Weekly Group Discussion

[Nigel]

In this thread, each week we will take a particular group or type of Transformer and discuss it. The discussion will be wide ranging and can cover any aspect of that group: its good and bad aspects, its contribution to the Transformers range, personal reminiscences, "best of class", potential improvements, comparisons between the toys and interpretations of them in fiction, variants, or anything else that comes to mind.

Each week's group will be selected by... whoever first nominates one on a Monday!

First under the microscope will be MINI AUTOBOTS.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

On the one hand, great to have small TFs at affordable prices. (£2 or thereabouts!) And I know they weren't from the same toy range originally as the large Diaclones. However, it does annoy me now that they aren't to scale. If I were doing it from scratch, I'd have Bumblebee and Beachcomber as Mini Autobots, but Seaspray and Powerglide as giant-size ones - as illustrated by Graham in the last issue of Hubris.

The problem with them wasn't really the toy designer's fault, except for advertising them as being the Autobots' spies, small enough to go unnoticed by the Decepticons. The animators took them too literally, the result being that in robot mode they are all portrayed as being smaller than Hound, Jazz and so on.

Taking them in isolation and on their own merits, you can't beat Warpath for a quality toy of that size. Totally believable as a robot that could work in real life. On the other hand, Brawn makes no sense. He can't reach anything with those arms, nor maintain his balance and walk on those legs. As characters, Bumblebee is probably the Transformer who has made the greatest contribution to TF lore relative to his size.

Martin

[The Doctor]

I love them with all my heart. Especially Seaspray, my first TF. Long since lost, really must pick up a replacement at some point.

-Ralph

[grahamthomson]

Jan 11, 2010 18:32:56 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

However, it does annoy me now that they aren't to scale. If I were doing it from scratch, I'd have Bumblebee and Beachcomber as Mini Autobots, but Seaspray and Powerglide as giant-size ones - as illustrated by Graham in the last issue of Hubris.

[Stomski]

Seaspray was one of my first too. I agree with Warpath as being excellent for a toy his size given the era.

[Shockprowl]

Mini-Autobots were fab, I had/have loads of 'em. Great little toys. I loved that feature in Hubris, 'bout the size comparisons.

[Nigel]

The 1985 Mini Autobots are some of my favourite Transformers. I can't even really say what it is I like about them. I guess it's just that those were the toys that were around when I started, though they do have really good-looking character model sheets for the cartoons/comics and their storyline in the comic probably helped cement their place in my affections.

I was fortunate enough to have all of the Mini Autobots, with the exception of Cliffjumper. In fact, I think I still don't have him, though I do have the keyring version from a few years ago and also the red Bumblebee, which I believe was released on both Bumblebee and Cliffjumper cards.

Looking purely at the toys and not the comics/cartoons and the tie-in merchandise that supported the brand, I think Mini Autobots probably did more than any others in the range to establish and popularise the brand, with the possible exception of Optimus Prime. They were easily accessible, being the cheapest and presumably most readily available type; they were quick and simple to transform, a key part of play in my opinion; they were robust; and it was clear what they were supposed to be in both modes, epitomising the "robots in disguise" theme. (Okay, perhaps some of the robot designs don't look great or lack detail but it is clear that they are robots.)

[Nigel]

This week, let's discuss SPECIAL TEAMS (including the few teams released in the following couple of years that weren't marketed as Special Teams but combined in the same manner).

[Grand Moff Muffin]

So, just to be clear, you mean Aerialbots, Protectobots, Stunticons, Combaticons, Technobots, Terrorcons and Seacons, and their recolours, but no other combining teams?

Martin

[Nigel]

Aye. Technically, the recolours aren't Special Teams but I don't think we need to be stringent.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

They were lazy in terms of design. No cleverness to the way they combined, and they made the Mini Autobots' scale problems seem like minor quibbles.

I used to have all four of the 1986 Special Teams, but got bored of them, and the Constructicons beside them on the shelf made them look bad by comparison, so I gave them all away. I'll be keeping the Constructicons.

