The Taxonomy of Toy-Based Fiction, or a further look at Continuity Families

[LordGigaIce]

It seems like, with regards to G1 at least, there needs to be that "crashed on earth and lay dormant for millennia" that Beast Wars can neatly slot into to truly be a G1 continuity, as all the different variations are still basically telling the same story with Beast Wars/Beast Machines as an endpoint.

Versions like IDW seem like they should be splintered off as separate continuity families, as they are using the same characters but telling very different stories (with very different endpoints when they get to them).

I was always against breaking stuff like IDW off from G1 because you look at it and it's clearly G1-inspired and rooted. Had Skybound started its G1 continuity by having the 'bots and 'cons get here in the present I'd never think twice about it.
Skybound stuck very faithfully to the classic G1 origins though, and it got me thinking about Devil's Due, Dreamwave, and IDW... and yeah. IDW, of the major G1 comic continuities, is the only one to disregard the "stasis on the crashed Ark until reawakened" backstory.
So... maybe it is its own thing. What makes IDW "more" G1 than Cyberverse for example? Or EarthSpark? If it just comes down to connivence for the Wiki... that's all well and good but I think that needs to acknowledged. Splitting IDW1 off as its own continuity would be a headache for Wiki regulars and I'm by no means suggesting they have to do it.
But if it's "fan convenience" then... it's fan convenience.

Though, would you say the same about the Unicron Trilogy's three disparate designs for its characters? The

I think that in that case it just comes down to the narrative. Energon is very clearly a sequel to Armada. And even characters like Demolisher, Cyclonus, and Tidal Wave start Energon in new deco'd versions of their Armada bodies (available at your local retailer!). Megs too, if we count the petrified outline of his Armada body before his rebirth.
I've always argued that Cybertron as a show makes more sense and is all around more enjoyable if you treat it like its own thing and don't worry about connecting it to Armada and Energon, but Hasbro insists it's a sequel so... yeah it makes sense to treat it as part of the same continuity. Even if the show actively fights you on it

notable things about each of them that make them stand out from all the other Skywarps, Swoops, Cosmoses, Ravages, and Frenzys in the brand's many continuities, merging them all with their G1 male namesakes would likely make them all stand out less as their own unique character versions unto themselves.

My personal take is if that Shockwave can be a loyal Megatron loyalist in one version of G1 and a cold, logical tactician who overthrows Megatron because logic demands it in another version of G1 then Frenzy being female in one version of G1 when the character is usually depicted as male isn't that wild an idea.
At the same time if enough people feel differently then... eh it's not a hill I'm willing to die on.

In fairness, Rescue Bots wasn't supposed to be part of Aligned. It was the people who made the show that decided to make it part of the same continuity as Prime, due to both shows being made by most of the same crew and airing alongside each other on the same channel. Rik Alvarez was pretty miffed about Rescue Bots being added in at the time (but boohoo on him because Rescue Bots is the best part of Aligned!).

Full disclosure, I think Rik Alvarez is sort of a tool so who cares what he wants?

You're right, Rescue Bots wasn't intended to be part of it but it still ended up being part of it. And it added a third widely different art style to Aligned. This time making it so that characters looked different in contemporarily existing stories depending on what show they were in. And Aligned would ding art style #4 before the end with RiD '15.

I'd argue that while there are stylistic changes between A/E/C they are all consistently "G1 through a 2000s anime filter." Aligned meanwhile goes from detailed and gritty G1 inspired (High Moon) to stylized and sleek movie inspired (Prime) to Duplo-esque kid friendly (RB) to this sort of stylized cartoony style (RiD '15).

The Highmoon guys talk at length about how G1 was their starting point after all. But Hasbro just chucked the games into Aligned continuity for reasons.

In other words, the inmates have taken over the asylum. With practically everything we get nowadays feeling closer to G1 than all the things that deliberately tried to distance and disassociate themselves from G1 during Archer's tenure, the once reliable system of continuity families isn't as clean as it used to be.

I suppose my hottest take here is that I'm not a huge fan of Archer myself and prefer the directions taken since his departure. He's not like Rik Alvarez where I go "oh hey that guy's kinda a tool." By all accounts Archer seems like a nice guy and he did great things with the brand. Armada remains one of my favourite "eras" of Transformers.

But... I gotta be honest. There are so many cool things we've gotten that I as a fan love since he's left that I gotta admit... I'm happy it all happened as it did.

