TFARCHIVE FORUMS

I can't believe that Season 4 of TF Generation 1 ended with just 3 episodes titled "The Rebirth" which concluded the whole series. Why did the writers/creators of the show did that? Why did they ended the show like that just when TF fans was getting use to the Headmasters & Targetmasters theme?
Was it really ratings? I don't think it was since Optimus Prime is brought back to the show. I know that fans were really really upset that Optimus was killed in the 1986 Transformers the movie and fans wrote angry letters about that and demanded a return of Optimus Prime which they got receive in The Return of Optimus Prime/season 3 finale. I thought when Optimus Prime is back fans would flock back in watching the show again.
Was it really money issues? Did Hasbro filed for bankruptcy back in 1987?
Was it a writers' strike? Was it an actors' strike?
Was it lack of ideas?

There are other popular cartoon shows that are cult hits have more than 98 episodes, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 TV series) had 193 episodes and The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991) had 147 episodes.

What was the real reason the show ended with 98 episodes? Ratings, Money Issues, Contract disputes, Writers/Actors strike, what?

We'll probably never definitively know, but it's most likely that the cartoon's costs were beginning to outweigh its' use to sales. Transformers was in decline from 1986 on until the steady late-1990s revival, and Hasbro would have been looking to cut costs to keep the franchise viable.

Yeah, I'd go with Hasbro just deciding the cartoon wasn't popular enough to have enough impact on sales anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if Sumbow would have been keen to get at least one more full season out of it to make a more attractive syndication package (they had enough episodes, but over as much 100 as you can get the better. And syndication was how American studios made their real money in those days, for the same reason I'm sure Mainframe would have wanted more Beast Machines).

Actually, I wonder if part of the reason Sunbow brought up the Star dub versions of the Japanese shows and added them to the main Transformers package was to bump up the size of what they could offer for syndication?

Then again, Sunbow did take a big hit the previous year where they had three expensive (very expensive by their usual standards) flop films. One of which ended up straight to video. I'm not sure exactly when they wound down (they presumably lasted at least a couple more years so GI Joe fans could be annoyed they didn't wind up making the new series rather than DiC) but their best years were certainly behind them. Can anyone name anything really successful they did after '87 off the top of their head?

One thing we do know thanks to the David Wise interview done for the Rhino DVD's is that he was originally commissioned to write a five part Rebirth before the budget cuts hit and he wound up having to compress it down to three (no doubt loosing the Monsterbots and Duocons). So it looks as if what we did get that year only just managed to squeak out by the skin of its teeth.

That interview is well worth looking for if it's out there on youtube, by definitively stating he was hired specifically to write the "Final" episodes he dispelled a lot of surprisingly long lasting fan myths about there being unbroadcast "lost" episodes in various states of completion in the Sunbow vaults that some people even swore blind they'd seen physical evidence of.

IIRC, Transformers continued to run anyway (with either all episodes or Season 3 repeated immediately after Rebirth with the new titles added), and later the CGI PM Prime puppet. Few kids would have been lucky enough to have seen all 98 episodes and any they'd missed would be new to them, and repeats were a cheap alternative to VHS as well.

Also 95% of advertising (which is what the G1 cartoon was) is brand awareness rather than specific product promotion. I am, and always will be, highly skeptical of the impact 'spotlight' episodes have on sales of specific figures. I don't think an average child watches/watched "Auto Beserk", for example, and then specifically wants Red Alert. They go to the store and want a Transformer, and if Red Alert's there he might get the jump over Skids, but if he isn't, the kid will settle for Skids. Thus repeats could still sell product; the line's cancellation was due to a mix of unsuitable gimmicks and simply being naturally overtaken by TMNT, Captain Planet, etc.

Ratings also aren't as important in this sort of thing as demographics are. Hasbro wouldn't, for example, be happy if Transformers had been getting 5m viewers and they were all 30+ non-toy buyers or whatever* - that wouldn't have been the case of course, but if they'd done some market research and found, say, 25% of the audience never bought a toy it wouldn't reinforce the case for making more episodes.

* = I have a pet theory that demographics were possibly the downfall of Animated, or at least a contributing factor; the thing just seems to have failed to shift enough bits of plastic to children.

I always figured that Transformers meant to stop at episode 95 after the return of optimus prime.

Think about it

1) The Rebirth only aired almost a year after Return of optimus prime. Why was there such a gap? Because the REbirth was never planned as being part of the Season 3 story. I suspect Hasbro commisoned those episodes purely to sell toys.