Of all the Special Teams, I have most time for the Seacons (most of which I've never owned), because they are colour-matched, aren't supposed to turn into real-size fish disguises and so have no problems with scale, and they look absolutely terrific in the Masterforce cartoon series. The Pirranacon combination sequence is probably my favourite transformation sequence in any TF cartoon series.

The Seacons also actually filled a vacant story niche - in the comics, as the Decepticons' undersea operatives (Enemy Action, Club Con), in the cartoons, as the Decepticons' army of cannon-fodder monster troops. Most of the other Special Teams were more clumsily introduced, shoe-horning them in to satisfy the toy-selling requirements of Hasbro and shunting decent existing characters out of the way in the process.

Martin

[Bogatan]

The fact that my first 5 transformers (between bday in sept and xmas) were Defensor means I'll always have a soft spot for them.

They were simple, but made for good toys. Theres a good reason why so many still turn up at car boots compared to earlier toys, they didn't break. As a kid I could really throw them around.

I liked the Arielbots uniformity and found it odd that the Stunticons strayed away from the same uniformity. Dragstrip being back to front and two had the flip out legs, two pull down legs.

Then the Protectorbots and Combaticons with themed sets brought more of a mix to the range. Sadly most of the smaller figures lacked great looking robot modes. I think Brawl and 3 of the Ariealbots (not Slingshot) look really good. The Stunticons and Slingshot are solid but a bit boring. The rest are at best flawed.

Also the areielbots were using ball and socket joints years before the rest of the line.

Andy

[legios]

For me the Special Teams will always be the Aerialbots, Protectobots, Stunticons and Combaticons alone, but then I tend to treat "Special Teams" as a specific subset of larger group - the "Scramble City" or "Second Generation technology" combiner teams.

I have a reaction of two halves to them. On the one hand I really like the idea - "team of robots that combine to make bigger robot". Looked at from a child's perspective it is a candidate for "bestest thing ever". They are still a bunch of transforming robots but they can team up and make a even bigger robot that can smash the baddies/goodies even harder because it is ginormous. In terms of play value it is a brilliant idea.

Looked at from an adult perspective the execution of it in the Scramble City types is a little bit lacking. The indivdual members tend to have humanoid modes that are painfully limited in terms of articulation - they have shoulders and that is your lot and are all very samey looking in humanoid mode.

The scale thing is extremely pronounced in the individual team members as well. When you have Skydive and Air Raid, an F-15 and an F-16, having their alt-modes the same size or even more egregiously Blast-Off and Swindle - a Shuttle Orbiter and an M1A1 - my brain tend to find it a little off-putting. It is funny, I find the scale thing annoys me with the SC combiners much more than it does with regular Transformers. I'm not sure why, maybe because they are more closely tied together psychologically by virtue of sharing a tight sub-group?

The Second Gen combiners are something that the child in me rather likes. The idea of combining mecha is fun (unless they happen to be Go-Lion/Voltron, in which case it is dull) and it adds an extra play feature that makes them special compared to their contemporaries. On the other hand the adult in me, who is less concerned with them as actual toys finds them bit lacklustre and not as aesthetically pleasing as they might be.

Sadly I never owned a complete SC combiner when I was a child. If I did I would probably still own one. As it is I have had several pass through my hand over the years but currently I don't think I have a single Special Team member to my name.

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jan 18, 2010 22:37:06 GMT legios said:

When you have Skydive and Air Raid, an F-15 and an F-16, having their alt-modes the same size

Er... yeah.





Yeah, that's what bothered me, not the motorbike the same size a helicopter, no.

Martin

[legios]

Jan 19, 2010 6:25:38 GMT Grand Moff Muffin said:

Jan 18, 2010 22:37:06 GMT legios said:

When you have Skydive and Air Raid, an F-15 and an F-16, having their alt-modes the same size

Er... yeah.





Yeah, that's what bothered me, not the motorbike the same size a helicopter, no.

Martin

What can I say, it is the _little_ things that annoy me sometimes.... :-)

Karl

[The Doctor]

Never had a complete team as a kid, so the combining thing really didn't register with me so I just treated them like my other Transformer toys. Really liked Motormaster, Brawl, Blast-off, Onslaught and Drag Strip. Don't recall having any other Special Teams blokes.

