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

[Sabrblade]

The way people were misusing the system was that so many who latched onto it thought that each and every stream designation denoted a single unique universe. Yet, the Japanese dub of the G1 cartoon's first two seasons, The Headmasters cartoon, the Masterforce cartoon, the Japanese dub of Beast Wars season 1, and the Beast Wars II cartoon all received separate stream designations of their own. Does that mean that each one is their own individual universe? Judging by how the people who misused the system thought, it would seem so.

But they're actually all part of the same shared universe, existing at different points on that universe's timeline. That's how the system was supposed to work. The streams denoted individual points in time on a particular universe's timeline, meaning multiple streams could exist within a single universe. Greg Sepelak (who created the system) likened it to how each timeline is a river whose different parts are like streams of water weaving and flowing into each other, sometimes even branching out from and joining back into the main river. But the misusers instead treated each stream as if they were whole rivers unto themselves.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Again, I'm not throwing shade on those who enjoyed the stream system... I'm just being realistic. Already Cyberverse and EarthSpark don't fit into the system given that they are considered unique continuities. And any fan-made system is just that... fan made. I don't see Hasbro working to maintain the system. FunPub was arguably ready to shut it down even if they kept the licence.

TuxedoPrime is right, anything we fans decide is arbitrary... but the stream system only really worked because it was official material, and now no one on the official end is maintaining it. The further away we get from FunPub losing the licence the more and more continuities will spring up that can't be placed into it.

So rather than focus on the universal streams I'd rather discuss the quirks of continuity families, why some continuities are lumped together and others separate, etc... there's a lot of interesting stuff to discuss there- both about Transformers as a franchise and ourselves as fans of it- as opposed to going "it's still good! it's still good!" over a categorizing system that no one working on the brand in an official capacity is actually maintaining.

 

[Sabrblade]

Again, I'm not throwing shade on those who enjoyed the stream system... I'm just being realistic. Already Cyberverse and EarthSpark don't fit into the system given that they are considered unique continuities. And any fan-made system is just that... fan made. I don't see Hasbro working to maintain the system. FunPub was arguably ready to shut it down even if they kept the licence.

TuxedoPrime is right, anything we fans decide is arbitrary... but the stream system only really worked because it was official material, and now no one on the official end is maintaining it. The further away we get from FunPub losing the licence the more and more continuities will spring up that can't be placed into it.

And it wasn't even supposed to be taken so seriously, either. It was supposed to be someting akin to Star Trek technobabble, quantum gobbledygook that only the TransTechs cared about because they're so far above all other lifeforms, and to which lower lifeforms (like ourselves) don't give a darn. But then Hirofumi Ichikawa started using it in Alternity fiction, and the AllSpark Almanacs used it too. And sadly, fandoms gonna fandom. Even I'm guilty of having drunk the Kool-Aid back then.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

The way people were misusing the system was that so many who latched onto it thought that each and every stream designation denoted a single unique universe.

They can.... but as you point out, that isn't a universally applicable rule. (So to speak.)

Going back to my Star Wars example, Lukas 577.25 Delta (feature films), Lukas 197.31 Delta (Special Edition re-releases), and Lukas 904.21 Delta (DVD re-releases) could be considered virtually identical timestreams that run seperately, differing on some minor cosmetic and continuity points. I opted to describe them as being in quantum superposition "occupying" the same domain simultaneously.

Yet, the Japanese dub of the G1 cartoon's first two seasons, The Headmasters cartoon, the Masterforce cartoon, the Japanese dub of Beast Wars season 1, and the Beast Wars II cartoon all received separate stream designations of their own. Does that mean that each one is their own individual universe? Judging by how the people who misused the system thought, it would seem so.

But they're actually all part of the same shared universe, existing at different points on that universe's timeline.

I'm not saying anything new, but Toei-G1 and Marvel-G1 were basically mirror images of each other in how they treated spacetime and how they were understood in the context of same.