So if getting figures I've always wanted is the price for this confusion then I'm down with it I guess

I think we still need the term or something like it, for all the reasons it made sense in the first place. I'd keep the trend of treating new kid lines as new continuity families until convincingly shown otherwise. Cyberverse is one. Earthspark is one.

Generally speaking I can get behind this approach.

But yeah. When I started my first post here I wanted to talk about how Aligned fudged so much trying to make disparate outings feel connected but I ended up talking myself into "IDW should probably be its own thing"

 

[CoffeeHorse]

We already have the framework to handle Aligned. It's a continuity family, not a singular continuity no matter how hard you squint. Something like the High Moon games happened in Prime's backstory, but not the High Moon games. Something like Prime is happening during Rescue Bots, but not Prime. Something like Prime happened before RID, but not quite Prime.

 

[Sabrblade]

You're right, Rescue Bots wasn't intended to be part of it but it still ended up being part of it. And it added a third widely different art style to Aligned. This time making it so that characters looked different in contemporarily existing stories depending on what show they were in.

And with Rescue Bots's four seasons taking place concurrent to all three seasons of Prime and the first season of RID 2015, its depiction of Optimus and Bumblebee meant that the bodies they had in all three shows were actually the same body just viewed through a different lens.

In other words, these three are all the same body:

And these three are the same body:

 

[NovaSaber]

Assuming we stick with the prevailing view of counting IDW as part of the G1 continuity family, the definition that fits how the term is generally used (with regard to major continuities and their tie-ins, anyway) is something like this.

A continuity family is
1. at least one major piece of screen fiction +
2. other major fiction that anyone official ever falsely said were the same continuity +
3. anything else that's in continuity with that fiction, obviously +
4. any comics based on the same character designs +
5. any micro-continuities based on the same character designs

But I'd probably prefer it if people agreed on the one below (which would exclude IDW from the G1 family).

A continuity family should be
1. at least one major piece of fiction +
2. other major fiction that anyone official said was in the same continuity without contradicting the actual story +
3. anything else that's in continuity with that fiction, obviously +
4. other major fiction based on the same character designs that also have sufficient narrative similarity +
5. any micro-continuities based on the same character designs



Actually, maybe we should just take the "taxonomy" in this thread's title literally and have multiple layers of classification. Related "continuity families" can be a "continuity order", branching continuities are different "species" in the same "continuity genus", etc.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I'd prefer to keep the definition loose. Hasbro almost certainly doesn't have an exact system we can deduce from any evidence. It's all contrived by us for our own convenience. So I prefer the freedom to just go with whatever seems to make the most sense in each case.

 

[Sabrblade]

From watching the Hasbro Pulse livestreams and reading designer commentaries posted to Instagram, I get the feeling that the likes of Evan, Mark, and BMac seem to understand the fandom's interpretation of character and continuity better than most other Hasbro higher ups, as they have referenced reading the wiki a few times and have been willing to make continuity-specific versions of certain characters like the Marvel-based Comic Edition figures, two different capsules of prewar figures based on two different G1 continuities (the cartoon-based "War Dawn" two-packs and the IDW1-based prewar two-packs + Nova Prime, which together gave us not one, not two, but three different Orion Pax toys based on different continuities), and even a Tarn mold whose every use has been based on a continuity-specific version of either him or Bludgeon (IDW1 Tarn, IDW2 Bludgeon, IDW1 "Stormbringer" Bludgeon, and Cyberverse Tarn).

 

[CoffeeHorse]

The current team really cares. It's great.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Actually, maybe we should just take the "taxonomy" in this thread's title literally and have multiple layers of classification.

No thanks. Like I said in my first post, it mostly comes down to vibes. And that's not a bad thing.
The transtech universal stream cluster system was a nightmare and thank G-d it's been rendered obsolete, imo. We don't need to replace it with more made up rules, especially when the existing generally accepted continuities don't conform to a single rule set themselves.

The current team really cares. It's great.

Another reason I adore the post-Archer years.

There's something endearing about the fact that someone whose job it is to lay out official figure decos made the same mistake thanks to a Wiki reference that a fan would make with fan art.

Like Hasbro's TF team being nerds who read the Wiki is kinda adorable the same way you can't help but go "oh TakaraTomy you scamps" when they colour some figure wrong based on footage from faded G1 laserdisc scans no one in the office has updated.

But now, in the post-Aligned era of the brand? It's the opposite, with all corners of the brand now embracing the looks and vibes of 1980s G1 more than it ever did, thanks to the new people in charge at Hasbro being way bigger nostalgia geeks than Aaron Archer ever was. In other words, the inmates have taken over the asylum. With practically everything we get nowadays feeling closer to G1 than all the things that deliberately tried to distance and disassociate themselves from G1 during Archer's tenure, the once reliable system of continuity families isn't as clean as it used to be.

