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Post by Pinwig on Mar 15, 2014 8:26:19 GMT
Oh that makes sense if it was in the Eagle, I did used to get that.
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Post by Pinwig on Mar 15, 2014 10:35:17 GMT
I could be completely wrong, due to the general hatred some more irrational TF fans have towards gobots, they just aren't as well documented, and much harder (for me, at least) to find reliable information about them. I don't think I've ever had strong feelings either way about that range. I know I had a Cy-Kill at some point, but nothing more than that. I think I felt they were inferior to Transformers, mostly because my lasting memories of Robo Machines are figures like this one, which are just daft:  Reminds me of a smash robot:  Why? I don't know. Oh, now that's set me off again. I had one of those. That needs to go in the moving on regrets thread. |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 12:04:18 GMT
I could be completely wrong, due to the general hatred some more irrational TF fans have towards gobots, they just aren't as well documented, and much harder (for me, at least) to find reliable information about them. I don't think I've ever had strong feelings either way about that range. I know I had a Cy-Kill at some point, but nothing more than that. I think I felt they were inferior to Transformers, mostly because my lasting memories of Robo Machines are figures like this one, which are just daft: I dunno, on a 1v1 level for stuff released at the same time, I think Gobots wins. Guys like that are no more strange than say, Ratchet and Ironhide. The Gobots were all die-cast, all to the same scale and all quite cheap so you could easily amass a huge collection of key characters quickly, unlike Transformers. However when people think of the early Transformers they think of the Sunbow designs. The Transformer cartoon designs prioritised prettying up the sometimes ugly and strange toys, whereas the Gobots cartoon went totally toy accurate. That's what won the 'war', I think. If Gobots had been done by Sunbow and Transformers by Hanna Barbara, it would be anyone's game! |
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kayevcee
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Post by kayevcee on Mar 15, 2014 18:04:12 GMT
Bug-bite was the only super Gobot I had back in the day... until I got Super Coupar a few years later. I really liked him. I've often tried to think about why Transformers won "the war" while Gobots vanished into obscurity in most of the world. The key aspects that I can think of are: 1) Branding. Not just Transformers party supplies and bed sheets- I mean the box-back battles, the profiles and the clear differences in packaging between Autobot and Decepticon. I don't even remember seeing "Guardian" or "Renegade" written on Robo Machines packaging, but it was always clear at a glance what side any given TF toy was on. Their personality was laid out on the back and then kids could look for them in the lovingly-painted battle scene above the profile  2) Size classes. Robo machines had regular and super-sized versions of some characters, the odd novelty like Zod or Scales and a couple of giant spaceships/bases. All well and good, but TF had all sorts of options to suit pocket money and birthday-proximity- tapes and minibots, Scramble City limbs, Autobot cars, Decepticon jets, Dinobots and so on up to the occasional massive baseformer. I think that helped TF gain the upper hand. 3) (in the UK) Comics. A page a week in Eagle is great. Your own comic, with posters, badges, competitions or cover mounts nearly every week? That's a whole different ball game. Matt, you do make an interesting point on the Sunbow-vs-Hanna-Barbera designs. That could have been a factor too. -Nick |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 18:22:12 GMT
2) Size classes. Robo machines had regular and super-sized versions of some characters, the odd novelty like Zod or Scales and a couple of giant spaceships/bases. All well and good, but TF had all sorts of options to suit pocket money and birthday-proximity- tapes and minibots, Scramble City limbs, Autobot cars, Decepticon jets, Dinobots and so on up to the occasional massive baseformer. I think that helped TF gain the upper hand. See, I think that's where Gobots had the advantage. For the price of say, a Grimlock, a kid could go and buy several core Gobots characters. You could get the chief villains and good guys and have a bigger collection to play out more of the stories. Unless maybe the high price of Transformers made them more unobtainable and thus 'exciting'. |
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Post by Pinwig on Mar 15, 2014 19:03:15 GMT
3) (in the UK) Comics. A page a week in Eagle is great. Your own comic, with posters, badges, competitions or cover mounts nearly every week? That's a whole different ball game. This definitely. What drew me into Transformers was the story. Those 11 pages each fortnight completely fired my imagination. I don't even remember what the Robo Machines back story was. If that had been as a good I'd have been into them. I'm intrigued to learn here that Gobots were all die-cast. Didn't know that. Even the smaller ones? |
