Clay's TF community research project

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Clay
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Clay's TF community research project

Post by Clay »

Went to another conference and gave a presentation about TF fan communities and representation. Went well, overall. Didn't record the actual event as I was starting to fatigue out from the drive down and I was more lethargic than I would have liked to have been. Still, I'm happy with the result, and think it's interesting in its own right.

text+pics.
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Denyer
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

Post by Denyer »

The conceptual "modes" coda still feels a point not that different to how fans and buyers regard other lines such as Marvel Legends where the same figure might stand in for any of a variety of different representations in media and particular storylines. With or without head canon smoothing over the differences -- eg, and I might have used this example previously, personally one corner of a cabinet shelf is "pre-Nextwave" because that reduces the number of figures you need to customise or acquire as rarities to make up the team.

That stats are interesting, and it's a shame the response rate (and probably the achievable response rate in situations like this) equates to noise. Even in the heyday of the fandom there were probably more fans engaging offline than on, never heard from, but 40 out of 15K, or any number, is a little hard to draw conclusions from.
non-denominational transformer site
If that other FB group is anything to go by, the future looks a lot like Imgur comment threads. Larkin's "The Winter Palace" also comes to mind, for purpose of coding myself as twenty or thirty years older than I actually am, as does a meme involving a shotgun, rocking chair and grass. (Text meme will do, although apparently Letterman popularised).
Tailgate is adorable
IDW Tailgate's an immature and manipulative little prick, analogous to a child, in something that could be termed a relationship with an ancient Cybertronian who's spent a colossal amount of time in another dimension boxed in with others definably evil or at best morally ambiguous (ignored in the MTMTE/LL storylines to the extent it's basically an alternate continuity) but who irrespective before that was involved in a lot of war and other trauma. Attempts to pass off Tailgate and Cyclonus as more-or-less healthy probably reflect more on the author than readers, given that it's the same book where a big part of the pitch was setting a few story arcs of redemption against uncountable war crimes for another character.

I do like parts of Red-Dwarf-with-Transformers, but RD didn't age well either (watching it as an adult you're far more aware that it's a very grim adventure and they're lost in deep space until they die off one by one; it's a product of its era but just hasn't gotten around to doing a downer ending like Hi-de-Hi or Press Gang) and that didn't have to put up with daft crossovers, unless you count the mini ninth series. Tailgate and Cyclonus is one of those side-plots that should have wrapped up way before it did.

That's one takeaway from social media led interaction with creators, actually. Fanservice tends to keep ideas being flogged past their natural span -- it happens with TV ratings and movie sequels too, and RD is very guilty of it, but direct public interaction does encourage feedback loops.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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The conceptual "modes" coda still feels a point not that different to how fans and buyers regard other lines such as Marvel Legends where the same figure might stand in for any of a variety of different representations in media and particular storylines.
I can see that, but it's far more germane and complementary to TFs as a subject.
That stats are interesting, and it's a shame the response rate (and probably the achievable response rate in situations like this) equates to noise. Even in the heyday of the fandom there were probably more fans engaging offline than on, never heard from, but 40 out of 15K, or any number, is a little hard to draw conclusions from.
Agree; that's why I mentioned the small sample size as something difficult to draw conclusions from several times. As for those sample sizes, facebook pinned posts seem good for about 48 hours of visibility before dropping off a cliff. With TFW, I was posting in the general discussion forum under the advisement of a moderator, and it took about 72 hours to get that many responses.

At the same time, I intentionally didn't post it here because I wanted responses from fans that were never part of that original discussion. That said, small as the samples are, they do show generational differences in priorities and impressions (that first question establishing the age ranges is critical), even if they're the equivalent of a statistical anecdote.
for purpose of coding myself as twenty or thirty years older than I actually am, as does a meme involving a shotgun, rocking chair and grass.
I lol'ed at this, honestly.
IDW Tailgate's...
Could be, yeah! I'm still going through the stuff. Even if that's the case, it doesn't change the larger point of contrasting a largely blank slate (Tailgate) with a character that has a previously established "gist" to it (Cyclonus), even if not previously developed with any depth.
That's one takeaway from social media led interaction with creators, actually. Fanservice tends to keep ideas being flogged past their natural span -- it happens with TV ratings and movie sequels too, and RD is very guilty of it, but direct public interaction does encourage feedback loops.
Haven't actually watched Red Dwarf. I'll add it to the list for the summer.

Re: feedback loops with creators, it can certainly prolong things, but the other side is that the content creator has a much more immediate idea of what the audience they're targeting actually wants. Probably exaggerated for stuff with relatively short turnarounds like comic issues and a bit more muted for stuff with longer development times like movies/tv shows.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Definitely fair to say that TFs spawns new continuities on a more frequent basis than the vast majority of franchises, even movie era Marvel, and people who like any of the more minor ones have little choice but to do "counts as" collecting with their toys.

Engagement's one of those interesting condundrums... Transformers have been back to being a household name for the last fifteen years, up there with the first few years which benefited from less media and toy aisle saturation. And geek culture and the internet have more adults talking about it than ever. But Facebook would rather move eyeballs onto the next page with a new ad, and forums aren't where a lot of the activity is any more.
the larger point of contrasting a largely blank slate (Tailgate) with a character that has a previously established "gist" to it (Cyclonus), even if not previously developed with any depth.
Sort of. Roberts' Cyclonus isn't Furman's IDW Cyclonus. It also, more interestingly, isn't Marvel UK's and neither is his Tailgate. He is pretty close in some ways to the Marvel US profile, which references his naivety and fantasism and specifically frames it as mental illness. It's actually more a more extreme disparity in IDW than I recall: he's online for two weeks before being trapped in what's effectively a time loop for several million years.