Another thing comes to mind and I swear I didn't grave dig this thread to crap on Aaron Archer, as I think he's probably a really nice guy.

But I'm not sure this is entirely fair, even if it's accurate. Allow me to explain.

The whole point of Aligned- which was an Archer and Alvarez baby- was to streamline and standardize not just Transformers lore but designs, design concepts, and universe building. The Binder of Revelations was written to be the definitive guide for TF lore and even featured its own version of "evergreen" control art.

My theory on the matter is that Hasbro execs liked the idea of one of their flagship properties having a consistent backstory and character and character designs and Aligned was the first crack at it.
It wasn't the overall concept they eventually got tired of, but how Archer managed it- unable to reign in a show that's production had gotten ridiculously expensive, an under delivering toyline, and paying his buddy with no practical experience in toy design or engineering a salary to codify story.

Post Archer and Alvarez- and post Aligned- the same tactic was approached again, but differently. Instead of some new continuity trying to pick parts of G1, the Bayverse, and assorted other bits to build a grand and new continuity the new approach (~2015 or so) be striped down.

G1 would be leaned into as the "base," with new "evergreen" control art being commissioned that leaned closer to the G1 baseline. New shows like Cyberverse and ES would use that as a reference point but instead of trying to tie them directly to some grand continuity they were left alone to do their own thing provided they stayed within the bounds of Hasbro's character designs and directives regarding target audiences.

In the end mostly the same results were achieved- Hasbro's most prominent Transformers characters got consistent "evergreen" designs that kept them recognizable across multiple continuities and properties, multiple toylines that leaned into a shared backstory (Prime Wars, WfC, Legacy), and shows that featured those designs and characters done at a fraction of what it cost to make Aligned's centrepiece, Prime.

This open ended approach to accomplish the same goal is far more flexible than Aligned's attempt. Alvarez had to fight with creators to adhere to the Binder of Revelations when they wanted to do their own thing. Now that level of micromanaging isn't necessary. Shows can chart their own path, even introduce their own lore or expand on neglected lore, so long as the evergreen core of the franchise is retained.

So while things have homogenized post-Archer and post-Aligned I don't think that's fair to put on Archer's successors. It would still have been homogenized had Aligned worked the way Archer and Alvarez intended. It's just that they got a bit too ambitious trying to force a unified vision of the brand on all of its disparate parts whereas their successors took a light touch approach, and mostly pulled it off.

But either way the brand was going to be streamlined in some form, and that makes sense.
Transformers went from Hasbro's second choice to make into a movie, only getting the green light when the board thought a GI Joe movie might be too politically charged after 9/11, to being their flagship property. The various continuities and offshoots and aesthetics wasn't appealing to suits who wanted it be recognizable and streamlined in a way that new fans could just hop on with and not get bogged down with all of these separate continuities. Just tell the kid who Optimus Prime is so he wants the toy!

 

[Sabrblade]

The transtech universal stream cluster system was a nightmare

Sadly yes, but primarily because of how misused, misunderstood, and misinterpreted it was, with people constantly asking the Ask Vector Prime Facebook what universe XYZ character was from, in an attempt to net more stream designations, when that wasn't how the system was supposed to work at all.

The whole point of Aligned- which was an Archer and Alvarez baby- was to streamline and standardize not just Transformers lore but designs, design concepts, and universe building. The Binder of Revelations was written to be the definitive guide for TF lore and even featured its own version of "evergreen" control art.

In light of what all that control art looked like, I bet most are glad that we don't live in a world where, say, Sideswipe's "evergreen" design that all Sideswipes are derived from looks like this:

 

[LordGigaIce]

In light of what all that control art looked like, I bet most are glad that we don't live in a world where, say, Sideswipe's "evergreen" design that all Sideswipes are derived from looks like this:

I think that's the issue I have with the "always forward never back" approach. Making Sideswipe evocative of his Bayverse design certainly isn't backwards looking (or wasn't at the time) but it's probably best for the brand long term that Sideswipe generally leans a bit more into his classic look.

I don't think looking backwards all the time is the answer either- and I think the current team gets that, as you said they're not afraid to give us multiple flavours of Orion Pax- but the past is a part of the franchise, and contains a lot of roads that resonate with a lot of people. Be it Geewuners, kids who grew up with Beasties, or the UT, etc...