-Ralph

[grahamthomson]

I have a real soft spot for the Special Teams.

I am sure they were the genesis for a collector mentality in most Transformers-liking kids, especially having them numbered.

(I'm just glad the rest of the Transformers weren't numbered like they were in Japan.)

[Bogatan]

As I said Defensor was my first transformer and at some point my brother got the Superion giftset, but after that we never collected them as teams to be completed. Menasausr was made up of some second hand toys and the classic reissue. One original figure might have been bought. Bruticus was entirely classic, by which time I had stopped getting any other toy lines except some turtles and WWF so I was able to get a lot more toys. Plus the parents by then got that I really liked them and wan't just going to get bored off them one day. We never came close to completing the other teams though. I got Hungrr, Matt got Snaptrap and we each got one small technobot, I got strafe and Matt Afterburn, well the bike one.

So I guess Hasbros attempt to push the collect them all thing by introducing teams wasn't totally successful.

The latter three teams were probably better than the first 4, scale really want an issue and the leaders were better, but the small bots still rather sucked too often. The Sea and Terrorcons really were shocking to me when I finally got my hands on most of them in the last year.

Its a shame the the concept has only been revistied by the reuse of the combaticons and Seacons. Energons attempt just was wrong. I'd love to see some scout class figures possible homages to the original figures that had the little connectors built in so they could be attached to original team leaders or better include connection points to voyager class figures, not a whole lot different than fitting minicon ports really.

Andy

[blueshift]

Jan 19, 2010 9:01:20 GMT Bogatan said:

So I guess Hasbros attempt to push the collect them all thing by introducing teams wasn't totally successful.

Oh boy oh boy, it was for me! I collected all of Superion and Menasor, week by week going to ASDA.

I also miss toys being available forever, or at least it seems that they were. Actually I probably don't miss it at all, it is just nostalgia talking

[grahamthomson]

Back then, toys still weren't available for long enough for my limited pocket money.

I had all the Aerialbots, Stunticons and Combaticons. Then Streetwise was my only Protectobot I managed to get before everything was replaced by Headmasters et al. I got as far as Strafe before everything disappeared again in 1988.

Thanks to "Enemy Action", I got Seawing that same day, and that was the only Seacon I got.

God Neptune is the only "version" of the Seacons I currently have. I love the colours.

[Kingoji]

I was pretty lucky in that I was given the gift sets of Superion and Menasor one birthday, and prior to that the Devastator one.
The scale issue has never really bothered me. As an adult, naturally I can see that a police motorbike roughly the same size as a space shuttle is a little daft to say the least, but I really couldn't care less. This is, after all, the toyline which had a robot which became a semi-cab be smaller than one which became a personal cassette player, to say nothing of the minibots and later on the 'cities' and Micromasters. Scale and TransFormers don't work, simple as. I've always been of the mind to just enjoy them for what they are. Maybe the fact that my other great childhood love, the Godzilla movies, had scale issues which make the ones in TF look like nothing made me a little more leniant to the whole thing.
Anyway, aside from the afforementioned gift sets, I can only recall owning the following individual team-members; Onslaught, Nosecone and Nautilator. my brother never got any gift sets, but he accumulated Hun-Grr, Blot, Seawing, First Aid, Streetwise and Groove, from what I remember. I couldn't tell you why, but back then I was always most fond of the Stunticons. These days, my favourites are the Terrorcons, despite still not owning a single one.

[Bogatan]

I never really got pocket money growing up so never had the chance to save up for toys on a regular basis. My collection was built up in September (my birthday), Christmas, Easter and the summer which had matts birthday and a holiday. One UK one abrouad, till 1990 we went to Spain or similar, were I never saw transformers and from 90 to the US where TF was ending but our camping trips or family visits always brought a good haul.

So I imagine, the toys on the shelves would change between those periods so usually I would only get one or two from any line up. Mum and Dad would see one headmaster and a target master as better than 2 headmasters I think.

