 10 years ago. Reading through it, it seems that many of the predictions have come true. While some of the ideas and analysis are pretty silly in hindsight, it does some up the transition era between fringe and mainstream fairly accurately. Looking back at it now, what do others think?
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TMUK: To Cybertron And Back?
The past year or two has seen a big change in the Transformers, with both toys and the fans themselves evolving. I decided to write this article after I received a phone call from TMUK member Matthew Kelly (not the guy from "Stars In There Eyes"). We talked about how the club had changed since the days of the initial G2 wave of new members (of which I was one), way back in
late ‘94 to early ‘95.
Way back then, fanzines were made in peoples’ bed rooms, using a lot of hard labour with typewriters pens, pencils, and photocopiers. If you were lucky, another member would do a bit of work on a computer for you, but that was rare at the time. I guess what drove the fanzines at first was the discontinuation of the Marvel Generation Two comic; hence the birth of Matt Dallas’ monumental fanzine Transformers: Continued Generation 2. After
seeing this fanzine, a lot of people became inspired to pay homage via our own fanzines; hence the birth of Tranzines such as Transmasters Universe, Japan Files, Transformers HS, Continued Earth Wars, etc.
Fans, bought toys and other spare things from each other, like a small little community. Poor quality 5th generation copied videos of Masterforce and Victory, often missing many of the episodes were held as masterpieces by those who managed to catch a glimpse of them. The meetings were big highlights of the TMUK calendar, and took place during school holidays at a member’s house; with a few people travelling from both locally and miles around to attend. At meetings, fans brought their favourite toys
to put on a display for other fans to look at, watched classic Transformers videos, talked about all aspects of Transformers, read fanzines, and generally had a great time.
I suppose that all this fan activity was spurred on by the commercial death of the Generation 2 toy line and comic. Hasbro kept telling us that they weren’t making Transformers anymore and everybody thought this was the end, par the Tranzines. But, in 1996, rumour of a controversial new line of Transformers started to appear in almost every fanzine of the time. "Beast
Wars" was initially judged by most to be a poor attempt to copy the formula used in such crap television programs such as Power Rangers.
When the first Beast Wars toys were released in America, fans over there seemed to be polarized; either you loved Beast Wars, or you hated them, it was as simple as that. Rumours about a possible TV show cropped up, and eventually after many months, the pilot episode of Beast Wars was unveiled to the amazement and delight of the majority of the fans. The detailed CGI work, and the more mature scripts, made some fans totally Beast Wars crazy, but other fans saw it as a poor imitation of the cartoon they knew and loved.
Back in the UK, the hype was running wild. Many fans had contacted people in the US, begging to purchase the new toys, to see what all the fuss was about. The TMUK fanzine scene had by this time exploded into a really big thing; starved of official material, fans just couldn’t get enough, and with the quality of some ‘zines (notably TMU and CG2) being in most fans’ opinions "better than the official media", TMUK was probably one of the hottest fan communities in the world.
If things were doing so well, why the decline all of a sudden? Over the years, the fans grew up and took on more responsibilities outside of the club. From being mainly a group of high school and college students with some being university undergraduates, the club as a whole has grown up, with a lot of people starting in the next phase of their lives, either finishing
high school (like me this year), college, university or starting jobs. It isn’t that we’ve lost our passion for Transformers, it’s simply in this writer’s opinion that we don’t have as much time to spend on Transformers as we all used to.
It’s not just the fans’ changing, there have been various other changes in the Transformers world too. Professional Transformers dealers, have cropped up over the past few years. Although some fans seem to blame the dealers and the commercialization of Transformers for the decline in Transfandom in general, I personally believe that the big dealer explosion simply came at
the wrong time, and that it isn’t there fault at all. In actual fact they’re helping to sustain the Transformers world, since most of them were actually already fans before they became dealers, and although prices of older Transformers have risen, the dealers, are able to supply the toys that the fans are looking for, making it easier for fans to get what they want, and that can’t be a bad thing can it?
Perhaps if we all took a moment to reflect on the way things are happening, we could come up with an action plan to redress the balance between going too commercial and keeping it too raw. Perhaps things like universally agreed capped rates on Transformers toy pricing, joint fan/dealer fanzines with total emphasis being placed on the fictional aspects of Transformers
since in the end, since that is what sells the toys the dealers provide for us. All the internal bickering must stop, and encouragement given to all projects no matter how small or how challenged a person may think they are.
Perhaps instead of focusing on meetings and toy dealing events, we could attempt something like a fan-dub of some of the Japanese cartoons. This could be very beneficial to both the fan and dealer communities. The project could be joint financed, with the dealers supplying the laser disks and a percentage of the cost of re-dubbing the videos, with the fans paying the
remainder. The fans involved (and if they wanted to, the dealers), could then take part in providing the voices for the characters in the shows, and then a limited few copies could be given to the involved fans, with the contributing dealers given a copy each. It would then be agreed that the dealers could make back the money they placed into the project by selling copies of the fan production, but only at minimal profits, so they make back what they put into the project, but still make a small amount of money from it.
A project like I have described above, should ideally be the thing we should aim for because it will unite the fans and dealers of all factions, breathe life into the Transfan scene, and be amazing fun to do; not to mention an excellent thing to put on our c.v.'s. Only by working together can we sort out the problems plaguing Transfandom in general. It is a way that everybody is a winner and everybody’s smiles will be genuine once more. The energon
cube is in our court, lets not lose it.
