A trip down memory lane TF websites from the past

Anonymous X

Anonymous X

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ZakuConvoy said:
Transmasters UK can be a elusive beast. Always was. Outside of tracking down a physical copy from someone, I don't think you'll have much luck, unfortunately, but I'll add a little to your quest.

This archive of Alt.Toy.Transformers has a little bit of discussion about the interview from Simon Furman from Transforce 2000, mentioning how he saw Beast Wars as part of the comic universe, and didn't consider Beast Machines canon.

The last days of Optimus Prime by Simon Furman

groups.google.com groups.google.com



And another interview with one of the guys who ran Transforce and mentions the Transforce 2000 cover. It's apparently a redone version of Marvel's Transformers UK #1, and similar art was used in some old region 1 DVDs, but I can't find ANY images of the actual Transforce 2000 cover in question.
www.transformertoys.co.uk

Paul from Transforce in 2003 | Transformers At The Moon - www.transformertoys.co.uk

The article Paul from Transforce in 2003 was published in the category Conventions. TransForce - Paul Cannon Interview, 29th May
www.transformertoys.co.uk www.transformertoys.co.uk

There's other mentions of Transforce in Transformers At the Moon's archives. You can try your luck there.


EDIT: And I found the cover!
So, at least you should know what you're looking for.


There WAS a exclusive comic and book at Transforce 1999. But, it looks to be all about TMUK proper. Although it does have a interview with...Bench Press? Who? (More on that later)

Transforce 2002's exclusive seems to be Simon Furman's Alignment. Transforce 2001 only had the first part of Alignment, but this was both parts combined. (Transforce 2001 is ALSO where Eugenesis first released)
tformers.com

Transforce 2002 Convention Updates

Transforce 2002 is coming! Get ready for the UK's foremost Transformers convention. With all the activity around Transformers lately and Rob
tformers.com


And Transforce 2004 DEFINITELY had a collection of sorts. The Last Odyssey. Which was a fanfic collection written by a bunch of TMUK mainstays. (Also...a exclusive video game collection of Transformers themed versions of classic arcade games?)
It's not really of much interest to people who aren't familiar with TMUK, but it was probably the last hurrah for the "golden age" of TMUK. And...from the looks of the website, things went wrong, unfortunately for them.
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Wondered what happened to Transmasters UK. I think 2004-ish is when they went off my radar. (Perhaps in-fighting? Always a problem with that group.) I did have a lot of their fanzines, like a lot, but unfortunately they all ended up going in the recycling during a life crisis at some point. And there does't seem to be an actual official website with details of the 'zines and fanfics. Possibly a lot has disappeared for good there, sadly.
 

ZakuConvoy

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And there does't seem to be an actual official website with details of the 'zines and fanfics. Possibly a lot has disappeared for good there, sadly.
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Well, The Underbase is still around, though a little spotty at times. That's probably as close to a "official" source as we have.


And, technically TMUK is still around. Though, they don't really have any of the "classic" stuff from 1994-2004 on the site. Seems like they mostly want to focus on the newer stuff. Which is...fair enough, if unfortunate for those curious about the past.

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Visit our forum at: tmukhub.proboards.com
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And I HAVE found various listings of what was in the "Continued Generation 2" and other zines, from various searches through the Internet Archive. Almost none of the picture links work, anymore. Which basically just makes them annoying teases of what you're missing out on more than anything else.

And those old CDs they were sending out back in the day should still be around, somewhere. There's SOMEONE out there with a collection of some of those old 'zines sitting on a old CD collection in a box, somewhere. Who knows if it still works, given they were probably just self-burnt CDs, but some of that stuff SHOULD still exist.

And I know a lot of people who were actually a part of TMUK don't really want to talk about it and just want to move on. But, there was something special about it. And I would like to see it preserved...somehow...someway. It just feels like a shame for it all to fade away.
 
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Anonymous X

Anonymous X

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ZakuConvoy said:
Well, The Underbase is still around, though a little spotty at times. That's probably as close to a "official" source as we have.


And, technically TMUK is still around. Though, they don't really have any of the "classic" stuff from 1994-2004 on the site. Seems like they mostly want to focus on the newer stuff. Which is...fair enough, if unfortunate for those curious about the past.

Home |

Visit our forum at: tmukhub.proboards.com
tmukhub.proboards.com tmukhub.proboards.com

And I HAVE found various listings of what was in the "Continued Generation 2" and other zines, from various searches through the Internet Archive. Almost none of the picture links work, anymore. Which basically just makes them annoying teases of what you're missing out on more than anything else.

