Transformers Legacy toyline

[Echowarrior]

Well, fortune smiled on me today. I found Tow-Line at a Target! Also, Cloudcover arrived in the mail, and it looks like Laser Cycle is on the way. Yay!

And getting back in line with recent posts...Armada had some neat toys. Gimmicky toys, but neat toys. I'm glad we're getting modern updates for them, and wouldn't complain if we got one for Scavenger.

 

[Haywire]

Right now, in a room full of Transformers from across all Generations, Haywire3 (who will be 5 on Friday!) will grab Armada Megatron and a couple Minicons to play with out of all of them. The Armada figs were great toys!

I wouldn't mind an update of Scavenger (one with actual feet), but they'd have to keep the working tank tread arms, and I don't think that's happening any time soon. What we really need is a new Armada Smokescreen!

 

[Princess Viola]

Right now, in a room full of Transformers from across all Generations, Haywire3 (who will be 5 on Friday!) will grab Armada Megatron and a couple Minicons to play with out of all of them. The Armada figs were great toys!

I wouldn't mind an update of Scavenger (one with actual feet), but they'd have to keep the working tank tread arms, and I don't think that's happening any time soon. What we really need is a new Armada Smokescreen!

why do we need a new armada smokescreen, you can probably still find the original warming pegs somewhere

 

[CoffeeHorse]

A new Scavenger could be cool. I'd be happy ditching working treads for greater long term durability. The original treads have held up surprisingly well, but I don't trust today's materials to be as good.

 

[Haywire]

why do we need a new armada smokescreen, you can probably still find the original warming pegs somewhere

Oddly enough, after I posted, I dug this gem out of storage...working winch, head that moves with the boom, flip out missile launcher; Megatron may have lost his place as favorite tonight...

 

[ZacWilliam1]

What is really impressive about Armada in the modern context is they are largely simple enough for a kid to TF easy, full of fun gimmicks and really really thick blocky and solid/durable by modern standards.

Todays kids aimed figures sometimes, sometimes, still get the gimmicks, but they're almost always either complicated to get modern poseability and/or thin-plasticed and fragile feeling for budgetary reasons.


-ZacWilliam, I could give a kid most Armada figures with no worry about breakage on a level unmatched by modern stuff.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

I think Armada is probably the most "Fun and Best Kid Friendly" TF Toy Line. The toys aren't the most poseable or adult collector friendly but they are the most fun to play with and for a kid, and Armada Megatron despite the lack of leg articulation may be the most fun TF ever with a great look and so many play gimmicks.

The Cartoon? It's not good writing or acting wise. I got married maybe a dozen episodes in and didn't have cable at our first apartment so never got to see the rest. I've owned the box set for years now, I've tried to watch through at least three times. I have yet to make it through the first half.


-ZacWilliam, the concepts and characters in the toon are not bad I WANT to like it, but the writing is dull and generally just kinda dumb/bad and the poor acting/directing doesn't do it any favors.

The Unicron trilogy (or those Samurai combiner abominations for TF Prime "Go!") seemed to be TT's final stab at competing with Bandai's sentai ranges of toys via the Transformers brand. After that, they aimed themselves at collectors in their CHUG and MP lines and used other, localised robot toys (tomy car/train bots, etc) to complete in that market?

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

The Cartoon? It's not good writing or acting wise. I got married maybe a dozen episodes in and didn't have cable at our first apartment so never got to see the rest. I've owned the box set for years now, I've tried to watch through at least three times. I have yet to make it through the first half.


-ZacWilliam, the concepts and characters in the toon are not bad I WANT to like it, but the writing is dull and generally just kinda dumb/bad and the poor acting/directing doesn't do it any favors.

I'll always advocate for the back half. I'd say if you haven't made it there already, skip to where Thrust first shows up and go from there, or just on to the second half entirely. (I personally really liked Jetfire's debut, his first combination with Optimus, and the debut of Tidal Wave, if I was to pick and choose from the first half.)

If nothing else, it has one of the best Optimus vs. Megatron/Galvatron fights of the entire franchise, I think. I used to rate it as THE best, but... we've had a lot since then. I'd need to rewatch and reevaluate the rest.

You can even find videos where they just cut the other stuff happening around it, and focus on the fight.

I'm also going to say that Armada and Energon were going when my friends and I started doing the RPG that my Mega Man Legends stories are based on. That fact is... not entirely insignificant, let's say. And the two are kind of tied together in my mind as well.

...come to think of it, it's funny we get the new Armada toys in Legacy around the same time I rebooted that story. Certainly puts me in a mind of wanting that new Optimus even more, though!

 

[Shadewing]

I always felt Armada started to get good around the 13 episode mark, once the Star Sabre is completed. The stuff before that was mostly world building, but after that we started getting the threads of on going plot.