Also, common criticisms were that dialogue is frequently interchangeable between characters in MTMTE/LL and that humour / referencing / regular fake-outs about the fate of characters do rather undermine other aspects of the narrative. (This is around the point I switched off more, ditto the staple plot of shrinking down to go inside Magnus, but it might be less sledgehammer-to-the-face for non-British readers). Both characters are used as something for the audience to project onto, and for all that it's one of the main interactions in the books it never really digs into the damaged-adult-and-child relationship. Possibly because it's on the Hal Jordan / Arisia spectrum of interactions.
Haven't actually watched Red Dwarf. I'll add it to the list for the summer.
If you happen to just grab all of the episodes and do it without researching, see if you can tell where most fans consider it either to have ended (in the same sense that there's only one Highlander film) and or to have jumped the shark. Also, it's a curious mix of hard sci-fi concepts, puerile humour, and like a lot of sitcoms of its time and earlier made over here, tragicomedy versus the era typified by Friends and later. But rarely overt with the pathos.

Would be interested what you make of it.
the content creator has a much more immediate idea of what the audience they're targeting actually wants
Sometimes. Social media is mainly amplification of particular away-from-centre loud voices, itself a bunch of feedback loops. As you say, there's an immediacy with comics production, second only to comments on unlicenced fanfic, but comic sales continued and continue to demonstrate ongoing bleed-out. It gets more complicated factoring in later sales at lower collected prices, and with a bit of viability restored by digital sales, but Occam's razor: fanservice when done frequently is often desperation to stem that bleeding out, or to press the button and receive a pellet of adoration, rather than effective market research.

IDW losing the licence can be far more attributed to Hasbro's preferred direction, though -- the Hasbroverse that doesn't fit how people collect or are interested in different franchises (kids are more open to mixing wildly different toylines and universes, adults mostly aren't if it's not out of continuity) and the subsequent reboot and non-continuity books that bored the remaining potential audience into comas, whilst simultaneously throwing away most of the MTMTE/LL readers.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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This was a great read! Lots of good insights into the "invisible" younger demographics of the fandom, for sure.

Like I mentioned when we chatted last week, if you run a project like this again you're welcome to pick my brain about survey design and data analysis. Stuff like that's been a part of my job for over a decade now! :)
As the Transformers themselves are something of a literal metaphor for adaptation and change, so too is the brand itself, through constant revision, something of a figurative metaphor for fluid-yet-concrete identity.
I've said this before, but I feel like this is more an expression of what was than an evaluation of what is. Hasbro seems to be playing things as safe as possible ever since the big "high" of the first couple movies passed, and your ouroboros metaphor seems to describe the official output these days even more than it describes a segment of the fandom. :(
The comic featured no female-gendered robots
Not true! The comic featured an astonishingly sexist take on the one female character Furman was obliged to use. :(
This series also introduced the first girl robots that would actually get toys in Western markets: Blackarachnia and Airrazor.

Now, as far as a diversity of representation goes, these characters are good examples of the standard practice for a long while: mostly unexplored concepts of sexless gender despite its now more consistent presence (although Blackarachnia totally does have her simp boyfriend, Silverbolt).
I was actually discussing these two with someone just a couple weeks ago! I feel like the two of them embody two polar opposites when it comes to portraying female characters in this franchise.

Airazor's gender is purely an informed trait. She calls herself a she, so I suppose she's a she, but that's literally the only way that she differs from the other Maximals. Her identity was so utterly irrelevant to her portrayal in the series that the Japanese dub made her a guy, and no one thought anything of it until her last few seconds of screen time (when the writers had her suddenly being romantic with Tigatron, more or less out of the blue).

Blackarachnia, on the other hand? I don't think a single episode passes by where her gender isn't a factor. To start with, Tarantulas very clearly reprogrammed her protoform not just to make her a Predacon, but to make her his dream woman come to life. Her interactions with the male cast are constantly fraught with sexual tension, flirting and outright harassment. She's frequently the target of gender-based insults. Tarantulas often acts like a creepy stalker around her, absolutely loses his shit when she breaks free from his control, and outright tries to murder her when she chooses Silverbolt over him.

We can debate which one makes more sense as a part of the Transformers' universe, but there's no room for debate when it comes to which one of them the fans and writers connected with.
The first question is age. For TFW, the forum is 60% north of 25 years old, whereas the Botposting group is 60% under 25 years old.
I'm stunned that there's people under 25 on Facebook for anything other than talking to their older, out of touch relatives.

(Sidenote, there's nothing wrong with those age groups but coming from the industry that I work in, they cause me physical pain to look at. :lol: )
The third question is about trying to find the bumps for various series to see if they’re correlated with kids returning as adult fans. It’s… hard to say, as we have more variables to account for, but in both cases the 2007 movie provides a good partitioning point. Here, the question had an open answer, which was a mistake on part! It meant that I had to tally all the results manually.
A mean or median for either group might be an interesting metric here. If you had more data you could calculate the standard deviation and come up with a "bracket" that captures the bulk of both sets, but your sample sizes are probably too small for that to be really useful. Sadly, it's really difficult to get TF fans to actually contribute to a project like this...we only got around 90-100 votes back when we did our "30 Greatest" poll way back when, and the fandom was easier to target in those days.
Surprisingly, TFW has quite a few recently active fans (five years or less) even though it skews older.
This doesn't surprise me! I was talking about that in the exchange you quoted at the start of your essay. Anecdotally, there seems to be a whole lot of late 30s/early 40s fans who've only started collecting Transformers over the last few years. The impression I've got from reading their posts is that a lot of them are media-first fans who may have collected other lines like Marvel Legends or DC figures, but who weren't previously interested in Transformers figures at all. Those new fans have crossed over and become active TF fans as the toyline shifted from trying to sell cool toys to trying to sell merchandise based on cool characters, if that makes sense.
The group that likes new designs is less interested in the figures, primarily.
I think this is treading into ground that the survey didn't cover, but I'd suspect that a large slice of this is because of how Hasbro has actively tried to reposition Transformers as a media property first and foremost over the last decade and a half or so. When you or I were kids, the toys were the only thing that really mattered to them and everything else only existed to sell them. But since 2007, it's been just as important (or more so?) to drive people to buy movie tickets. I bet that shift in focus has created a lot more media-only fans in the younger generations than you'd have seen in 80s and 90s kids.