And those old CDs they were sending out back in the day should still be around, somewhere. There's SOMEONE out there with a collection of some of those old 'zines sitting on a old CD collection in a box, somewhere. Who knows if it still works, given they were probably just self-burnt CDs, but some of that stuff SHOULD still exist.

And I know a lot of people who were actually a part of TMUK don't really want to talk about it and just want to move on. But, there was something special about it. And I would like to see it preserved...somehow...someway. It just feels like a shame for it all to fade away.
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Oh true, it was pretty amazing to be aware of it during its glory days, so much constant creativity, and such passion for the Transformers mythos.

I’ll see if I have any of the CDRs, and if they still work if they do. However, I definitely have some TMUK text fanfics as HTML files on my Mac, so I could upload them as a zip file somewhere (or email them to anyone for preservation purposes – just don’t let any of them know!).
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

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You guys wanna see a doozy of a relic from the early fandom years? This old ATT thread from 2003 is just bonkers:


It starts with a wacky theory that Planet Cybertron is actually Planet Earth. But as the thread continues, it goes completely off the rails as other people proceed to debate G1/BW continuity by pulling information from many disparate sources like the early BotCon Beast Era fiction or the Japanese G1 fiction as if all of these were actually in one continuity with each other together. 🤯o_O😵🥴

And the really sad thing is, had I been online back then, I very likely would have been one of those continuity nuts debating right there along with them, thinking the same of the BotCon and Japanese fiction. 😓
 
CoffeeHorse

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Where could they have gotten that idea?

Sabrblade said:
I just found the Beast Wars page of Fox Kids's old website, and boy is its description of the show WEIRD! It reads like an old machine translation!

Imagine a long time ago, somewhere in the universe, far from the sun that would later create Earth, an essence came into existence that would birth a race of living robots known as The Transformer®. These robot tribes inhabited the planet Cybertron, a prehistoric Earth. Millenniums have passed and the descendants of world-destroying Transformers known as the Predacons have stolen the ancient artifact, which maps the location of a distant planet, rich with energy. These crystals will provide the Predacons with enough strength to complete their terrifying galactic quest - to conquer Cybertron. Our heroes, the Maximals, have followed the Predacons to Energon to protect Cybertron and the universe from all tyranny.
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Oh.
 
NovaSaber

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I remember that. Both a less detailed version of that specific theory, and the weird trend of trying to make a unified continuity that mashed together stuff from every continuity (even though it could only work by also leaving out parts of every continuity).
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

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NovaSaber said:
I remember that. Both a less detailed version of that specific theory, and the weird trend of trying to make a unified continuity that mashed together stuff from every continuity (even though it could only work by also leaving out parts of every continuity).
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I think the idea at the time was to create one master continuity for the cartoons and their related tie-in media. People seemed to understand that Marvel was its own beast, and so didn't try to merge all of it with the cartoons completely. Some elements from the comics were included, but only because Beast Wars and its related media made references to those specific elements. It was really only when RID 2001 and Armada started up that people found it too difficult to merge all the cartoons together anymore (though, there were still some theories lingering, but it all mostly died down by the time of Energon).
 
NovaSaber

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There was definitely at least one popular(?) fan timeline floating around while Beast Machines was new that merged events from Japanese cartoon and UK comic continuities (while also ignoring or recontextualizing large parts of each).
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

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NovaSaber said:
There was definitely at least one popular(?) fan timeline floating around while Beast Machines was new that merged events from Japanese cartoon and UK comic continuities (while also ignoring or recontextualizing large parts of each).
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Okay, now, finding that sounds like something that this thread was made for.
 
LBD "Nytetrayn"

LBD "Nytetrayn"

Broke the Matrix
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I hate how the internet archive doesn't archive half the important stuff.
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
NovaSaber said:
Well, I found something completely different; probably the only remaining evidence for a toyline that never happened (the pictures are gone; I'm pretty sure it was all concept art and no physical prototypes):
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Your posting this over at the TFWiki Discord led to another user doing some further investigating, which has yielded positive results in the same interview being found hosted elsewhere, complete with all of the images still intact!

 
Donocropolis

Donocropolis

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Oh man, that's some good nostalgia. I ran into Heroes of Cybertron Thundercracker randomly at a Kroger while grocery shopping. I hadn't bought any Transformers or anything since I was a kid, but picked him up on a whim. I had so much fun fiddling with it while watching television that I made a point of picking up others. Soon I was looking them up on the internet to try to find out what all was out there and where to look, which led me to see the first online pictures of Alternators Smokescreen. From there on I was hooked, and 20 years (and more dollars than I'd care to admit) later, I'm still firmly entrenched in the hobby.
 
Tuxedo Prime

Tuxedo Prime

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I didn't attend Cybcon in its physical manifestations, but its mailing list was a refuge for me in the early 2000s.
 
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