2) The structure of the narrative. Characters yelling out each others names when they talked and their special abilities? Sounds like old Bob Budiansky's work when HE was under pressure to sell toys.

3) Return of Optimus had a more credible ending than Rebirth. It ended with an unsteady peace between autobots and decpticons. Optimus earns Galvatron's respect. It ties in almost perfectly with Beast Wars.

My conclusion is that G1 cartoon ended with 95 episodes.
The 3 rebirth episodes were never meant to revive the series but just to give a push to the new headmaster and target master toys.

Whilst the TROOP does make a fitting conclusion...that was because it was designed to round off season 3. It more than likely came about due to the faux pas of killing him off in the animated film. I suspect that given the rather free-form nature of the original cartoon, it ended up as the bookend of S3 due to the majority of the episodes already being in some stage of production.

The Rebirth airing a year after TROOP isn't so suprising - IIRC from that David Wise interview, season 4 was delayed due to discussions around whether a fourth season was commerically viable and / or desirable, and the decision was made to make a further five episodes (poss to bulk up S3 for overseas sales?) , which eventually became three due to a lack of finance for the episodes.

S4 was also to debut 1987s toyline - The Head/ Target Masters anyway so this became a rather busy and condensed set of episodes! (As a result , I still find it one of the few runs of original episodes that stands up well - its pace feeling oddly contemporary)

There was always going to be a S4, but with the poor reception of the film (it didn't do well at the box office which no doubt impacted on Sunbow, as others have said) i suspect financing a new series was difficult, even using cheap overseas studios. Transformers toy sales also went into a protracted decline, with the 'smaller and cheaper' construction and design points at a line that was drastically scaling back to keep it a going concern. I think all these factors - including the demographics - are what caused the cartoon to come to a halt,more than anything else.

@Cliffy - you are spot on with the demographics. All US TV shows that were not affiliated to a network (i.e. were made by a production studio) were reliant on demographics to survive, as networks would frequently shuffle shows around the schedules. Quantum Leap is a good example of this (I have the rather good Boxtree book on QL which goes into a lot of detail about how the show, like Beast Wars, was never guaranteed survival, reliant as it was on demographics to make the case for its popularity to ensure more episodes were ordered).

Oddly enough, I just watched Dark Awakening a couple nights ago, and I laughed at the final announcer voice-over: "Is this really the last we'll see of Optimus Prime? Find out in our next episode, The Return of Optimus Prime."

It's funny not only because he gives away the answer with the upcoming title, but also because there are twenty episodes until TROOP comes up. I know the order of G1 was random and irrelevant, but it still cracked me up.

Cliffjumper wrote:IIRC, Transformers continued to run anyway (with either all episodes or Season 3 repeated immediately after Rebirth with the new titles added), and later the CGI PM Prime puppet. Few kids would have been lucky enough to have seen all 98 episodes and any they'd missed would be new to them, and repeats were a cheap alternative to VHS as well.

Oh sure, but that wasn't just a post cancellation thing. The fact season one episodes with the Omega Supreme titles and Five Faces with the main season 3 titles making it onto DVD suggests that it was just standard policy for Sunbow to add the latest credits to repeats. Why is a puzzler as I'm only aware of one other American TV show, which I'll come to in a sec, that did that (though presumably other Sunbow series with changable title did as well). Effectively the first repeat shown after Rebirth was the start of the shows syndication run regardless of the titles.

Also 95% of advertising (which is what the G1 cartoon was) is brand awareness rather than specific product promotion. I am, and always will be, highly skeptical of the impact 'spotlight' episodes have on sales of specific figures. I don't think an average child watches/watched "Auto Beserk", for example, and then specifically wants Red Alert. They go to the store and want a Transformer, and if Red Alert's there he might get the jump over Skids, but if he isn't, the kid will settle for Skids. Thus repeats could still sell product; the line's cancellation was due to a mix of unsuitable gimmicks and simply being naturally overtaken by TMNT, Captain Planet, etc.

Yep, though that only works if the show is still in reruns. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the reason for "Season 5" (after all, as you say not many kids are going to go out and buy Joyride specifically just because scary pedo puppet Prime mentions him) was because the show already beginning to come to the end of its syndication life and this was an attempt to offer something "new" separate to that package.