MTMTE and LL contribute to that as well, because they brought in a whole new demographic of fans who were comic readers first and foremost -- many of whom didn't care about the toys in the slightest.
How much do you like reworked visual styles? Inter-related to the last question, this has more to do with making different series distinct from one another at a glance.
As someone who has read more than a few threads in the TFW toy forums, the results here shock me. I never would have guessed that a majority of posters there would be this open to different visual styles.

Denyer wrote: Fri Mar 25, 2022 7:29 pm Sometimes. Social media is mainly amplification of particular away-from-centre loud voices, itself a bunch of feedback loops. As you say, there's an immediacy with comics production, second only to comments on unlicenced fanfic, but comic sales continued and continue to demonstrate ongoing bleed-out. It gets more complicated factoring in later sales at lower collected prices, and with a bit of viability restored by digital sales, but Occam's razor: fanservice when done frequently is often desperation to stem that bleeding out, or to press the button and receive a pellet of adoration, rather than effective market research.
This line of discussion is right up my alley. :)

Social media feedback is explicitly not representative of the overall public, or even the overall readership. Any reader who is going onto social media to comment about MTMTE is, by definition, far more engaged than the average consumer. Their opinions, likewise, by definition are going to be a lot more extreme than the average reader. They're engaged because they either love the product or hate it. In either case, their feedback probably isn't going to help you sell to the less-engaged masses. The "silent majority" is a real thing in this case, because the majority of TF comic readers just don't care that much about the product and don't go out of their way to engage about it online. But there are way more of that kind of reader than there are people posting about the book on forums or Twitter, and the less-engaged readers are the ones you need to convince to keep buying the book. The ones who love it aren't going to stop buying over the short to medium term, and the ones who hate it have either already stopped, or they're completists who won't ever stop.

If a business wants to do effective market research that can help it make good decisions, selecting the right sample frame is one of the most important part of the process. You need to get opinions from a cross-section of your entire target market, not just the ones who already care about your product. That's the reason why a survey of randomly-selected telephone numbers will do a better job of predicting election results than an open web poll on a newspaper's website -- the people answering that web poll are self-selected, and the sample will inherently skew towards people with stronger opinions than the average. But IDW basing creative decisions on social media feedback would actually be even worse than that! It's more akin to a political party surveying nobody but their own donors' list, then being shocked when they don't win 99% of the votes in the election.

The incidence of comic book readers in the general population is higher than I'd expected based on these US numbers...around 15% seem to be regular or semi-regular readers. So there's a large enough population to make robust market research feasible, if they were of the mind to. I'd be surprised if a business like IDW is doing much quantitative research, though. Their financials never exactly seem to be too rosy, and market research is one of the first things that struggling companies cut from the budget when they see their numbers go into the red.

The best way for them to get useful information would probably be to take a two-pronged approach: surveying known customers (people who've bought a TF comic on their app in the last 12 months, maybe?) on the one hand, and a random sampling of general comic fans on the other (probably through an online panel provider). I think they'd see some pretty interesting contrasts between what the current buyers like and what the overall market wants. But, again, I'd actually be pretty surprised if IDW were investing in that kind of research right now.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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What have IDW got left now? I haven't been keeping up.
Warcry wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:14 pm Not true! The comic featured an astonishingly sexist take on the one female character Furman was obliged to use. :(
It's not aged well, but if you read the full few pages it's also ripping the piss out of Prime's characterisation and the crowd view (why only one, token effort, why pink, etc) and Decepticon view (transparent plan to win the humans over) is also pretty fair for 80s/90s social commentary, and accurately describes the inclusion of the character in TF:TM and Rebirth; Arcee's defined entirely by relationships with Daniel and Hot Rod.
We can debate which one makes more sense as a part of the Transformers' universe, but there's no room for debate when it comes to which one of them the fans and writers connected with.
Most of the fandom, particularly as was, would also go with Ravage = cat. There's always been disappointingly little actual science fiction in TFs, despite the potential of functionally immortal robots that mimic other lifeforms and their appliances/vehicles for interest as well as advantage. As wish-fulfilment literature goes, being able to be literally anything mechanical (and then superficially organic) as well as indestructible ought to have more mileage, particularly for stories aimed at more adult audiences, but instead there's often a leaning towards toyetic aspects of kids learning to frame and master their world by being in control of the big dumper truck and scary metal dinosaurs, etc. When what hooked a lot of kids originally was a full package including characterisations, bio hooks, formative interest in engineering, tactility, two toys in one, etc.

What always surprised me was how dull most of Dreamwave stuff and the set-on-Cybertron portions of IDW were. I'd love to see what Hickman, Morrison, etc at their peaks would have made of modern TF comics.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Warcry wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:14 pm This was a great read! Lots of good insights into the "invisible" younger demographics of the fandom, for sure.
:)
Like I mentioned when we chatted last week, if you run a project like this again you're welcome to pick my brain about survey design and data analysis. Stuff like that's been a part of my job for over a decade now! :)
It's entirely within the realm of possibility that I'll do a follow up sometime over the summer. I'll keep that in mind!
I've said this before, but I feel like this is more an expression of what was than an evaluation of what is. Hasbro seems to be playing things as safe as possible ever since the big "high" of the first couple movies passed, and your ouroboros metaphor seems to describe the official output these days even more than it describes a segment of the fandom. :(
Possibly. It's obviously the primary angle of the generations stuff for the past several years, but I think we're too quick to dismiss the parts we're not paying attention to as well. We had that one cartoon recently where all the decepticons had animalistic robot modes that I know basically nothing about, along with whatever Cyberverse is doing now (is that the current one?). On top of that, the generations figures are, really, pretty evenly split between Primes and Megatrons on one side and deep cuts like Slammer and Spinister on the other. Even with the latter, there's still that need for precedence or allusion, but there's such a massive backlog of obscure characters that it can likely keep the output interesting until the whole thing gets a change of course again.