Andy

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Re: the scale thing. I think my problem with it is that Transformers are so clever in the way they rearrange the bits and pieces of a vehicle to form a robot, without making inconvenient bits disappear or appear in order to work work. (OK, not true, fists and weapons sometimes have to be added on, but that's due to limitations of the toy - you can pretend they were hidden folded up inside somewhere.) This cleverness just jars completely with the concept of magically changing size. If you can magically change size, why bother with all the clever rearrangement of parts? Why not just magic yourself from a car that doesn't have any robot bits in it into a robot that doesn't have any car bits in it? There's just a technology mismatch between the way TFs transform their shapes - without creating or destroying parts of their bodies - and the way they change size at the same time.

So, credit to the live-action movies, which do better than any other version of TFs when it comes to mass conservation and proper consideration of vehicle sizes in robot mode.

Martin

[Philip Ayres]

We had Brawl & Onslaught but that was it. Years later (94 - so probably one of the Chinese issues) I hauled a Menasor giftset. At some point I've owened all 4 of the original Special teams, the BWII God Neptune and CR Baldigus plus parts of the Technobots & Terrorcons.

The evoloution of the designs is interesting - Superion and Menasor aren't that good but Onslaught & Defensor are much better proportioned. Computron & Abominus improve further with Pirranicon being the pinacle of the design with colour co-ordination, third modes and a team member serving as a weapon.

Kinoji - where did you get a Devastator box from ? I'm assuming you weren't in the UK at the time. I know I rejoiced when the Constructicons finally showed up in Woolworths in '89 and beg/borrowed the money for all 6 of them at once.

[Nigel]

Jan 18, 2010 22:03:48 GMT Bogatan said:

Theres a good reason why so many still turn up at car boots compared to earlier toys, they didn't break.

I think the Classic releases accounts for a large part of that availability, too. There are ways to tell the releases apart if you know what to look for. Actually, there are a surprising number of variants within the Special Teams, both within and across the original and Classic releases: metal/plastic chests, with/without rubsign indent, country of origin stamps, gold/silver chest on Groove, peg/no peg on Blast Off's hands to hold the nosecone together, probably others that I can't think of off the top of my head. I was about to link to the excellent Fred's Complete Transformers Variants Page but found that evil Yahoo has recently closed Geocities.

I had all the Stunticons for my seventh birthday, February 1986 - separate versions, not a box set. I occurs to me that, as I had only been introduced to Transformers at Christmas 1985, my Decepticon army consisted then only of Thrust and the Stunticons, up against Optimus Prime, Grimlock and possibly Mini Autobots. That would have been the only time my Decepticons outnumbered my Autobots. The baddies would still have lost.

I had Streetwise and First Aid on separate caravan holidays (and promptly lost Streetwise's pistol, the only accessory I've ever lost) and got Fireflight from the Weetabix promotion, which I seem to remember was at some point between the original and Classic releases, but I could be wrong.

Those eight were the sum of the originals I had from new. In time I picked up more from car boot sales including a complete Blast Off. I had Classic Onslaught and Hot Spot one Christmas, buying Brawl and Vortex out of my Christmas money to complete Bruticus. Superion would be "completed" with a half-price Generation 2 Silverbolt from Woolworths.

[Philip Ayres]

Fred's was on Geocities as well ? $#!+ that's bad news. This is The latest version on the Wayback machine

I've just recieved a Takara 5 combiner. But it's not a TF ......

[Nigel]

Thanks for the link. I was right, there are more variants than I mentioned, a lot more: web.archive.org/web/20071113135028/www.geocities.com/futuristgroup/vgestault.html

[grahamthomson]

Consider the "Special Teams" page on here: www.allspark.com/content/view/6139/37/ (It's the JPEG file "g", I didn't want to hot link.)

Did anyone else ever do this with their Special Teams?

[Philip Ayres]

for lack of pieces, yes.

I keepmeaning to buy all 4 brawl variants to make an all Brawl combiner

[Nigel]

I think it was a case of never the twain shall meet for me - and the limbs had to be in the "proper" places, too. I did connect the Autobots to Metroplex, though.