Marvel-G1 spawned a bunch of contradictory splinter futures (with the in-multiverse explanation that Unicron's destruction in 1991 warped the spacetime framework that universe was in). Toei-G1, by contrast, became the Katamari Damacy (AVP blamed MegaZarak for this, not all agree) of Transformers fiction, throwing just about everything in.

I think (though I didn't have a front row seat for this) the many stream codes of the latter were to denote media (series, manga, radio play) as well as provide possible jump points (going from Headmasters cartoon to Masterforce manga, for example), and if needed provide a possible "exit hatch" if Takara were to create G1 fiction that was in a new continuity. As we know, that last didn't really happen (EDIT: save for Alternity, which had its own finale event/removal from the multiversal suite).

That's how the system was supposed to work. The streams denoted individual points in time on a particular universe's timeline, meaning multiple streams could exist within a single universe. Greg Sepelak (who created the system) likened it to how each timeline is a river whose different parts are like streams of water weaving and flowing into each other, sometimes even branching out from and joining back into the main river. But the misusers instead treated each stream as if they were whole rivers unto themselves.

Which, again, is why I feel the system worked best (or perhaps, was understood best) for those smaller story universes. Toei-G1 is, and I'll give Sayori a break today , Not At All a small story universe, but rather the Test Cases of all Test Cases. Is it unfair to judge the stream system by how well or poorly we understood it in relation to that Hojoni of a storyline? Perhaps, but how Toei-G1 (and our understanding of it) fared in the scheme of things does remain instructive.

 

[NovaSaber]

The only part of the stream system that was even related to continuity (the cluster names) was literally just an in-universe name for the continuity families the wiki was already using.

And that's one of the reasons the stream system was terrible for what people wanted to use it for; the designations were that long and clunky while containing almost no meaningful information. (Type of media and publication date tell us nothing about plot, setting, or relation to other stories.)
They told us nothing about how one stream was related to another besides all-or-nothing inclusion in one of a small number of equal-leveled categories.

That's why I think that the only way it can make any sense to be systematic at all is to add more nuance and complexity to the only part that actually means anything relevant to what the system is being used for.

 

[Blot]

Denton J Tipton I now understand you.

 

[lastmaximal]

The only part of the stream system that was even related to continuity (the cluster names) was literally just an in-universe name for the continuity families the wiki was already using.

I was and am intrigued by it, but even at the time I as puzzled by how much it was blowing up. It's literally "here's where it's from" and a specific way of writing the date and category of release... All information that already exists on a thing's wiki page, except now it's in a new and apparently super cool code.

As the in-story thing it was made for (iirc), it's a pretty neat device, but on the level of fandom most conversations about it or using it deteriorate to "Oh yeah? Well I can say THIS in Dothraki" to me.

This is just reinforced by what Sabr and Tuxedo mention about fans besieging Ask Vector Prime (which is a whole other thing I got soured on in part) about this stream code and that. I doubt it's (entirely) because they "couldn't" do it themselves, and would venture that it's due at least in part to fishing for that to come from this official source (and to squeeze out a bit of technically-canon story bits along with it). "What stream is this instruction booklet in?" "Why, it's from Yomomma 202.¥1.Alpha, a stream where Optimus Prime fell in love with a bowl of oatmeal for 4 million years."

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

TuxedoPrime is right, anything we fans decide is arbitrary... but the stream system only really worked because it was official material, and now no one on the official end is maintaining it. The further away we get from FunPub losing the licence the more and more continuities will spring up that can't be placed into it.

I mean, the current Neo-G1 and Legacy pushes are sort of keeping it going, but then you have something like BotBots....

So rather than focus on the universal streams I'd rather discuss the quirks of continuity families, why some continuities are lumped together and others separate, etc... there's a lot of interesting stuff to discuss there- both about Transformers as a franchise and ourselves as fans of it- as opposed to going "it's still good! it's still good!" over a categorizing system that no one working on the brand in an official capacity is actually maintaining.

My initial concern, back in '22, was more that TFWiki and related not-official-but-with-clout groups were treating the system as an Old Shame, and I couldn't fathom why.