Just going "we're never looking back ever" gives you tunnel vision and doesn't let you explore EVERYTHING you could.
And it ends up tricking you into thinking Sideswipe having wheel feet is a good idea

 

[lastmaximal]

Wee already have the framework to handle Aligned. It's a continuity family, not a singular continuity no matter how hard you squint. Something like the High Moon games happened in Prime's backstory, but not the High Moon games. Something like Prime is happening during Rescue Bots, but not Prime. Something like Prime happened before RID, but not quite Prime.

Frankly, even at the time, it was clear that Aligned having One True Story or whatever was an interesting idea, but in practice would always be a fool's errand given the sheer spread of the brand's story and product arms, and the lack of incentive or reason for Hasbro to allow anyone to set and police such strict limits. (And honestly, how much less fun such a storyverse actually is.) And my reaction to all the stuff Alvarez has said about it is "you really didn't see this coming?" It was always going to be a continuity family rather than a hard singular story.

Could have just continued what the brand has done since fotever, embracing variety rather than desperately trying to throw floodwater out a bucket at a time. And then the club had to do an entire story basically adapting the real-world decision to unalign Aligned and undo the singularity business; to see them take time away from telling their other stories to basically do a big meta fix fix was as wearisome as it was fascinating.

On another note, I will say I miss the Archer direction of "let's move forward from G1". I also wouldn't change how the brand and toys have gone (if anything, if i could travel back in time is just have myself spend less on the 2000s era of CHUG and save that money for later, but I like that that era exists, and there were some real standout designs from then), but I really miss the variety of having, say, G1-oriented Classics/Generations existing alongside Movie stuff and a kid mainline that was entirely distinct in design and story from G1 (Earthspark did have quite a bit of that feel, but whatever follows that may stem from One is probably going to diverge quite a bit less.)

 

[Sabrblade]

Just going "we're never looking back ever" gives you tunnel vision and doesn't let you explore EVERYTHING you could.

I feel like a lot of that wasn't just the fact that Archer wasn't a big fan of G1, but also that he mostly saw the brand as being for kids above all else and thus was constantly trying to innovate and reboot the brand in order to grab new kid audiences. He seemed to feel that kids of the 2000s wouldn't care about stuff from the 1980s, so we got attitudes from him like "It makes no sense for us to make Soundwave a tape player again since kids today don't know what a tape player even is," or "Perceptor needs to be a vehicle instead of a microscope because kids don't want to play with something that makes them think of schoolwork," and such.

There was also a time where the extra realism of the movies clouded a lot of creative thinking at Hasbro, which is why things like the Dinobots didn't appear in the films until after Archer's tenure, due to the belief of "Giant mechanical dinosaurs make for terrible disguises, which is what the Autobots strive for in the movies."

 

[LordGigaIce]

There was also a time where the extra realism of the movies clouded a lot of creative thinking at Hasbro, which is why things like the Dinobots didn't appear in the films until after Archer's tenure, due to the belief of "Giant mechanical dinosaurs make for terrible disguises, which is what the Autobots strive for in the movies."

Oh yeah. "Powerglide needs to be light tan because a red A10 would be silly" stuff like that.
And ultimately when Hasbro finally got over trying to impose movie realism on the Classics-Universe-Generations stuff... I can't speak for everyone but it landed for me. My old Universe '08 Powerglide was sold years ago. My CW Powerglide, meanwhile, is still on my shelf. All I ever really needed out of the guy.

I feel like a lot of that wasn't just the fact that Archer wasn't a big fan of G1, but also that he mostly saw the brand as being for kids above all else and thus was constantly trying to innovate and reboot the brand in order to grab new kid audiences. He seemed to feel that kids of the 2000s wouldn't care about stuff from the 1980s, so we got attitudes from him like "It makes no sense for us to make Soundwave a tape player again since kids today don't know what a tape player even is," or "Perceptor needs to be a vehicle instead of a microscope because kids don't want to play with something that makes them think of schoolwork," and such.

I can't blame Archer for thinking like that, and he was probably right at one point. A lot changed though.

Stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy, Stranger Things, and a variety of superhero movies leaning on the gimmick of "set in the 80s" brought stuff like tape players back into public consciousness. Kids recognize what these things are even if they don't use them.

The second thing is that while adult collectors were a small portion of the brand's consumer base in the late 2000s/early 2010s the rise of video games and tablets and smart phones have meant that more and more kids just don't opt for physical toys. At least not as much as past generations of kids did. Meaning that the adult collector market has become a bigger force in the overall marketplace.
Probably not big enough to eclipse kids as the primary consumers, but that shift plus the new awareness for stuff from the 80s in pop culture in general suddenly made stuff like "tapedeck Blaster and Soundwave" viable at retail.