 

[Sciflyer]

I remember sticking with the first 8 or 10 episodes but kind of falling off afterward. I still picked up the toys that I liked, since they were my main focus, but maybe I will give the rest of the series a watch at some point.

I agree that there was/is a lot to like about Armada. I recall being a little bit disappointed/put off at first by the lack of articulation, especially coming off the heels of the Beast Era and Car Robots / RID. But the toys were just engineered so well and were so much fun, that I didn't mind after a while. I would love updates of Red Alert, Demolisher, and Cyclonus, in particular.

 

[Lobjob]

I'll always pine for Armada and the rest of the Unicron trilogy. Literally the only downside for the toyline is "knees", but guys like Scavenger don't need knees.

If the show had been dubbed and translated properly i'm sure it would have been fine, because that second half is good. Their execution in the shows leave a lot to be desired, but the stuff Aaron Archer and the rest of the team came up with concept wise was super ambitious and expansive.

Sometimes i get nostalgic for psuedo homages or the naming philosophy of calling someone Smokescreen who looks nothing like the first guy to have that name.

 

[Blot]

I always preferred a toy that moved over one that didn't, so even if I was the right age for Armada, I probably still would have ignored it.

 

[The Predaking]

I can't rewatch Prime. It's so self-serious and dreary. And Animated rubbed me the wrong way when it was out and nothing's really done much to change my mind on it.

Prime has a lot going for it though.

Spoiler

That end of season 1 arc when you find that Unicron is Earth! Freaking crazy idea at the time!
Optimus losing his memory and joining up with his friend Megatronus.
3 Actual character deaths before we get to the end, not to mention the zombiefication of several of them.
Wreckers! We get wreckers for the first time!
The best Soundwave since G1.
Probably the best Starscream that we will ever get.
Bumblebee's first words are FREAKING EPIC!

A lot of folks didn't like animated, but it has some great things going too.

Spoiler

The Freaking Ark, that we have been seeing the entire show, gets magically repaired, and suddenly transforms into Omega Supreme!
"Decepticons! Transform and rise up!"
A competent Starscream that actually takes out Megatron himself and leads the Decepticons.
The main crew are just some no bodies, has-beens, and wash-outs on a back water world.
Freaking Tick chin!
Introduces some now staple characters.
Davd Kaye kills it as Optimus Prime!

 

[The Predaking]

Cloudcover has arrived! Just need to find the G2 Lasercycle in the wild now.

 

[The Predaking]

I don't mind a slow pace. I would argue that Armada's second half had more impact because that slow (even, tedious, perhaps) first half lulled us into complacency. Nobody expected it to escalate like that.

It looks better and better every time something else has Unicron show up too quickly.

Slow pace is one thing, but Armada was ridiculously slow. So much time between actual dialog and plot.

*Shudders*

 

[The Predaking]

I bought most of the Armada line and regret having done so. Ginmicks over quality. I'm glad we're finally getting better figures although omitting the Minicons for dinner if these releases was a bad idea.

I got pretty much all of it too, skipping a lot of the Minicon repaints, and now I just let my kids play with them, but they want my TFs.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

I got pretty much all of it too, skipping a lot of the Minicon repaints, and now I just let my kids play with them, but they want my TFs.

I got most of the Japanese and American micron repaints but I also gave away some microns and regret it now.

 

[Shadewing]

Prime has a lot going for it though.

Spoiler

That end of season 1 arc when you find that Unicron is Earth! Freaking crazy idea at the time!
Optimus losing his memory and joining up with his friend Megatronus.
3 Actual character deaths before we get to the end, not to mention the zombiefication of several of them.
Wreckers! We get wreckers for the first time!
The best Soundwave since G1.
Probably the best Starscream that we will ever get.
Bumblebee's first words are FREAKING EPIC!

Too bad Prime wastes all its time trying to make every moment seem as epic as epically possible to the point its bland and boring as **** until Smokescreen shows up.

 

[Dake]

I always said TFP had some of the best characters to date, in some of the most boring situations. With the exception of Prime himself, nearly everyone was fantastic in that show.

 

[lastmaximal]

I kind of wrote Armada off after the first third or so, just coming back for a few key episodes and the finale. Energon same thing. As much for the quality issues as for the difficulty at the time of obtaining copies of the shows, which didn't air locally. It just got to be too much work for too little enjoyment.

Don't really feel like I missed out on that much, partly because I followed the TOYLINES with rapt interest. Armada was a lot of fun ideas and sculpts that really invited the imagination (because the toys themselves would do one thing really well, and not the rest). Energon gave me clear plastic weapons and spark crystals and lots of inventiveness. And Cybertron is still that rarified peak of "a little of everything, including a sharp dose of new" that many lines since then haven't really delivered, for my tastes.

That trilogy just gives me so much good nostalgia I can't bring myself to drop many of the figures from the lines all these years later.