But if we can come up with something less contingent on the maintenance or approval of Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing (who will pretty much take the stance of "All Canon is Canon"), well, I'm interested. As a wise man put it: "I like to stick with what I know, unless I find something better."

(And that's not even getting into the built in Y72 flaw -- should the Transformers brand last so long as to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Diaclone.

I mean, I think the odds are good....)

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

This is just reinforced by what Sabr and Tuxedo mention about fans besieging Ask Vector Prime (which is a whole other thing I got soured on in part) about this stream code and that. I doubt it's (entirely) because they "couldn't" do it themselves, and would venture that it's due at least in part to fishing for that to come from this official source (and to squeeze out a bit of technically-canon story bits along with it).

Star Wars fandom had a similar thing, which is (thanks to a helpful talk show host) how we got "Conan Antonio Motti" as the full name of the Rear Admiral choked by Vader in A New Hope. He was one of the few remaining prominent Imperials to not have a full name, Conan O'Brien asked about him, George Lucas gave a (likely somewhat joking/flattering) answer, and off to Wookieepedia we went, because if George Himself said it, It's Canon!!1!

You can probably guess how we got the planet "Stewjon".

"What stream is this instruction booklet in?" "Why, it's from Yomomma 202.¥1.Alpha, a stream where Optimus Prime fell in love with a bowl of oatmeal for 4 million years."

You've pretty much described the typical Q and A when Sideways had control of the column. Cy-Kill also recruited some mechs hailing from "Aurex something something" to bolster the Renegade ranks during his stint in Axiom Nexus, if memory serves.

 

[lastmaximal]

I was being facetious in summing up what the general vibe was; I recall Sideways deliberately sounding like this, but even with Vector Prime himself hosting it got exhausting when people kept fishing for stuff they could then race to add to the wiki. "Aha! This obscure toy based on Rhinox is named Snugglenips and he fought noted animation error Obscuro Maximus on the Whogivesa Dam, depicted in this 1991 commercial that only ran in Italy."

Like, sure, democratizing the generation of and contribution to canon can be great, but this was not it.

Sorry to have taken this into the AVP tangent I was trying to avoid; this isn't even really about cataloguing the canon anymore so I'll drop it now.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Give me control of AVP 2.0 for one day. I'll make two declarations.

1. Anything declared by AVP 1.0 is null and void.

2. Allspark Almanac Easter eggs don't count for anything but Animated.

I will refuse to elaborate, close AVP 2.0, and leave.

 

[LordGigaIce]

And it wasn't even supposed to be taken so seriously, either. It was supposed to be someting akin to Star Trek technobabble, quantum gobbledygook that only the TransTechs cared about because they're so far above all other lifeforms, and to which lower lifeforms (like ourselves) don't give a darn. But then Hirofumi Ichikawa started using it in Alternity fiction, and the AllSpark Almanacs used it too. And sadly, fandoms gonna fandom. Even I'm guilty of having drunk the Kool-Aid back then.

On one hand I don't blame fans for doing what they did- it's in fandom's nature as a collective to latch onto stuff like this, even if the creators never intended it to be used that way.

I wouldn't even have an issue so much with it being used as a categorizing system (alongside a more straightforward grouping of continuities) if you had someone maintaining it, but we don't. Even Sorensen, who seemed to delight in pulling these streams out of you know where doesn't touch the subject in official media he works on these days.

My initial concern, back in '22, was more that TFWiki and related not-official-but-with-clout groups were treating the system as an Old Shame, and I couldn't fathom why.

I think it's a confluence of factors. The fist is that it is a bit tricky to get a handle on if you're new. Imagine being a 14-15 year old fan today just getting into the online fandom and suddenly all of this pseudo Latin is being tossed at you.
Wikis are community driven projects, and communities thrive when they're replenished by new blood. Otherwise they stagnate and slowly die. And I think maybe the Wiki's over-reliance on the system for a while may have created an unnecessary barrier of entry to new fans who may have been interested in taking part.
That's why I said I don't mind the idea of the system continuing if someone were officially maintaining it, but only so long as it didn't totally overshadow standard stuff like just saying "G1" or "Animated" or "EarthSpark."