Not true! The comic featured an astonishingly sexist take on the one female character Furman was obliged to use. :(
I was aware of this! I omitted because the prominence of the examples I used were directly related to how old those examples were. G1=Arcee, BW=Blackarachnia/Airrazor, IDW=comic only characters from phase three, etc.
Airazor's gender is purely an informed trait. ... when the writers had her suddenly being romantic with Tigatron, more or less out of the blue.
Was it full-on romance, or more platonic? I haven't watched BW since 2005 or so, so my memory's hazy on this aspect.
Blackarachnia, on the other hand?... We can debate which one makes more sense as a part of the Transformers' universe, but there's no room for debate when it comes to which one of them the fans and writers connected with.
Hmm. The difference between them has a few more variables, too. I think it's too quick to say that the feminizing of BA is the draw of the character over AR when, as you say, AR is just kind of... there. She's a solid personality, but she's not the center of the tensions that drive a lot of episodes. That said, if BA had been the center of tensions that drove a lot of episodes in ways that had nothing to do with the femme fatale aspect, she'd still be the more interesting and memorable character.

(Sidenote, there's nothing wrong with those age groups but coming from the industry that I work in, they cause me physical pain to look at. :lol: )
How so? The over/under 25 break, or the other groupings? I think I was trying to make rough partitions according to major series, but I can't remember exactly.

Another thing to consider is that not everyone on the facebook group is in North America. I have no idea if facebook has the same generational stigma in other countries. That's also one question that I didn't ask: location. That was on purpose, though. I tried to keep all of the personal questions transformer-related so as to not put people off from the poll. Even so...
Sadly, it's really difficult to get TF fans to actually contribute to a project like this...we only got around 90-100 votes back when we did our "30 Greatest" poll way back when, and the fandom was easier to target in those days.
...yeah, pretty much. Apparently having a post pinned in a facebook group is good for about 48 hours of visibility. I didn't get any responses after that window even with up for a full week. And of course besides the small sample sizes, I also only polled two groups and didn't ask questions about whether a given group was the primary social forum re:TF'ers. Even so, the results pretty much line up with the mood or atmosphere of their respective groups that I've observed over time... but I do wish the sample sizes were bigger, yeah.
Those new fans have crossed over and become active TF fans as the toyline shifted from trying to sell cool toys to trying to sell merchandise based on cool characters, if that makes sense.
It does, though I also remember Denyer saying years ago that it's just good sense to move toward evergreen designs so that you're meeting both criteria at the same time rather than necessarily prioritizing one over the other.
I think this is treading into ground that the survey didn't cover, but I'd suspect that a large slice of this is because of how Hasbro has actively tried to reposition Transformers as a media property first and foremost over the last decade and a half or so.
Yeah, the number of responses that said "lore" as the most interesting aspect made me do a double take. That's not a range of terms that I had to homogenize into one category: they used that specific keyword. So... there's something to that, and I don't know what it is. Also, as I said, the toys are expensive and that could be a big factor, too.
As someone who has read more than a few threads in the TFW toy forums, the results here shock me. I never would have guessed that a majority of posters there would be this open to different visual styles.
Keep in mind it wasn't a forum-wide sticky/announcement, but just a thread in general discussion. I know some of the subforums have their own devotees that don't necessarily poke their heads into other parts of the site (I usually only look in the kitbash and third party sections, myself), so the results might be biased towards the atmosphere of the GD forum. Even so... I don't know how to calibrate for all that when, as noted above, getting people to respond to polls in large enough numbers is tricky to begin with.

Any reader who is going onto social media to comment about MTMTE is, by definition, far more engaged than the average consumer. Their opinions, likewise, by definition are going to be a lot more extreme than the average reader. They're engaged because they either love the product or hate it. In either case, their feedback probably isn't going to help you sell to the less-engaged masses. The "silent majority" is a real thing in this case, because the majority of TF comic readers just don't care that much about the product and don't go out of their way to engage about it online.


Sure, but this was all about active super-fans and the relative differences in attitudes correlated with age and series iteration rather than the general public's perception. It'd be interesting to see how much of the "evergreen" design push can be attributed to either older fans or the general public, though.

The best way for them to get useful information would probably be to take a two-pronged approach: surveying known customers (people who've bought a TF comic on their app in the last 12 months, maybe?) on the one hand, and a random sampling of general comic fans on the other (probably through an online panel provider). I think they'd see some pretty interesting contrasts between what the current buyers like and what the overall market wants. But, again, I'd actually be pretty surprised if IDW were investing in that kind of research right now.
I think this is where they start to get in the "damned if they do / damned if they don't" territory. Frequent reboots make for frequent entry points, but they need to maintain consistency in other ways (say, visually) to remain recognizable, which in turns blurs the distinctions between the reboots. Like, Animated wasn't just a new continuity unto itself, but it looked different from what came before and after it. If they go with the evergreen strategy, there's nothing flashy to catch the eye of people that aren't already following it to begin with, nor something to clearly mark it as distinct from what came before.