 

[lastmaximal]

Otherwise known as "Ultimate G1", in the same vein as how Marvel's "Ultimate Marvel" was to Earth-616.

I vaguely remember this term being thrown around when IDW G1 was new, but I never liked it. It's like calling all toothpaste Colgate or something.

And I don't really think it's endured as a term, especially now that the Ultimate brand and universe, still new enough at the time that it was a handy shorthand, is now itself a dated thing. I haven't heard anyone use Ultimate as shorthand for a reboot (or a specific type of reboot) in literally a decade plus. This is partly because the reboots the stories (IDW and otherwise) have had since then has made it easier to decouple the idea of "storytelling reboot" from "Ultimate".

 

[LordGigaIce]

I remember Blizzard using Marvel Ultimates as a shorthand to explain the 2016 live action Warcraft universe in relation to the main game timeline.

Might have even meant something if that movie didn't land like a fart in church at the box office

 

[Sabrblade]

Oh yeah. "Powerglide needs to be light tan because a red A10 would be silly" stuff like that.

Yeah. That's why he was an Ultra, too. Cuz "A10s aren't tiny." That toy was a definite victim of the movieverse mindset.

And yet, during the same time, the same Hasbro team gave us the bizarre Primal Prime-colored Universe Leo Prime.

And ultimately when Hasbro finally got over trying to impose movie realism on the Classics-Universe-Generations stuff... I can't speak for everyone but it landed for me. My old Universe '08 Powerglide was sold years ago. My CW Powerglide, meanwhile, is still on my shelf. All I ever really needed out of the guy.

Funnily enough, when DOTM gave us the Cyberverse Commander class Powerglide, I remember people practically ate up that figure.

 

[lastmaximal]

That Cyberverse one was a really cool figure. I still want to track down the green redeco.

 

[Sabrblade]

That Cyberverse one was a really cool figure. I still want to track down the green redeco.

I picked one up a few years ago at the final RoboCon. His colors look like Beast Wars Sky Shadow.

 

[LordGigaIce]

That Cyberverse one was a really cool figure. I still want to track down the green redeco.

I still have the red DotM Powerglide. He got replaced by CW Powerglide but I can't bring myself to get rid of him, even if he's stuck in storage. He was the last Transformer I ever bought at the Real Canadian Superstore and that, perhaps dumbly, means something to me.
I always wanted the green one though, so I could have a version of the mould to stand in as Powerglide's non-conformist cousin....Wingbolt or something

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

I am just so happy that I could kickstart a topical conversation here.

Anyway, had to add a bit regarding the structure we currently have, if a bit neglected.

Sadly yes, but primarily because of how misused, misunderstood, and misinterpreted [the cluster/stream system] was, with people constantly asking the Ask Vector Prime Facebook what universe XYZ character was from, in an attempt to net more stream designations, when that wasn't how the system was supposed to work at all.

I don't claim to be among the smartest of the fandom -- if I was, I'd have known better about whom to trust 26 years ago, for example -- but the explanation given regarding how stream designations were handed out on the Wiki itself didn't seem so hard that I couldn't come up with stream codes (unaided) for the IDW 2021 BW comic, the Sector Seven ARG, the World's Worst Fanfiction, and even our own universe.

I've spoken to Jim Sorenson maybe twice on Discord, and aside from his pointing out that the Transtech likely wouldn't be interested in charting non-Transformer inhabited universes (and considering how many Transformer inhabited universes there must be, that stands to reason. It also keeps us from duplicating Marvel or Memory Alpha's own work), my unofficial efforts seem to be meeting with acceptance if not full endorsement.

(That being said, I did come up with this as a thought experiment, as the cluster name was pre-existing.)

However, as I've pointed out elsewhere on this thread, the "pillar" realities don't really need to be remembered by stream identifiers, and most fans likely won't. The stream system has been good for systematizing the micro-to-medium sized story universes, as well as keeping "distinct" variations on a larger theme (Wings Universe vs. Sunbow-G1, for example). Is it possible that those pillars might be rearranged to provide a new method of organizing Transformers Fiction? I had long held that RiD 2001 wasn't big enough to be a whole cluster, might IDW-2005-G1 be big enough to be split?

Any system we pick will be somewhat arbitrary, but we have some guideposts at least, whether we keep the existing system or create a new one.