I'd guess the second issue is probably due to more than a few FP employees speaking out now that they no longer have the licence about how they never intended the system to be used like the fandom ended up using it. Word of G-d as the TV Tropes people say.

Related, I think AVP ended up annoying people. Between fans fishing to have their head canon be made "official" and the people behind it using it to make the Wiki categorize their fanfiction as official. The stream system was some collateral damage with the general annoyance towards AVP.

Finally, I think it's what I've been saying. Whatever virtues or flaws it may have had, it's ultimately not about any of it. It's about the system having no active maintenance and no way to deal with stuff that cropped up after the FP licence expired.

I mean, the current Neo-G1 and Legacy pushes are sort of keeping it going, but then you have something like BotBots....

BotBots, Cyberverse, EarthSpark. The list will only keep growing. Time marches on and it waits for none of us. Every new continuity will be another mainstream iteration of the franchise the stream system can't categorize.

But if we can come up with something less contingent on the maintenance or approval of Hasbro Consumer Products Licensing (who will pretty much take the stance of "All Canon is Canon"), well, I'm interested. As a wise man put it: "I like to stick with what I know, unless I find something better."

The problem is the beast we know died and is lying in a ditch. It may have "rules" to allow for further categorizing stuff in continuities that were established when it was being maintained, but again. BotBots. Cyberverse. EarthSpark. And EarthSpark is ending. Something else will replace it. And then it will lead to something else...
There is no one maintaining the system to name these new universes, these new streams. And there likely never will be. It was a system that depended on constant updates, and that died when FP's licence ended.

My solution is a rather elegant one. We just use the terms we've always used.
G1. Beast Era. Unicron Trilogy. Movie. Animated. Aligned. etc...

It doesn't need to be maintained either. Something new comes up you just... refer to it.

Now I know. You said the stream system wasn't for these tentpole terms but more specific continuities. But even then... we had terms for those.
Marvel G1. Marvel G1 UK. Sunbow G1. Japanese G1. Armada anime. Armada comics. Dreamwave G1. IDW1. IDW2.

I suppose you could go deeper still... but I will posit a question.

Do we need to, as a collective fandom, waste time trying to Weekend at Bernie's the stream system just so we have something technical to refer to the Frito-Lay poster continuity?

 

[Princess Viola]

Do we need to, as a collective fandom, waste time trying to Weekend at Bernie's the stream system just so we have something technical to refer to the Frito-Lay poster continuity?

wouldn't be a fandom if we didn't do stupid bullshit like it tbh

 

[lastmaximal]

I second everything from that last LordGigaIce post on this. I think feeling that people treat the stream system as an "old shame" may be projecting a little bit, and may be coming from value attached to the thing rather than the thing itself (or the behavior itself).

Really, it's just as likely the pendulum swinging away from something that it swung toward at one time. As it does.

It was new, it was interesting, it was useful for some purposes. But the audience and the audience's need shifted, as is natural, and as with anything involving language, the tendency is toward utility, accessibility, and simplicity. Yes, I know the stream system checks these boxes for you and others; point is, it doesn't for these people. To someone who's coming to it fully formed rather than being around to form an attachment to it as it was being developed, it may just be extra homework-- it's an additional layer of stuff to know, it's potentially pretentious, and it's ultimately not as informative as a result.

So it makes sense that newer audiences, and even a portion of the returning audience, would eventually go "why do I need this entire serial number-like thing to refer to 'When Continents Collide', that G1 cassette story?" and just not bother getting into the weeds. Especially because skipping it is one less thing to learn just so you can start or join the conversation.

I suppose if there's any shame to be attached to it, it's not in the system itself but in the behavior and atmosphere that came up around it. And even then it's not "shame", just "boy, we sure did sink so much time and energy into that, huh. Oh well, no need for that anymore".