Part of the problem with less episodes is that it means the amount a station can show before repeating itself is limited, and unless you've got a fluke hit like Star Trek if there isn't more of a gap between second and third screenings you're going to loose your audience if they last saw The Girl Who Loved Powerglide a month ago.

I believe at the time (and of course, the TV market has changed hugely since the mid-90's and in the last decade especially) the ideal number of episodes was over a 100 but not hugely over a 150, enough to run through the show regularly without frequent repetition but not so unwieldly an amount it becomes too expensive for small stations to buy (one of the several factors contributing to Star Trek: The Next Generation ending with season 7, along with rising costs and the desire to do movies, was that as they were hurtling towards 200 episodes they were at the point where they had more that stations wanted to purchase).

I would suspect based on the fact it doesn't seem to have ever been seen again season 5 wasn't included as part of the main syndication package for the series as, even if kids wouldn't notice/mind, stations would be annoyed they'd purchased some episodes twice with only a different introduction.

Skyquake87 wrote:Whilst the TROOP does make a fitting conclusion...that was because it was designed to round off season 3. It more than likely came about due to the faux pas of killing him off in the animated film. I suspect that given the rather free-form nature of the original cartoon, it ended up as the bookend of S3 due to the majority of the episodes already being in some stage of production.

I don't know, TROOP really does feel to me like, at best, they really weren't 100% sure if it was coming back or not and wanted to provide something that could work as an ending. I think the real surprise is how keen they seem to be to have given the show some sort of closure, it would have been easy to end Rebirth with the basic status quo intact but Wise seems to have been told specifically to do something that could work as an ending but still keep Hasbro happy by leaving just enough of a thread so kids could still imagine future toys being out there. That's extremely rare for US TV at the time.

@Cliffy - you are spot on with the demographics. All US TV shows that were not affiliated to a network (i.e. were made by a production studio) were reliant on demographics to survive, as networks would frequently shuffle shows around the schedules. Quantum Leap is a good example of this (I have the rather good Boxtree book on QL which goes into a lot of detail about how the show, like Beast Wars, was never guaranteed survival, reliant as it was on demographics to make the case for its popularity to ensure more episodes were ordered).

Is that the QL book where the episodes are listed in order of the date they're set? Other than that bizarre choice it's a good solid making of, lots of interesting details on the genesis (ha ha) of the show. Though it was networked wasn't it? I was under the impression it was on NBC?

Oddly enough Leap is the only other show I can think of where the titles are mucked about with for syndication, the cheap looking season 1 opening and Sam's longer rambling voiceovers recapping the story so far were replaced by the what we'd consider the "normal" credits and "Theorising he could time travel..." narration.

Notabot wrote:Oddly enough, I just watched Dark Awakening a couple nights ago, and I laughed at the final announcer voice-over: "Is this really the last we'll see of Optimus Prime? Find out in our next episode, The Return of Optimus Prime."

It's funny not only because he gives away the answer with the upcoming title, but also because there are twenty episodes until TROOP comes up. I know the order of G1 was random and irrelevant, but it still cracked me up.

That voiceover wasn't on the episode when it first aired though, but added to a repeat that was broadcast the day before TROOP went out. Probably as part of some heavily promoted "Look! He's back! Please start watching again!" promotional push. You fail fandom

I do very much think DA was well into production before the film came out (backed up by the fact they started voice recording on season three before they did for the film and it was a very early episode, at the rate Akom knocked 'em out it was probably done and dusted before the film was even approaching its final edit). If there had been any chance of replacing the script with something else once they'd seen the reaction to the film I don't think there's a chance in hell they'd have done an Evil Zombie Optimus Prime episode.

um..yes QL was networked and then sold in syndication a year after original broadcast in 1990 (which is when it aired on BBC2).

the credits thing whereby a different series' titles were used was so other networks could run repeats in with new episodes. QL is very much affected by this as some of the prints for Universal's boxsets have the wrong opening titles and / or wrong 'leap in' attached to them - the result of worlwide sales meaning some episodes don't exist in their original form in Universals archives.

IIRC, BBC 2 ran the series with the more polished S2 opening titles and leap fx over S1 - although I may be mis-remembering this as I remember they ran a 'catch up' series running S1 & S2 back to back before S3 was shown over here (or had ended, or something - there was definately a rerun at some point anyway as it became BBC2's top rated show of the time) with the recut pilot episode (retitled 'Genesis' from, uh, the Pilot Episode - shame the uncut pilot didn't make it to DVD...makes me wish I'd kept my videos now...)