-----------------------------
------------------------------------
TMUK: To Cybertron And Back?
The past year or two has seen a big change in the Transformers, with both toys and the fans themselves evolving. I decided to write this article after I received a phone call from TMUK member Matthew Kelly (not the guy from "Stars In There Eyes"). We talked about how the club had changed since the days of the initial G2 wave of new members (of which I was one), way back in
late ‘94 to early ‘95.
Way back then, fanzines were made in peoples’ bed rooms, using a lot of hard labour with typewriters pens, pencils, and photocopiers. If you were lucky, another member would do a bit of work on a computer for you, but that was rare at the time. I guess what drove the fanzines at first was the discontinuation of the Marvel Generation Two comic; hence the birth of Matt Dallas’ monumental fanzine Transformers: Continued Generation 2. After
seeing this fanzine, a lot of people became inspired to pay homage via our own fanzines; hence the birth of Tranzines such as Transmasters Universe, Japan Files, Transformers HS, Continued Earth Wars, etc.
Fans, bought toys and other spare things from each other, like a small little community. Poor quality 5th generation copied videos of Masterforce and Victory, often missing many of the episodes were held as masterpieces by those who managed to catch a glimpse of them. The meetings were big highlights of the TMUK calendar, and took place during school holidays at a member’s house; with a few people travelling from both locally and miles around to attend. At meetings, fans brought their favourite toys
to put on a display for other fans to look at, watched classic Transformers videos, talked about all aspects of Transformers, read fanzines, and generally had a great time.
I suppose that all this fan activity was spurred on by the commercial death of the Generation 2 toy line and comic. Hasbro kept telling us that they weren’t making Transformers anymore and everybody thought this was the end, par the Tranzines. But, in 1996, rumour of a controversial new line of Transformers started to appear in almost every fanzine of the time. "Beast
Wars" was initially judged by most to be a poor attempt to copy the formula used in such crap television programs such as Power Rangers.
When the first Beast Wars toys were released in America, fans over there seemed to be polarized; either you loved Beast Wars, or you hated them, it was as simple as that. Rumours about a possible TV show cropped up, and eventually after many months, the pilot episode of Beast Wars was unveiled to the amazement and delight of the majority of the fans. The detailed CGI work, and the more mature scripts, made some fans totally Beast Wars crazy, but other fans saw it as a poor imitation of the cartoon they knew and loved.
Back in the UK, the hype was running wild. Many fans had contacted people in the US, begging to purchase the new toys, to see what all the fuss was about. The TMUK fanzine scene had by this time exploded into a really big thing; starved of official material, fans just couldn’t get enough, and with the quality of some ‘zines (notably TMU and CG2) being in most fans’ opinions "better than the official media", TMUK was probably one of the hottest fan communities in the world.
If things were doing so well, why the decline all of a sudden? Over the years, the fans grew up and took on more responsibilities outside of the club. From being mainly a group of high school and college students with some being university undergraduates, the club as a whole has grown up, with a lot of people starting in the next phase of their lives, either finishing
high school (like me this year), college, university or starting jobs. It isn’t that we’ve lost our passion for Transformers, it’s simply in this writer’s opinion that we don’t have as much time to spend on Transformers as we all used to.
It’s not just the fans’ changing, there have been various other changes in the Transformers world too. Professional Transformers dealers, have cropped up over the past few years. Although some fans seem to blame the dealers and the commercialization of Transformers for the decline in Transfandom in general, I personally believe that the big dealer explosion simply came at
the wrong time, and that it isn’t there fault at all. In actual fact they’re helping to sustain the Transformers world, since most of them were actually already fans before they became dealers, and although prices of older Transformers have risen, the dealers, are able to supply the toys that the fans are looking for, making it easier for fans to get what they want, and that can’t be a bad thing can it?
Perhaps if we all took a moment to reflect on the way things are happening, we could come up with an action plan to redress the balance between going too commercial and keeping it too raw. Perhaps things like universally agreed capped rates on Transformers toy pricing, joint fan/dealer fanzines with total emphasis being placed on the fictional aspects of Transformers
since in the end, since that is what sells the toys the dealers provide for us. All the internal bickering must stop, and encouragement given to all projects no matter how small or how challenged a person may think they are.
Perhaps instead of focusing on meetings and toy dealing events, we could attempt something like a fan-dub of some of the Japanese cartoons. This could be very beneficial to both the fan and dealer communities. The project could be joint financed, with the dealers supplying the laser disks and a percentage of the cost of re-dubbing the videos, with the fans paying the
remainder. The fans involved (and if they wanted to, the dealers), could then take part in providing the voices for the characters in the shows, and then a limited few copies could be given to the involved fans, with the contributing dealers given a copy each. It would then be agreed that the dealers could make back the money they placed into the project by selling copies of the fan production, but only at minimal profits, so they make back what they put into the project, but still make a small amount of money from it.
A project like I have described above, should ideally be the thing we should aim for because it will unite the fans and dealers of all factions, breathe life into the Transfan scene, and be amazing fun to do; not to mention an excellent thing to put on our c.v.'s. Only by working together can we sort out the problems plaguing Transfandom in general. It is a way that everybody is a winner and everybody’s smiles will be genuine once more. The energon
cube is in our court, lets not lose it.
-----------------------------