As much of a fool's errand as it can be, building boxes around concepts is just how we become able to study them. But then the concepts grow and break out of the box, partly because that's what art does. But then we build new boxes to study THAT. I think that's what drew ME to it; ooh, new jargon, new categories, new stuff.

It's just that at some point people kind of realized that with these concepts and these boxes in particular, we might have been creating (essentially) busywork that doesn't really add the value we thought it did. Which is what, to an outsider, that whole Iocus thing felt like. I mean really, an entire catch-all cluster for "ancillary merch lines"? Never mind that they then "hilariously" named it after the word for joke, this just seemed like coming up with something just because people would ask about it. It's pretty telling that the wiki then backed off of it, but to have even thought it necessary...

 

[Blot]

2. Allspark Almanac Easter eggs don't count for anything but Animated.

Hey we all know everyone loves when you use Easter Eggs to subversively hide secret coded messages on Transformers products. Power of the Primes Jazz was the talk of the town when he came out because of his!

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

There's certainly a lot to consider here.... enough to invoke the multi-quote function!

First, a confession:

wouldn't be a fandom if we didn't do stupid bullshit like it tbh

As the fan who came up with the add-ons to make a designation like "Quadwal [1.38e10.0] Theta" to refer to our own universe (not to be confused with TFWiki's Quadwal -3975.925 Theta, which is a negative polarity version), I must admit that stupid BS is likely my speciality (he said in amused self-deprecation).

It was new, it was interesting, it was useful for some purposes. But the audience and the audience's need shifted, as is natural, and as with anything involving language, the tendency is toward utility, accessibility, and simplicity. Yes, I know the stream system checks these boxes for you and others; point is, it doesn't for these people. To someone who's coming to it fully formed rather than being around to form an attachment to it as it was being developed, it may just be extra homework-- it's an additional layer of stuff to know, it's potentially pretentious, and it's ultimately not as informative as a result. [Emphasis mine]

One complaint about the stream scheme I do find quite valid is that the Marvel-G1 splinter futures, because they are catalogued by launch date, are.... not closely aligned in any list of Primax Streams. "A Distant time and Place" wasn't too far from Generation 2, but Classics and Regeneration One had significant gaps between each other and the earlier stories (to say nothing of Primax 984.0 Gamma itself)....

So it makes sense that newer audiences, and even a portion of the returning audience, would eventually go "why do I need this entire serial number-like thing to refer to 'When Continents Collide', that G1 cassette story?" and just not bother getting into the weeds. Especially because skipping it is one less thing to learn just so you can start or join the conversation.

I mean, it was genuinely nice to learn what happened to the Transformers (and Sub-Atlanticans) in the G.I. Joe cartoon's alternate-universe story, or that there was a name to the Giant Soldier half-remembered in a rapid-cut commercial until Juniper Walters proved that he actually existed. Though I suppose that ties into the whole "Vector Prime just dropped new lore! TO THE WIKI! It's CANON, BITCHES!!!ONE!!" craze that at least some in fandom are hungover-and-all-cross about.

It's just that at some point people kind of realized that with these concepts and these boxes in particular, we might have been creating (essentially) busywork that doesn't really add the value we thought it did. Which is what, to an outsider, that whole Iocus thing felt like. I mean really, an entire catch-all cluster for "ancillary merch lines"? Never mind that they then "hilariously" named it after the word for joke, this just seemed like coming up with something just because people would ask about it. It's pretty telling that the wiki then backed off of it, but to have even thought it necessary...

That one was either a missed opportunity (to define the "evergreen" lines, which started with ancillary merch, IIRC) or a deliberate creation of a top-level "wastebasket taxon". And one should never set out to create a wastebasket taxon....

[That said, I did use the cluster to place the fanfiction "Twotone and the Very Peculiar Fish" (Iocus 500.31 Zeta?), because... well, because it was so damn weird and out-of place. It barely felt like a Transformers story, if you take my meaning. But again, we have a top-level wastebasket when we arguably shouldn't need it. How many uncertain streams are there, really? (Besides the aforemention fic and Botbots.)]