Skyquake87 wrote:Whilst the TROOP does make a fitting conclusion...that was because it was designed to round off season 3. It more than likely came about due to the faux pas of killing him off in the animated film. I suspect that given the rather free-form nature of the original cartoon, it ended up as the bookend of S3 due to the majority of the episodes already being in some stage of production.

The Rebirth airing a year after TROOP isn't so suprising - IIRC from that David Wise interview, season 4 was delayed due to discussions around whether a fourth season was commerically viable and / or desirable, and the decision was made to make a further five episodes (poss to bulk up S3 for overseas sales?) , which eventually became three due to a lack of finance for the episodes.

S4 was also to debut 1987s toyline - The Head/ Target Masters anyway so this became a rather busy and condensed set of episodes! (As a result , I still find it one of the few runs of original episodes that stands up well - its pace feeling oddly contemporary)

There was always going to be a S4, but with the poor reception of the film (it didn't do well at the box office which no doubt impacted on Sunbow, as others have said) i suspect financing a new series was difficult, even using cheap overseas studios. Transformers toy sales also went into a protracted decline, with the 'smaller and cheaper' construction and design points at a line that was drastically scaling back to keep it a going concern. I think all these factors - including the demographics - are what caused the cartoon to come to a halt,more than anything else.

@Cliffy - you are spot on with the demographics. All US TV shows that were not affiliated to a network (i.e. were made by a production studio) were reliant on demographics to survive, as networks would frequently shuffle shows around the schedules. Quantum Leap is a good example of this (I have the rather good Boxtree book on QL which goes into a lot of detail about how the show, like Beast Wars, was never guaranteed survival, reliant as it was on demographics to make the case for its popularity to ensure more episodes were ordered).

but u realise that only season 3 seems to have the most definite end among all the season.

Sure the 3 episode miniseries and season 1 Heavy metal war ended with the decepticon army seemingly obliterated but megatron surviving.
But you know he will be back with new toys............i mean minions. The war will carry on.

Season 2 had no conclusion at all. Since both teams are alive and well

Season 3 however is implied to end with a truce, thus logically ending the war.

I seriously wouldnt have minded maybe direct to dvd miniseries. Maybe Rebirth was planned something like that? Maybe?
I know i've seen cartoon clips of Powermaster optimus prime so i wonder if they were considering making a power master miniseries.

I never really felt that TROOP was meant to be a concluding episode, sure there are lines in there that suggest it may have been "there will be no war today Optimus Prime, you have earned Galvatron's respect" and the "sorry" from Dr Swafford, but they are hardly conclusive in the context of that two parter.

TROOP establishes a universal threat that only Optimus can resolve - well, it didn't have to be him, but if you are gonna bring him back from the dead then it'd better be for something worthwhile and important. I'd also suggest that those two episodes are almost a direct sequel to the movie - it certainly has the pacing, scope and storytelling chops of one. I just think happenstance had it plonked at the end of S3 - particularly if, as Cliffy says, S3 was already in production by the time the animated film came out.

I don't think you can really say there is as much thought put into the cartoon as we project onto it. It was cheaply made at a breakneck pace with the aim of promoting a line of toys. Flint Dille's interview on the metrodome 2007 animated movie release pretty much suggests as much, with only some real effort put into the film (which itself feels like a 3 part set of regualr cartoon episodes - just with a better budget). The wild and uneven tone of the cartoon from start to finish - particularly in S3 where anything went - including, god help us, that wretched musical episode - just to me smacks of naked marketeering and banging out enough episodes to run the thing in syndication - its no doubt why such a lot of the original cartoon is, frankly, trash.

Those clips of Powermaster Optimus you mention may be Masterforce - the second Japanese animated series after Headmasters. And although he looks like him, Ginrai is not Optiimus

Fresh cel animation was also commissioned by Hasbro right up until the toyline ended. You can usually spot commercial animation quite easily - it tends to be, y'know, good.

The G1 cartoon was largely made by people who did not give a **** - don't make me link the Glut interview again. The ones who did care were people with no talent, such as David Wise, who did for Transformers what the Luftwaffe did to Coventry.

Any conclusions you can draw from watching it are largely down to coincidence.

The ones who did care were people with no talent, such as David Wise, who did for Transformers what the Luftwaffe did to Coventry.