It's a head scratcher, honestly. I think the ~2008-2009 approach of having the Bay movies, Animated, and the G1 throwback toy line running all at once was probably the best strategy simply because it didn't put all the eggs in one basket. Even so, that may be antiquated as well. With the prevalence of streaming for TV/movies and comics that are available instantly in digital form, the distinctions between past and current may just not matter that much.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Denyer wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:34 pm but instead there's often a leaning towards toyetic aspects of kids learning to frame and master their world by being in control of the big dumper truck and scary metal dinosaurs, etc. When what hooked a lot of kids originally was a full package including characterisations, bio hooks, formative interest in engineering, tactility, two toys in one, etc.
Mmmm. There's a FB page I follow called "vault of retro sci-fi" or some variation thereof. It's just posts of illustrations from the 1930s-1990s of a kind of "space generica" for lack of a better term. The back-of-box artwork on the original TF toy packaging pings that exact nerve as well, and to this day still fires the imaginative spark more than the cartoon or comic. It's just enough of the "gist" - along with the rudimentary bios and the overall conflict setup - to be a wonderful mental sandbox.

I also unironically love the G1 character box arts, weird proportions and all. I have no way to gauge how subjective I'm being, but they're memorable.
What always surprised me was how dull most of Dreamwave stuff and the set-on-Cybertron portions of IDW were. I'd love to see what Hickman, Morrison, etc at their peaks would have made of modern TF comics.
Funny thing I realized after getting past the Furman and McCarthy parts of IDW and onto the Roberts era... I do like the Roberts stuff more, but I'm hesitant to say that it's necessarily better. The character driven stuff interests me as an adult, but the general bonkers-ness of the Furman portions are probably more engaging for younger readers, which is necessary too.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

Post by Denyer »

Clay wrote:I also remember Denyer saying years ago that it's just good sense to move toward evergreen designs so that you're meeting both criteria at the same time rather than necessarily prioritising one over the other.
Evergreen helps, nostalgia helps. The traditional generally accepted rule of thumb for retail toy sales follows the Pareto principle -- i.e. 80% ish needs to be bought for kids. Doing deep cuts and fan favourites (at the expense of very few genuinely original characters in new lines) helps to firm up sales for adults that they can't afford to lose, as kids and more and more adults increasingly get priced out or simply see the product as poor value.

eg Hasbro's rolling the dice with a Cybertron Menasor in Titan class. That's a price bracket in which it's doubtful anywhere near 80% of sales are for kids. I think it'll get remaindered harder than previous Titan class figures, and the Ark was already a hardcore-only appeal release. Could be wrong but I don't think the same level of nostalgia for toys exists in the generation Cybertron was primarily aimed at, particularly adding a price hike into the equation. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the last Titan before a hiatus on them.

Similarly, whilst it's probably proven to be good business sense to include some BW characters in each line, I think Kingdom (and the BW reissues) won't quite have done the numbers they needed to and will be backed away from, and Legacy and Studio Series '86 continue to chase the ageing OG customer base -- both are able to cast a wide net.
they used that (lore) specific keyword
It seems to be common with science fiction and fantasy properties, and I'd guess with anime too. It's probably been popularised by YouTube titles/searches.
I do like the Roberts stuff more, but I'm hesitant to say that it's necessarily better. The character driven stuff interests me as an adult, but the general bonkers-ness of the Furman portions are probably more engaging for younger readers, which is necessary too.
IDW Furman? I'm not sure he had an outright "good" series with them. You could cut half of the issues in each of the first three -Ation arcs, the Spotlights suffered by that material being taken out of longer arcs, Max Dinos was ridiculously drawn-out and Revelations ridiculously abbreviated and disjointed. I could definitely see a better-edited version of the -Ations going over well with K-12 readers, though.

And the building blocks are there for an interstellar cold war flaring up into the destruction of inhabited worlds, but it's very linear and the ideas don't really get explored. Like with the old bios and box-artwork, though, there's enough to spark imagination and possibly if it was expanded upon on-panel it wouldn't work as well as, as you put it, a mental sandbox.

IDW Roberts gets into his own ruts. I'd say the natural demographic was 20-somethings, plus a tranche of 30-somethings with similar media/political interests as the author.

Postmortem, I think LSTOTW was the peak for ex-Marvel UK readers. Dense, fresh but full of references, self-contained and plenty of re-read value.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Denyer wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:34 pmThere's always been disappointingly little actual science fiction in TFs
I would have to agree with that. You would think that a franchise based around mechanical life forms would skew more towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum, but Hasbro seems to have really strongly embraced a "fantasy" direction of the franchise instead. I've always found that a bit ill-fitting. Building up a big, LOTR-knockoff mythology around the Transformers, Unicron, Primus and the 13 Primes...to me at least, taking the franchise in that direction detracts from what makes the Transformers themselves unique and interesting.

In particular, I'm always going to wish that the fiction would go back to the early-80s "robots with super advanced software brains" take on the characters instead of the "metal container for a magic glowy soul" that everything since the 90s has gone for. Modern Transformers, in a lot of ways, are just boxy elves.
Denyer wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:34 pmWhat always surprised me was how dull most of Dreamwave stuff and the set-on-Cybertron portions of IDW were. I'd love to see what Hickman, Morrison, etc at their peaks would have made of modern TF comics.
In retrospect it's too bad that IDW didn't try to parlay the huge Dreamwave sales numbers into a sales pitch for top-level industry talent. I'd love to see Transformers comics written by...well, anyone who isn't a mediocre journeymen or a promoted fanboy, honestly. But after the sales numbers tanked, that was never going to happen. :( Maybe the new license-holder will try to make a splash, but I'd be surprised.

