Manic Ramblings and Delerious Ranting
re:  BW roolz!  G1 sux!

As a long-time fan of almost every TF line that's ever come out, here are my
thoughts on the Beast Wars line compared to G1:

1) The toys are somethin' else.  In many ways they're what I've wanted the TF
line to be for a long time.  Even the lowest price range ones offer
incomparable posability and realism; they are all extremely posable, durable,
and playable.

  Let's compare Prowl and Cheetor, two midrange-price representatives of their
lines.  Prowl is a decent looking car, if you don't mind all the joint lines
on him, and the fact that 280Z police cars are pretty unusual.  But he's
fragile.  His roof is infamous for breaking off.  Drop him and he's had it.
His transformation is fairly intricate and complex, but when you're done what
you have is largely a statue.  He can't move his legs at all, and his head can
only move to look down at his chest.  His arms have several points of
articulation, but that makes him something of an anomoly for G1.  Finally, you
have to add two missile launchers, two missiles, and a very breakable rifle
before he's 'complete'.  Cheetor, OTOH, has a decently realistic cheetah mode
(which offers as much or more play value than a police car), an equally
complex transformation, and is a lot tougher.  Drop him?  No problem.  Break a
piece off?  Chances are it'll pop right back on.  Add to this immense
posablity (waist, upper legs, knees, and TOES, ferprimusake), and you've got a
fantastic toy.

2) The show is perhaps the best cartoon being produced today.  The stories are
complex and sophisticated; the dialogue is believably well-written, by turns
witty and hysterical.  The sense of a larger, on-going story arc contributes a
further sense of depth to the series, a feeling that things matter and are
progressing.  And the animation is both groundbreaking and stunning.  Finally,
the show has taken great pains to respect and involved the original
continuity; even now it is possibly preparing to take that continuity in new
directions.

3) The show also offers a pretty good retcon of why TFs would give up more
powerful, less vunerable, and faster vehicle forms for animal modes.  In fact,
it's the same reason the orginal TFs turned into the stuff they did --
adaptation to the planet they're on.  Also, consider a purely mechanical race
encountering organics for the first time.  It seems natural that they might
try to assimilate this 'technology' somehow; in fact it is, in a way, the
culmination the Headmaster and Pretender lines from G1.

4) Beast Wars isn't precisely what you'd expect to see in a line of robots,
but it's essentially the TFs doing what they had to to survive as a toy line.
Until Beast Wars was release, TFs were pretty much dead in the water.  The G2
line gave us some of the best TFs ever made -- Dreadwind, Laser Op, the
Cyberjets, the Laser Rods, the Laser Cycles -- and they languished on the
shelves.  Then came BW, and sales zoomed.  Thanks to Beast Wars' success,
vehicular TFs might be set to come back yet again, and be bigger than ever.

 And that's why BW roolz and G1 succs.

  Sorry this wasn't longer; I had this post ready to go at the same time as
its counterpart, and the computer crashed right as I was moving the mouse to
hit the button and send it.  Typical.
--
Robert Powers, formerly of the Ever-Changing .sig
repowers@shell.faradic.net
"You guys must lube your joints with ground glass, or else you're all
practicing to be statues!"  -- Sky Lynx on the G1 Dinobots