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Post by Toph on Mar 15, 2014 19:03:33 GMT
2) Unless maybe the high price of Transformers made them more unobtainable and thus 'exciting'. That is usually cited as a huge reason why gobots "lost" over here, though I don't know if it's real, or something more modern haters conjured up. "Only poor kids had Gobots. Gobots are K-Mart TFs." I personally don't recall ever encountering this logic back then, or ever at all until the age of message boards. One factor that is proven, is hasbro did aggressively target Gobots with their rubsign campaign. "Only REAL Transformers have these." And I think that contributed a lot to the modern disdain. On a personal lever, i think gobots kick the asses of similar priced and scaled TFs. There are very few gobots that arent better designed than minibots, and combiner limbs. Especially since the "tf counterparts" often just repeat the same designs or engineering over and over, while gobots tended to come up with lots of transformation schemes for the tiny scale. And honestly, they're still more clever than spychangers and legends/legion, which are the closest modern analog to them. Gobots usually fit with most matchbox and hotwheels scaled sets, expanding your gobot universe to epic proportions, which is something very few tfs ever did. Hell, TFs seldom ever fit their own playsets. Another strength was females. They had one who was a central character (a couple years before arcee), and at least three others who were reoccurring, and all of them had great toys, while none of them were stereotyped like "the autobot girlfriends." "We have to go back to cybertron to rescue our girlfriends, whom we never talked about before, or since." I do feel that if Gobots had gone to a better animation house than Hanna Barbara, their fate would be vastly different. I think the poor information about them, a cartoon that doesnt hold up ( neither does sunbow imo), and negatively reinforced stereotypes combined with bullying tactics by more irrational tf fans contributes to keeping gobots from resurging. Imagine what Furman could do with them in an IDW comic? |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 19:48:12 GMT
I'm intrigued to learn here that Gobots were all die-cast. Didn't know that. Even the smaller ones? Not entirely die-cast, but all the ones I had had a decent die-cast content. |
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 15, 2014 20:02:05 GMT
Enjoyed Gobots/Robo Machines back in the day. It was never as good as Transformers but had its place. Shame the line is mostly obscure these days.
-Ralph
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Post by KnightBeat on Mar 15, 2014 21:12:16 GMT
It is a pity. Most of the websites seem to have been created in the late 90s/early 2000s. It's a shame there isn't a TFWiki equivalent for this series. I only became aware of Gobots after receiving several TFs. I recall comparing the larger Leader-1 toy to Ramjet (my first TF, fact fans) and being amazed at the Gobot's build quality. I only saw smaller Gobots in the shops, which were a bit rubbish, but they were more affordable for my parents. I watched a few Gobots episodes last year and found it quite entertaining. Cy-kill's evil monologues and frustrated put-downs were reminiscent of BW Megatron in places. Edit: forgot to mention the fantastic playsets. I was envious of my friend's Guardian command center and would have killed for a TF equivalent. |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 21:36:55 GMT
I watched a few Gobots episodes last year and found it quite entertaining. Cy-kill's evil monologues and frustrated put-downs were reminiscent of BW Megatron in places. There's lots to like about the cartoon. Cy-Kill is an entertaining villain, there's a nice set-up to the show with Leader-One choosing teams for specific missions rather than everyone piling in all the time, and females who are actual characters rather than 'her personality is that she is the girl'. It's a shame the designs are so goofy and it has the Hanna Barbara production quality (or lack of). |
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Post by Toph on Mar 15, 2014 21:53:35 GMT
I loved Zod. I loved that he was uncontrollable for the renegades, and using him was basically "set the bomb and RUN" type scenario for them.
Also loved that Crasher had a crush on Leader-1.
Like I said earlier, the cartoon did bring a lot of good ideas to the plate. Though I didn't remember the "choose a team" aspect.
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 22:13:10 GMT
I would love some sort of Gobots reboot. It's a real shame that the rights are in such a mess that we'll never see one (I am of the impression Hasbro has rights to the story and names and Bandai has the likenesses? How far does that stretch I wonder, as I mean we got a Generations Crasher which is how I would see a redesign...) I would like an episode where Leader-1 has to find a way of awkwardly telling Turbo that he looks like a clown  |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 22:50:37 GMT
This has made me nostalgic so I was looking at some gobot sites. I had an Apollo Robo! Apparently that is very rare and only released in Japan.