For a franchise that's been around for almost four decades, it's depressing how little actually good official fiction we've gotten.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amPossibly. It's obviously the primary angle of the generations stuff for the past several years, but I think we're too quick to dismiss the parts we're not paying attention to as well. We had that one cartoon recently where all the decepticons had animalistic robot modes that I know basically nothing about,
I'm pretty surprised by this myself, but Robots in Disguise ended almost five years ago, in 2017! I've always admired the show's creativity, but what I remember the most about it is hearing fans of the show complain that Hasbro didn't make toys of so many of those cool animal Decepticons at all! It always felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to me.

The designs were great, and I'd love to see Steeljaw or Bisk or Glowstrike or the like get the Generations treatment, since even the best of the RiD toys were pretty low-budget and unimpressive.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amalong with whatever Cyberverse is doing now (is that the current one?).
Cyberverse (from the bits I've seen anyway) falls squarely in the same "evergreen legacy regurgitation" bucket as the Netflix shows. I think Cyberverse might actually be over now too, but I admittedly don't pay very close attention to it.

They are apparently releasing a BotBots cartoon this year though, which seems like it's about three years too late to capitalize on that particular trend, but it's something different at least.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amWas it full-on romance, or more platonic? I haven't watched BW since 2005 or so, so my memory's hazy on this aspect.
It was blatant enough that the Japanese show team apparently ran an explanation in a local TV magazine explaining to kids that gay people existed. It always felt like a pretty big non sequitur to me though -- until literally their last scene, it never felt to me like the writers were even hinting at a romance between them. Then they were suddenly all hand-holdy and making with anguished last-minute declarations of how their souls will never be apart.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amHmm. The difference between them has a few more variables, too. I think it's too quick to say that the feminizing of BA is the draw of the character over AR when, as you say, AR is just kind of... there. She's a solid personality, but she's not the center of the tensions that drive a lot of episodes. That said, if BA had been the center of tensions that drove a lot of episodes in ways that had nothing to do with the femme fatale aspect, she'd still be the more interesting and memorable character.
I'd argue that Airazor and Blackarachnia were both solidly in the "secondary character" bucket during the first season of the show, and that only one of them managed to connect with the writers or the audience enough to break out. I don't think that Blackarachnia's sexualization was the only reason that she was able to make a bigger impact, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a factor.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amHow so? The over/under 25 break, or the other groupings? I think I was trying to make rough partitions according to major series, but I can't remember exactly.
It's just that we use standardized age groups for virtually everything, and if a study diverges from them it's usually a big red flag that it's going to be an adventure in lots of other ways too.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amThat's also one question that I didn't ask: location.
Location actually would have been super interesting to know, though I can understand why you kept the personal info to a minimum. The more stuff like that you ask, the fewer people will answer.

Anecdotally, I think the younger wing of the fandom has a huge Asian component that were onboarded by the Bay movies. How many of those would be active in any English-language communities, though, I can't say.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amIt does, though I also remember Denyer saying years ago that it's just good sense to move toward evergreen designs so that you're meeting both criteria at the same time rather than necessarily prioritizing one over the other.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. "Evergreen designs" was how Hasbro attempted to extend the brand's run in the early 90s, and both Actionmasters and G2 crashed hard. The Beast era, the Unicron Trilogy and the Bay movies all steered hard in the opposite direction, reinvented the brand in ways that appealed to the cultural zeitgeist of the day and had a lot more success for it. You can argue about how much reinvention is too much, but the world is changing all the time and a franchise like Transformers needs to keep up if it wants to remain relevant. Modern Batman productions don't resemble the Adam West show and modern Spider-Man media isn't dripping with contempt for it's own lead character for daring to be uncool the way the Tobey McGuire movies were. The world has moved on from those things and the brands had to adapt to the new realities they were living in.

If Transformers insists on mainly being a nostalgia brand, I don't see it ever returning to the same levels of success that it had in the mid 80s, or 2007. It'll keep ticking along as a moderately successful brand, sure, but you need to take a risk and inject fresh ideas to really make it big. The nostalgia line becoming the de facto main line is great for those of us who are already fans, but it's probably not going to create as many new fans as Armada or Animated or whatever drew in. In decades past it would have been RiD/Cyberverse and the like getting the media attention, premium shelf space and big, expensive toys. Heck, it's not that long ago that Generations toys were restricted to Deluxe class only!

Retreating to what they know worked in the past is an understandable reaction to the billion-dollar box office hits drying up, but if they ever want to see that level of success again they'll need to start taking risks again. The newspaper/cable TV style "charge increasingly higher prices to a shrinking customer base" thing that they've got going on now can't last forever.
Clay wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 2:22 amEven so, that may be antiquated as well. With the prevalence of streaming for TV/movies and comics that are available instantly in digital form, the distinctions between past and current may just not matter that much.
It definitely makes an impact, but I'm not sure how big an impact it'd be. The old media is available, but it's not going to generate the same amount of hype as something new, because it's not getting actively marketed. It'll certainly attract some views, but something new is always going to attract more eyes in the short term even if it doesn't have the same staying power as the old stuff.
Denyer wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 4:38 amCould be wrong but I don't think the same level of nostalgia for toys exists in the generation Cybertron was primarily aimed at, particularly adding a price hike into the equation. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the last Titan before a hiatus on them.
I'm really struggling to think of where else they could take the price point, unless they start repeating characters they've already done. Playsets/dioramas would be the obvious answer, but the best option for that was the Ark and they made it a transforming robot instead.
Denyer wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 4:38 amSimilarly, whilst it's probably proven to be good business sense to include some BW characters in each line, I think Kingdom (and the BW reissues) won't quite have done the numbers they needed to and will be backed away from, and Legacy and Studio Series '86 continue to chase the ageing OG customer base -- both are able to cast a wide net.
I'd always assumed that all this Beast Wars stuff was just timed to coincide with the (original, before COVID delayed it) release of the Rise of the Beasts movie, so that they'd have a lot of beast-related merch on the shelves in case the movie was a runaway success. But Hasbro's unequivocally said that the underlined is not the case and that they plan to continue with Beast-era stuff and other non-G1 designs for the foreseeable future. How much of each is anyone's guess, but what's been leaked of this year's lineup seems to be roughly half G1 and the rest a mix of G2, BW, Cybertron and Prime.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Primus/Unicron as ancient corrupted AIs I quite like as a concept, but it's a one-time story rather than something that should keep being flogged into the dirt. Unless the follow-on arc establishes persistent hegemonic swarms, etc.
Warcry wrote:"Evergreen designs" was how Hasbro attempted to extend the brand's run in the early 90s, and both Actionmasters and G2 crashed hard. [...] Modern Batman productions don't resemble the Adam West show
They do get to play off with callbacks, though. Retreading Batman, Wolverine, etc hasn't exactly hurt DC/Marvel.