I have no idea who Mr. Wise is but that still made me laugh.

Skyquake87 wrote:um..yes QL was networked and then sold in syndication a year after original broadcast in 1990 (which is when it aired on BBC2).

Someone on another board mentioned there was a big gap between the BBC showing seasons one and two of 18 months (presumably because of the short length of the former). Which would make sense as I have very strong memories of the pilot (I was allowed to stay up late to watch it!) but none of the rest of the season. That probably explains the early repeat run as well then.

the credits thing whereby a different series' titles were used was so other networks could run repeats in with new episodes. QL is very much affected by this as some of the prints for Universal's boxsets have the wrong opening titles and / or wrong 'leap in' attached to them - the result of worlwide sales meaning some episodes don't exist in their original form in Universals archives.

Ah yes, I've noticed that (the last episode of season 1 having different credits deeply confused me last week. Though from the documentary it always ended with the "In a woman" cliffhanger even though that wasn't the next episode). It's a shame as, even if the master prints had been changed, it'd be the work of five minutes during the claimed remastering to stick the proper credits/ends back on them.

(retitled 'Genesis' from, uh, the Pilot Episode - shame the uncut pilot didn't make it to DVD...makes me wish I'd kept my videos now...)

Aw, I didn't know the pilot was edited on DVD. I thought the UK sets were supposed to have all the stuff edited for the American ones put back in?

RE: The "Final" episode thing, it's worth noting that season 2- the one with at least one more story guaranteed afterwards in the film- is the only one that doesn't finish with a "The end... OR IS IT?!?!?!" style moment so it may well be a complete coincidence.

As for Wise, I thought he came over well in the DVD interview, but that one he did with Moonbase 2 made him look a bit of a tit(apparently giving the Turtles different coloured bandannas means he was more responsible for their creation than the people behind the comics). The story where he talks about how a young and keen Dille called him and the other writers into the office for one on one meetings before season 3 in an attempt to jazz them up for writing for the show only to be met with a "Meh" response as if this was a crazy thing to do (and this from one of the better writers despite what Cliffy thinks ) sort of sums up the cartoon perfectly.

inflatable dalek wrote:one of the better writers

Things we owe David Wise for: -

- The Female Autobots - not the concept, but the three ****heads in "Search for Alpha Trion" and their boyfriends, and by extension You Know What.
- And Alpha ****ing Trion.
- LED glowing heart. That's the three absolute worse things in the show, all thanks to David Wise.
- "Just this once, I shall speak as I did before". Four from four.
- "My Autobot counterpart is nearby, real nearby".
- "I know Daniel, I feel the same way too." (probably enough of Rebirth; I love it, but it features some of the worst writing in the show, which is no mean feat).
- "First, drain evil. Second, recharge good."
- Slingshot, the stupidest cartoon Autobot. Competition included Brawn, Ironhide and Sludge. Still won.
- Kremzeek
- Also "Day of the Machines", the most generic, forgettable episode of the show. It was left out of the original Japanese run because the dubbing team got ten minutes in and thought they'd already done it.

He was also one of the main culprits of the "change the names, submit it to six other shows" school of 1980s cartoon script-writing, which makes him a less successful Glut as 25 years down the line he's got time to sit down and shoot the shit about some lame Reagan-era cartoon about a kid in a hard-hat who hangs around with a bunch of creepy grinning alien robots - while wearing an XXXXXXXL branded t-shirt, no less.

Skyquake87 wrote: I'd also suggest that those two episodes are almost a direct sequel to the movie - it certainly has the pacing, scope and storytelling chops of one. I just think happenstance had it plonked at the end of S3 - particularly if, as Cliffy says, S3 was already in production by the time the animated film came out.
.................................

Those clips of Powermaster Optimus you mention may be Masterforce - the second Japanese animated series after Headmasters. And although he looks like him, Ginrai is not Optiimus

Not to mention that TROOP had almost movie-level style animation. I mean compare the art detail in that episode to everything else in season 3. Its almost better than Call of the Primitives.

And nope, i know Masterforce. The clips i saw were definitely not Ginrai.

He was also one of the main culprits of the "change the names, submit it to six other shows" school of 1980s cartoon script-writing

That trend extended all the way into the 90s with stuff like *shudder* Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm...........

inflatable dalek wrote:Aw, I didn't know the pilot was edited on DVD. I thought the UK sets were supposed to have all the stuff edited for the American ones put back in?