Oh well, it went to a good home!
I remember getting it at a car boot sale though, so maybe it did get a western release somehow.
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Post by Toph on Mar 15, 2014 23:35:43 GMT
Well... We came really close to being in the Gobots fandom. Because, while it's well know Beast Wars saved transformers from dying off and becoming just another obscure toyline from the eighties.
But what isn't know is that was almost Gobots.
Kenner had just acquired Tonka, and were in the beginning phases of a full Gobots relaunch, which would have had a new toyline and cartoon.
The reason it didn't happen is because Hasbro acquired Kenner, and said "use Transformers instead."
I have no clue what they planned, but I like to ponder the possibility of Beast Wars Gobots.
As for rights, names i think are subjected to the exact same thing TFs go through. Which is why we have Leader-1, and Cop-Tur, but Decepticon Fracture instead of Crasher.
So anyone can trademark a name if no one else has it. And Hasbro trademarked Machine Robo so Bandai couldn't bring over the actual machine robo under that name, which was doing really well in japan at the time that happened.
And Hasbro has the rights to the story and concept of The Challenge of the Gobots. So, say Bandai couldn't reimagine Machine Robo as an updated Gobots.
However, likeness rights has always been something i wondered about myself. We know exact Classics style updates of gobots based on toys is not likely.
But... the cartoon also changed a lot of their appearances, giving most of them more humanish faces. So thats what makes me curious, because I see no reason I know of the cartoon designs are off limits (even though I prefer the toy designs).
So... A deluxe leader-1 that compromises. Combining his "trademark" design cues (wings on the legs, chest), with his cartoon features (head with maybe a dash of toy to make it visually more interesting?), in a largely new design. I think that's how Hasbro may approach a classics update.
Actually... Maybe they can get closer. Gen Whirl, Roadbuster, and Jetfire are all based on toys by another company. And Whirl at least is pretty accurate. So who knows?
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Post by Pinwig on Mar 15, 2014 23:47:14 GMT
My god that is complicated. A property divided between two companies like that is destined just to be ignored. The more I learn about this and read about it, the more I'm wanting to chastise my teenage self for my ambivalence. Definitely going to get hold of this new 3P Cy-Kill. What kind of rep do Unique Toys have? Mania King is one of theirs isn't he? are their toys any good?
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Post by blueshift on Mar 15, 2014 23:50:32 GMT
My god that is complicated. A property divided between two companies like that is destined just to be ignored. I think that was the idea really. Hasbro get the intellectual property rights so no-one can make a rival Gobots series. Bandai hold the likenesses hostage, but Hasbro aren't interested in that, as they don't want another nostalgia property diluting the waters. See, the likenesses thing is interesting. What exactly do they own. I mean, the Gobots designs are so awful you'd want to update them anyway. How far is far enough? Does the colour scheme matter? If they called Fracture 'Crasher' would that be going too far, or could they have done that, because the robot/deco is so far divorced from the original despite blatantly being Crasher? |
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Post by Toph on Mar 16, 2014 0:20:33 GMT
I don't think it's as complicated as that.
Fracture is intentionally an homage to Crasher, and the only reason they didnt name her that is it didn't clear legal, like a bunch of names.
Hasbro does give of the occasional gobot homage, like Crasher, Dart, and Spoons, acknowledging there is a fandom. But we don't get more, I think because of the stereotypes that tf fans hate gobots.
I don't think there's a sinister sounding agenda by hasbro that they will never make a new mold homage. Though there is an agenda to keep machine robo and others out, but that's just standard business practice.
If Hasbro thinks they can make good money off of gobots, they will.