I wouldn't say the G2 redeco fest or Classics re-releases count as evergreen, and AM was more than anything a roll of the dice on non-transforming figures. The non-re-release G2 stuff (and quite a bit of AMs, and G1.5) was mainly new characters or different looks/alt-modes with minimal fiction to sell them -- plus shifts towards reduced sales and fragmentation in the comics and TV industries that made it difficult to get mindshare even if Hasbro had put more emphasis on that.

Evergreen's about keeping recognisable characters on the shelves, and in key roles for media/fiction appearances, rather than retro. And I'd say evergreen is about a relative handful of characters... almost every line gets a Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream and then there's some frequent recurrence at the next level of Prowls, Shockwaves, etc.

For modern TF lines the formula is then how much you sprinkle in of each of secondary G1, characters, beast wars, characters from other lines, etc. Meanwhile, production costs keep rising and economies head towards recession. I agree TFs is on a plotted course with diminishing returns, ditto other properties as the market window for plastic action figures shrinks, but whilst it lasts the "let's try to get adults to buy for themselves and keep it fun enough that kids will want it" factor only seems likely to increase.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Warcry wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 3:51 amIn particular, I'm always going to wish that the fiction would go back to the early-80s "robots with super advanced software brains" take on the characters instead of the "metal container for a magic glowy soul" that everything since the 90s has gone for. Modern Transformers, in a lot of ways, are just boxy elves.
Having sparks/souls helps with stakes. If soul-having Jazz gets ripped in half by Megatron, he's gone forever. If software-brain Jazz gets ripped in half, just upload his backup into a new protoform. Other than that, I agree with you that I'd rather see more sci-fi elements than fantasy ones. Though, that's mainly based on how RotF handled the mystical stuff, and they probably would've screwed up sci-fi, too.

The evergreen designs help stop Hasbro from competing against themselves. If there are multiple very different Starscream designs (G1, Bayverse, Unicron trilogy), then Hasbro has to create multiple figures to appeal to each audience. Evergreen means that 10 years from now, there can be a Starscream figure on the shelves that appeals to old G1 fans, young adults who grew up on Cyberverse, and kids watching the current TV show.

As for the original topic of gender/representation, I just figured TFs were genderless and assumed male/female robot modes for the same reason they assume Datsun and F15 vehicle modes, to fit in on Earth. The reason for the imbalanced male/female ratio is they notice the misogyny and not a lot of TFs want to put up with it.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Possible argument that being active in the 80s the Ark would have deployed elements of certain voices and parts of language, yeah, drawing on what passed for global media. Can handwave it however anyone wants, given that the machine was malfunctioning, and rationalise later character introductions as following precedent.

As long as writers go with robots performing gender, comedy accents etc rather than lazier appearance is actually reality type writing (whether it's Ravage is a cat or TFs are biological/pseudo-biological or Scattershot is fully functional) it's all good.
Tantrum wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:25 pmHaving sparks/souls helps with stakes. If soul-having Jazz gets ripped in half by Megatron, he's gone forever. If software-brain Jazz gets ripped in half, just upload his backup into a new protoform.
Depends how crap the writers are. Science fiction writers have done interesting things with the concept and I'd put Iain M Banks forward as one of the better ones.

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Skidsgrapp ... tracks.jpg

^Plus there's an ambiguous form already embedded in the Marvel comic. The concept of Hoist etc being stored on memory crystals is a convenience for introducing characters later, but as far as I recall it isn't nailed down whether the brainwave patterns are singular or copies. Prime says "you five allowed me to copy your minds" which might lean towards the originals conveniently buying the farm during 4 million years of war or they could still be knocking around. If so, it might be well-established technology with associated cultural traditions (eg the clones adopt new names, or decide based on consensus whether to re-merge at a later date) or could have been new at the time.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Denyer wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:18 pmThey do get to play off with callbacks, though. Retreading Batman, Wolverine, etc hasn't exactly hurt DC/Marvel.
That's definitely true, comics are prone to retrench in what's familiar. But they also tend to balance that out with a lot more "new" than we're seeing in main-line Transformers these days. You definitely don't want to discard all the popular legacy characters and designs, but there also needs to be a lot of room for new ideas. I don't object at all to Hasbro making new toys of popular Transformers from the 80s. I just don't think they should make only that in their main lines, and with G1 characters starting to take over Studio Series, we're getting close to that.