Hey we all know everyone loves when you use Easter Eggs to subversively hide secret coded messages on Transformers products. Power of the Primes Jazz was the talk of the town when he came out because of his!

I was thinking of Universe (2008) Onslaught, myself.

Anyway, for all that, here's what I think the main point is:

As much of a fool's errand as it can be, building boxes around concepts is just how we become able to study them. But then the concepts grow and break out of the box, partly because that's what art does. But then we build new boxes to study THAT. I think that's what drew ME to it; ooh, new jargon, new categories, new stuff.

And we likely will need a new -- or at least heavily revised -- system. Probably the easiest thing to do is look at the pillars and broad strokes of franchises, and see what micro-continuities fall where. As for IDW-2005-G1, while it is a pillar in its own right (alongside Marvel, Sunbow and Toei) it would be impractical to split it out. Even the fact that it anchors a "Hasbroverse" is not quite that unique (Sunbow did the same if with fewer Crossover Crises, and it looks like the live action films will merge G.I. Joe. And then there's Skybound....). That said, subfamilies (as I suggested with RiD 2001) might be the way to go there.

It'll be a long effort with little thanks, and I'm not exactly the most convincing of fans. I quote the wiki:

Hasbro itself, meanwhile, has never particularly considered there to be strong divisions between "versions" of the Transformers brand, particularly since the departure of individuals strongly invested in the mechanics of the fictional multiverse; indeed, when asked in 2017, brand manager John Warden indicated that he didn't consider Generation 1 Optimus to be separate from Armada Optimus, or even from Ginrai![1] This, of course, makes sense for a large corporation like Hasbro — they're here to make toys of Optimus Prime for kids to enjoy, not to worry about whether they fit into imagined categories; and, when not looked at from a wiki organization perspective, Sunbow Optimus isn't meaningfully more different from Armada Optimus than he is from Marvel Optimus or from IDW Optimus.

(But seriously, John, Ginrai?)

But I think it's worth bouncing some ideas around. Hopefully I'll have a sketch soon.

 

[lastmaximal]

One complaint about the stream scheme I do find quite valid is that the Marvel-G1 splinter futures, because they are catalogued by launch date, are.... not closely aligned in any list of Primax Streams. "A Distant time and Place" wasn't too far from Generation 2, but Classics and Regeneration One had significant gaps between each other and the earlier stories (to say nothing of Primax 984.0 Gamma itself)....

Funny enough, this looks like a problem that only exists BECAUSE of the stream system.

I mean, it was genuinely nice to learn what happened to the Transformers (and Sub-Atlanticans) in the G.I. Joe cartoon's alternate-universe story, or that there was a name to the Giant Soldier half-remembered in a rapid-cut commercial until Juniper Walters proved that he actually existed. Though I suppose that ties into the whole "Vector Prime just dropped new lore! TO THE WIKI! It's CANON, BITCHES!!!ONE!!" craze that at least some in fandom are hungover-and-all-cross about.

That's just it though. Prior to AVP we HAD a whole way to approach "what happened to __" -- fan fiction. And for a long time everyone was content with that. But the thin veneer of canonicity and legitimacy AVP lent to what was essentially fan fiction (some of it more polished than others) was clearly too tempting to ignore.

The constant fishing for ideas to be canonized (and thus between AVP and the wiki get twice the dopamine hit) was likewise constantly (thinly) defended with "it's nice to learn ___" (see above) and "I'm only fanonizing this obscure microcontinuity, does that bother you?", which is both cringe and missing the actual point.

What would be nice to learn is, say, what G2 Solarbot was supposed to be, and it would make sense to learn that from (more) unearthed production documents from that era. Not "learn what it was" from Vector Prime telling an alliterative asker about it being a digital egg timer that gained sentience in Hoobajoob 993.1 Dada.

Sigh. I keep going back to this after I said I would, and I apologize. It's kind of difficult to discuss the stream system and the wiki without also shading into what AVP and things like the Almanacs (I love easter eggs and lore ideas, but miss me with that entire "so this is canon right" mess) did to it.