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Post by blueshift on Mar 16, 2014 1:10:36 GMT
I don't think it's as complicated as that. Fracture is intentionally an homage to Crasher, and the only reason they didnt name her that is it didn't clear legal, like a bunch of names. Hasbro does give of the occasional gobot homage, like Crasher, Dart, and Spoons, acknowledging there is a fandom. But we don't get more, I think because of the stereotypes that tf fans hate gobots. I don't think there's a sinister sounding agenda by hasbro that they will never make a new mold homage. Though there is an agenda to keep machine robo and others out, but that's just standard business practice. If Hasbro thinks they can make good money off of gobots, they will. No no, I mean its more /can/ they. How far do Bandai's likeness rights go? |
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Post by Toph on Mar 16, 2014 2:02:58 GMT
Well, like I said, with Whirl, Roadbuster, and Jetfire now on the table, who knows what they can get away with? At one time Id think a combination of cartoon based with heavy redesign would be the only way.
But none of those are extremely different than the toys they're based on.
On a personal note, I'd like to see Hasbro bring back Isenberg and Wyatt, and recreate the Animated magic with Gobots.
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Mar 16, 2014 11:47:59 GMT
Bug-bite was the only super Gobot I had back in the day... until I got Super Coupar a few years later. I really liked him. I've often tried to think about why Transformers won "the war" while Gobots vanished into obscurity in most of the world. The key aspects that I can think of are: 3) (in the UK) Comics. A page a week in Eagle is great. Your own comic, with posters, badges, competitions or cover mounts nearly every week? That's a whole different ball game. -Nick Three pages a week in Eagle to be exact. It did also introduce us to Stron-Domez! Andy |
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Post by legios on Mar 16, 2014 13:10:57 GMT
Well, like I said, with Whirl, Roadbuster, and Jetfire now on the table, who knows what they can get away with? . Looking at the Whirl and Roadbuster does make me wonder if either Tomy or Hasbro has tossed some money at the Dorvack rights holders in return for some form of merchandise rights (where just for Western rights or for domestic ones as well). Given that Harmony Gold was able to purchase Mospeada lock-stock and barrel from Tatsunko I wouldn't be surprised if the merchandising rights for sonething like Dorvack, which came and went and has never been merchandised outside its home country didn't fall into the "petty cash" kind of realm for a Core Brand at Hasbro. Karl |
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Post by Toph on Mar 16, 2014 14:21:03 GMT
I dunno. Has it been confirmed that Takara will release Whirl in japan? If none of those molds is getting a release over there, that may speak volumes.
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chrisl
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Post by chrisl on Mar 24, 2014 10:43:58 GMT
This has made me nostalgic so I was looking at some gobot sites. I had an Apollo Robo! Apparently that is very rare and only released in Japan. Oh well, it went to a good home! I remember getting it at a car boot sale though, so maybe it did get a western release somehow. I got Apollo Robo from Asda back in 1987 so I'm shocked to find out it was only released in Japan...... |
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Post by blueshift on Mar 24, 2014 18:00:17 GMT
This has made me nostalgic so I was looking at some gobot sites. I had an Apollo Robo! Apparently that is very rare and only released in Japan. Oh well, it went to a good home! I remember getting it at a car boot sale though, so maybe it did get a western release somehow. I got Apollo Robo from Asda back in 1987 so I'm shocked to find out it was only released in Japan...... I shall send a correction to the internet's only Gobot site! |
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chrisl
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Post by chrisl on Mar 25, 2014 9:11:49 GMT
Yeah, definitely got him from Aintree Asda in November 1987 for my birthday along with Hans Cuff (sp). He was listed on the back of the card of others available at the time too.
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Post by The Doctor on Mar 26, 2014 18:22:36 GMT
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Post by Toph on Feb 6, 2015 9:42:04 GMT
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Post by Stomski on Feb 6, 2015 10:16:44 GMT
The long standing members of the forum don't want to hear about it until they do MP Rocklords.
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Post by legios on Feb 6, 2015 11:25:46 GMT
SOC stuff. Those are not going to be cheap by any means. Probably not as wallet-screamingly expensive as some of Bandai's stuff, but once you add on the costs of importing them I can see the prices smarting somewhat. (EDIT - *phew* looked into it further and they are Gokin, not SOC, so they will be a bit less screamingly expensive than I feared).
I do like some of those though - Shuttle Robo is fantastic , and I rather like that rendition of Jet Robo. (If we are really lucky these might be successful enough that they do some of the WWII inspired Machine Robos down the line, I'd love to see larger scale versions of things like the one that turned into a Hellcat).
Karl
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