I think X-Men is probably the best comic-book analogue to Transformers out there, since they both feature big casts of colourful characters. Different takes on the franchise usually do feature the same six or so most popular characters, but they constantly get reinvented, the supporting cast gets revamped, they get new looks, etc. The old stuff is definitely the most popular, but it's not the only thing that gets acknowledged. I think Hasbro just did an entire Legends wave based on the Hickman-era designs last year. The Transformers equivalent would be an entire wave of Generations toys made up of new designs from RiD or Cyberverse, which would be absolutely shocking nowadays.
Denyer wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:18 pmI wouldn't say the G2 redeco fest or Classics re-releases count as evergreen
Denyer wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:18 pmEvergreen's about keeping recognisable characters on the shelves, and in key roles for media/fiction appearances,
I'd say that's exactly what G2, Classics or Actionmasters were. Two of the three lines did feature new characters, but the accompanying fiction for all three was squarely focused on bringing the popular original characters back into focus. I think Krok was the only new-character Actionmaster to even get lines, and the new G2 toys that made the cut for the comics hardly fared better (in Marvel anyway). The fiction certainly wasn't trying very hard to sell Skram or Treadshot or Skyjack or Rad, it was all Optimus, Megatron, Starscream and Grimlock. The lines of the late 80s/early 90s feel very much like a reaction to Hasbro realizing that the original characters were a big part of what made the brand popular, and them trying to refocus the spotlight on them.

It's just that Hasbro half-assed it with reissues and redecos and not particularly good non-transforming toys, so it failed. If G2 had seen more stuff like Laser Optimus and Tank Megatron and less "your older cousin's toys, but uglier", I think there's a good chance we'd never have gotten the decade's worth of rapid reinventions that started with Beast Wars.
Tantrum wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:25 pmHaving sparks/souls helps with stakes. If soul-having Jazz gets ripped in half by Megatron, he's gone forever. If software-brain Jazz gets ripped in half, just upload his backup into a new protoform.
On the one hand, I see where you're coming from and you're not wrong. But on the other, what you're describing is exactly why their war could last for four million years. The war never ends because it's practically impossible to really kill anyone, at least once they've demolished enough of Cybertron's infrastructure that they can't afford to build WMDs anymore.

(I'd actually object to protoforms in G1-style fiction for the same reason as sparks, though -- it's much less robotic and sci-fi than Wheeljack and Ratchet having to build a new body from scratch if Jazz gets ripped to pieces. One of the most unique things about the Marvel books is that almost no one ever actually died, they just didn't have the raw materials to repair them right away.)
Tantrum wrote: Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:25 pmThe evergreen designs help stop Hasbro from competing against themselves. If there are multiple very different Starscream designs (G1, Bayverse, Unicron trilogy), then Hasbro has to create multiple figures to appeal to each audience. Evergreen means that 10 years from now, there can be a Starscream figure on the shelves that appeals to old G1 fans, young adults who grew up on Cyberverse, and kids watching the current TV show.
I understand where this comes from as well, but it supposes that kids these days will like designs that are based on something from the 80s. Starscream looks different in Armada or Animated or Prime because they redesigned him to be appealing to the kids of those generations. Do the kids of the 2020s want a Starscream that's basically the same as the Starscream of 1984? Will the kids of the 2030s? Or will they roll their eyes at the brand in the same way that I rolled my eyes at the aesthetics of the 60s Star Trek show when I was a huge TNG fan in the 90s?
Denyer wrote: Mon Apr 25, 2022 7:17 pmIf so, it might be well-established technology with associated cultural traditions (eg the clones adopt new names, or decide based on consensus whether to re-merge at a later date) or could have been new at the time.
I vaguely recall Heinrad talking about a story he had in mind where the Tracks we're familiar with crossed paths with the original, four million years older Tracks. But I'm not sure if anything ever came of it, or if it was just character background from the old RPG. I can understand why the official media never touched on it again, but it's honestly too bad. It's a very rich idea that deserved more than just being mentioned once as a handwave and never explored.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Warcry wrote:I just don't think they should make only that in their main lines, and with G1 characters starting to take over Studio Series, we're getting close to that.
The selection's varied enough it's not something that'd bother me... the issue I have with SS86 in most case is the simplified cartoon style. But then it's not really aimed at me. And if I didn't have various MP/3P dinobots I think the SS ones would convert quite well to large toy-inspired deco.
I think Hasbro just did an entire Legends wave based on the Hickman-era designs last year. The Transformers equivalent would be an entire wave of Generations toys made up of new designs from RiD or Cyberverse, which would be absolutely shocking nowadays.
Assuming you mean the Hickman era of the last few years, that seems to be very popular. (I've been following core books and not most of the side stuff, because it all has the usual event rubbish interwoven as well as the X-Men Does The Authority angle that Gillen and Hickman do well and gives us intelligent ideas in movie res). TFs doesn't have anything in the same league.
I'd say that's exactly what G2, Classics or Actionmasters were. Two of the three lines did feature new characters, but the accompanying fiction for all three was squarely focused on bringing the popular original characters back into focus.
I'd further categorise evergreen as a toy thing far more than any tie-in media. Plus late original era TF fiction has the hallmarks of writer burnout -- it's about characters the creators latched onto rather than just original characters. Furman particularly had Bludgeon, Nightbeat, Thunderwing, etc and make show pieces of Fangry and random others, which didn't translate into the toys at all. Hasbro and the media weren't connected except for basic approvals, and they were happy with sticking the Pretender Monsters or whoever in the background with a few lines.

As you say, functional immortality (plus long periods on ice waiting to be repaired, a lot of the war being cold, etc) are necessary for the timescales to have any kind of narrative credibility.

Agree on mechanical repair being something important not to lose from TFs and definitely not replace with liquid metal or nanobots or protoforms, etc. That was a step too far with Marvel US G2, and everyone should have stopped fixating on the T-1000 from T2, which was fresh in pop culture at the time.

60s Trek I appreciate a lot more as an adult, but even the film versions went over well as a kid. Characters usually mean more than design.

Tracks and a four million year gap of time travel or duplicates, I don't think that's in canon material from memory.
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Re: Clay's TF community research project

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Bump because I just got back from presenting an expanded version at TFCon Chicago. Will edit/modify the google doc with the new/restored bits in a day or two.

It went extremely well and the crowd seemed to really like it. All of the jokes landed, too!
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