As far as I am aware, the US/ UK dvd sets differ only in the music licensed for each territory. US consumers were outraged that Universal didn't license any of the music that appeared in the show, instead using session musican stuff or just generic score stuff. Rather robbed scenes of Al dancing with Beth to Georgia on my mind of their power. Most, but not all, of the music that originally featured in the broadcast episodes appears on the UK release (reading Amazons reviews is quite funny as there seem to be quite a few Americans annoyed that they have to import from us for a change!). There must be different laws for stuff like Netflix, as they show all the episodes with the original music intact. Basically, Universal cranked this out- along with other 'retro' TV shows (Magnum PI, the A Team) as cheaply as possible - not really thinking that there'd be much point in spending too much on a show they seemed to have think most folk had forgotten and / or didn't care about and didn't seem to think there'd be much demand for.

As far as the pilot episode goes, yeah the VHS 'Pilot Episode' features the full 2 hours mashings (might even be a bit longer than that, I can't remember) whereas both UK/ US dvd releases use the 'Genesis' 90 min re-cut version that was sold in various syndication / first run packages. Its very well done though, as you can't tell anything's been lost.


@relak, yeah the animation in TROOP is generally a cut above , aside from two glaring problems - Soundwaves mouth staying looking up when he moves his head back down when Ratbat returns and also Rodimus Prime's head bobbing back and forth whilst he muses over seeing Optimus in his 'dreams'.

The clips may have been commerical footage used for adverts. They're the only other bits of originated animation using PM Prime, aside from that weird puppet/ cgi thing used in season 5.

I would say the drawing is very good in TROOP, not necessarily the animation though. Epic for screenshots, but the actual flow is terrible - those blending Throttlebots and Aerialbots in the role-call, brrrr. And, as you say, the errors are very noticeable in that one even if there's only about the usual number - a lot of it is stupid, avoidable stuff like Kup driving off backwards or Vortex flying in through the door of a jet airliner.

I had always assumed that since TFG1 began with a miniseries, Hasbro had pushed for one more tack-on miniseries (Rebirth) just in hopes of providing some kind of lift for the (x)master toys.

Skyquake87 wrote:As far as I am aware, the US/ UK dvd sets differ only in the music licensed for each territory. US consumers were outraged that Universal didn't license any of the music that appeared in the show, instead using session musican stuff or just generic score stuff. Rather robbed scenes of Al dancing with Beth to Georgia on my mind of their power.

Yeah, I'd heard about the music changes. Shame about the pilot, I'd no idea it was originally so long. I wonder if they ever showed the full length version here because it's odd I could fail to notice an entire half hour missing.

(reading Amazons reviews is quite funny as there seem to be quite a few Americans annoyed that they have to import from us for a change!).

Oh yes, I saw a priceless one star one when I brought the set that basically boiled down to it being Amazon/Playback's fault they were unaware of DVD regions.

There must be different laws for stuff like Netflix, as they show all the episodes with the original music intact. Basically, Universal cranked this out- along with other 'retro' TV shows (Magnum PI, the A Team) as cheaply as possible - not really thinking that there'd be much point in spending too much on a show they seemed to have think most folk had forgotten and / or didn't care about and didn't seem to think there'd be much demand for.

I do know the laws covering this in the UK changed a few years ago (as can be seen on Doctor Who DVD's, Jimi Hendrix was removed from Revelation of the Daleks but by the time The Chase came out The Beatles were OK, but not on the American DVD). I think because someone realised that with things like ITunes people were buying songs they heard on TV and liked pretty much instantly so making it cheaper for shows to use proper music on the DVD release was in their own best interests.

Cliffjumper wrote:I would say the drawing is very good in TROOP, not necessarily the animation though. Epic for screenshots, but the actual flow is terrible - those blending Throttlebots and Aerialbots in the role-call, brrrr. And, as you say, the errors are very noticeable in that one even if there's only about the usual number - a lot of it is stupid, avoidable stuff like Kup driving off backwards or Vortex flying in through the door of a jet airliner.

Yeah, it looks nice and shiny but there's some very odd stuff in there. Wheelie being rebuilt into a Blaster lookalike being my favourite. Even scenes without any real errors like the "I feel like a Goooooooooooldbug" chat between Prime and the others don't look quite right somehow.

Things we owe David Wise for: -

I said one of the shows best writers, relatively compared to other writers that isn't so impressive.