Adjusted for inflation which Transformers series was cheapest to produce?

[UnicronusPrime]

Pretty much the title.

I'm watching the first episode of Armada with my son. It looks... Kinda cheap. I mostly want to know where it stands budget wise.

 

[MrBlud]

I don’t think we have any information to go on to make an assumption.

Presumably the stuff Hasbro did on its own (G1, BW, BM, Prime, Rescuebots) would have cost more than the Co-productions and/or stuff Takara took the lead on (RiDv1, AEC, Cyberverse, Earthspark)

I feel like Prime was probably the most expensive. Cheapest was likely those Machinima abortions but I can’t point to data to back either assertion up.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

Oh, I thought we were talking toy lines at first.

Hm, for cartoons...?

No idea.

 

[Sabrblade]

Pretty much the title.

I'm watching the first episode of Armada with my son. It looks... Kinda cheap. I mostly want to know where it stands budget wise.

Armada's animation was that bad looking because it had an incredibly rushed production. Cartoon Network wanted a certain number of episodes ready to air before the episodes were actually finished being made and ready for broadcast. So the early episodes of Armada were aired before the animation (and even the scripts) had been fully completed in their production by the Japanese.

Later episodes in the second half of the series look a lot better with far superior animation quality. But the first half was plagued by so many animation errors due to a heavily rushed production schedule.

 

[Steevy Maximus]

This is kind of loaded question, simply because there are a TON of criteria you could use. Are we talking JUST cartoons, or entire product lines?

Personally, all things considered, I think Hasbro probably invested the LEAST in Robots in Disguise 2001. The show was already financed by Takara, who had also already tooled and produced the toys. I’m not sure how much Hasbro put to Saban to get them to license and dub the cartoon, but I assume it couldn’t have been much since Saban ended up retaining rights for the series. Toy investment was minimal, with some minor retooling and the only new molds being a quartet of sub-basic level figures (And salvaging some leftovers from Beast Machines).

I think, for Hasbro, RiD01 ended up being the cheapest franchise entry to produce and had probably some of the better returns (excluding movie pushes).

 

[ZakuConvoy]

I mean, I feel like the original Sunbow G1 cartoon was probably made pretty cheaply, all things considered. Sunbow was known for putting out shows fast and cheap. So, I would think that show would be close to being the cheapest series Transformers has ever made. The Movie might skew that. But, if we're just talking about the cartoon series itself, it might be within the rankings.

Even cheaper than that would be the Generation 2 cartoon. But, counting that feels like cheating a bit. That show was just re-airing old G1 episodes with a new intro and framing sequence. They spared every expense! But, it kind of feels like that breaks the spirit of the question, a bit.

Transformers: Generation 2 (cartoon) - Transformers Wiki

tfwiki.net

Botbots might be down there. If only because the episodes are short and they don't have that many episodes.

But, probably the cheapest series that I can think of would be Q-Transformers. A series of Japanese flash shorts released mainly on Youtube and similar platforms.

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Q-Transformers:_Mystery_of_Convoy_Returns_(cartoon)

I'm going to guess that Q-Transformers is the series that they spent the least amount of money on in the entire franchise.

 

[LordGigaIce]

It has to be RiD '01 from Hasbro's perspective, right? A cartoon that was already made on someone else's dime and moulds they just had to import or repaint from previous lines.

 

[Sabrblade]

FWIW, the first 26-episode season of Beast Wars by itself cost $18 million in 1996 USD.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Machinima should have been pretty cheap, but then they got Mark Hamill.

 

[Sabrblade]

Machinima should have been pretty cheap, but then they got Mark Hamill.

Plus Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton, Jason David Frank, Judd Nelson, Victor Caroli, Gregg Berger, Ron Perlman, Samoa Joe, and Peter Cullen likely cost them a pretty penny, too.

 

[LordGigaIce]

FWIW, the first 26-episode season of Beast Wars by itself cost $18 million in 1996 USD.

That's still less than the per episode cost of Prime!

 

[Sabrblade]

That's still less than the per episode cost of Prime!

According to Alvarez or to the show's actual creators? Cuz the latter have rebutted the former's exaggerations, saying that Prime was not nearly as expensive as Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

 

[NovaSaber]

It's got to be Q-Transformers.
Unless you count the internet-only stuff older than the Machinima series, but even those probably cost more per-episode than Q-Transformers.

 

[LordGigaIce]

According to Alvarez or to the show's actual creators? Cuz the latter have rebutted the former's exaggerations, saying that Prime was not nearly as expensive as Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

I had no idea that the Prime creators countered Alvarez's claims.

 

[Sabrblade]

I had no idea that the Prime creators countered Alvarez's claims.

This post inspired me to go and finally make this post (over on Seibertron since we don't have a dedicated TF: Prime thread--or least, from what I could find--and the post was one of those that's way too long to fit into just one post here on The Allspark).

 

[lastmaximal]

You could make a thread! About Prime appreciation, or examining Alvarez's claims about it.

Either way thanks for this; I hadn't known about this claim or refutation either.