That one was either a missed opportunity (to define the "evergreen" lines, which started with ancillary merch, IIRC) or a deliberate creation of a top-level "wastebasket taxon". And one should never set out to create a wastebasket taxon....

That does reinforce that it was a miss. Was there a pressing NEED to define the evergreen lines? A need that didn't come from the system itself (we made all these boxes, we can't just let this go unboxed)? There certainly wasn't one for a catch-all "and this stream is where Everything Else goes".

 

[Cybersnark]

Sounds like the real problem is less the streams than AVP.

Personally, I prefer streams to define a multiverse, as opposed to what Marvel and DC do --"Earth-16" is utterly meaningless unless you already know which one that is, whereas "Primax 514.3 Gamma" at least gives you an anchor and some context (it's a G1-inspired comic book published on May 3, 2014).

 

[LordGigaIce]

What would be nice to learn is, say, what G2 Solarbot was supposed to be, and it would make sense to learn that from (more) unearthed production documents from that era. Not "learn what it was" from Vector Prime telling an alliterative asker about it being a digital egg timer that gained sentience in Hoobajoob 993.1 Dada.

This. Genuinely interesting stuff comes out now and then when old drafts of scripts are found, or old material some long time Hasbro employee has been storing in their garage comes out or even just someone at Hasbro going through their own archives and going "this is neat."

Like... I REALLY want to know about Hyperdrive. I want to know about the toy that never was, if there were any packaging samples or additional art mockups. It looks like a really fun toy design and I'd love to know more about what went into it before it was cancelled, and why it was cancelled. I'm sure that info is skulking around somewhere, and I'd love to learn.
But Jim Sorensen/AVP telling me he exists in some meaningless technobabble continuity that only exists on Skyquake's Megavisor slide tells me nothing. Nothing actually meaningful is told. Just that someone's flimsy one-still image centric fanfic got a special universe stream because apparently that's what we do now.

Sounds like the real problem is less the streams than AVP.

Personally, I prefer streams to define a multiverse, as opposed to what Marvel and DC do --"Earth-16" is utterly meaningless unless you already know which one that is, whereas "Primax 514.3 Gamma" at least gives you an anchor and some context (it's a G1-inspired comic book published on May 3, 2014).

To a degree, and I even called the streams collateral damage over a general annoyance with AVP (which the wiki perpetuated, btw, they could have just said "no").
Still, I have two objections to your premise.

The first is that "Primax 514.3 Gamma" only functions as an anchor if you know what "Primax" and "Gamma" mean in this context, and know how to parse "514.3" as a dating system (I've always used DD/MM/YY, Americans like MM/DD/YY, MM/YY/DD seems counter-intuitive to both). Essentially you're asking new fans who may just wanna learn about the franchise to learn a bunch of technobabble to participate. It creates an unnecessary barrier of entry.
This could hurt the Wiki as a community driven project by stemming the flow of new eager participants, but it could also hurt the fandom as a whole as potential new contributors just go "I just wanted to read about Optimus Prime but there was too much nonsense"

My second objection is... ok even if you know all the jargon and how it works, sure, "Primax 514.3 Gamma" is an anchor. So tell me. What's the designation for the EarthSpark cartoon?

 

[lastmaximal]

Oh a big part of "the problem is AVP" is just... me swinging back to the AVP stuff. At the core, the stream stuff alone is potentially intriguing, and as fun a for-storytelling element as, say, the Ancient Autobot alphabet.

It's mainly tiresome when it gets inflated into this... Aesthetic, almost, that's used to doll up basic facts (I contend "Earth-16" and "Yayayarst" are exactly as informative as each other, and more people can understand "G1 comic book from May 3, 1984" anyway) and lend some credence and cool vibes to essentially fanfic (which i suppose is where it intersects with AVP). There is an air of... authority from an in-character narrator who uses the jargon rather than the (more accessible) "this is a story that happened in this cereal box illustration from 1999".

And, I guess, can occasionally lead into some archiving kerfuffles, when it's not clear what the best way to proceed with something that bucks the pattern. But that's true of most systems.