Optimus going full “Soldier of Primus” is always awesome, like the forest fight, the rampage in DOTM, his final battle with Megatron in Regen or any of the Skybound fights.
Bayverse cons are still the most bloodthirsty in the franchise, it makes sense he wouldnt hold back.
It's interesting you mention Sonic; I've noticed among younger kids its suddenly become really popular. I guess because of the live action movies?
Sonic's always been popular with kids, much like Mario and Pokemon. Comes and goes in waves but it's mostly always a constant form of some kind of popularity thing amongst non journos the last near 2 decades last decade despite the insanity the online fanbase became notorious for. it was before the movies too. Those fuckng jakks sonic figurines and the jazwares/tomy ones before them tend to sell well. Well I mean the ones that aren't sonic because of a combo of kids already fucking having sonic and scalpers only wanting the non sonics. The jakks figures are kind of known for shitty dstribution and shady backroom deals to get stock never to shelves amongst vidya merch lore people right now.
My nephew asked for those Jakks figures for his birthday, it took me forever to find them stocked in a store. Like, I had to go to at least 6 stores before I found basic Sonic & Tails, and Dr. Robotnik I found by accident in a TJ Maxx while looking for Transformers, lol. Stupid scalpers ruining everything...
There was an advent calendar like a year or 2 ago that came with every important classic character, some in christmas outfits. There's one this year too but it seems to be reissuing the ones from the really badly distributed christmas wave from last year save for the weird glittery shadow figure. Problem is it's box is identical on the outside. Still is worth it whichever one you get, the new one has all 7 chaos emeralds apparently. You want a figurine of the master emerald though you'll have to track down Chaos.
The sudden demise of named characters is half the fun of the Bayverse, knowing they're shutting that shit down or moving so far away from the previous movie it doesn't matter if Shockwave eats ass. One of the thing I love in media is both sides having named characters worthy of reverence. Like the romance of the three kingdoms in China; you got almost god-like officers whom all know by name, meeting each other in different battles and shifting sides and fighting alongside each other. You know, like when someone like Optimus and Megatron end up fighting together. Kino trope.
I mean, kids cartoons back then was what, cars, beasts, beasts with powers, transforming cars, robots, big robots, edgy robots, digimons, pokemons. What do you have today? Different kind of humanoids in different kind of settings? Owl house, Steven Universe, Hazbin. It's like going from a diverse cast of beasts to a 'diverse cast' being 10 kinds of humans with different horns and teeth glued on. If you showed a kid used to today's programming Sonic or a modern Transformers series, I'm sure they'd be more piqued. In general a lot of kids shows seem to be... human centric. None of those fetish bait genres most of us grew up with; anthro animals, robots, kim possible, totally spies.
Late, but i always loved Soundwave. His design manages to be both sophisticated yet paradoxically simple too and his modified voice was always great to listen to. Where some characters have drastically different iterations, Soundwave arguably is the most consistent character(for the most part), a Decepticon with the power of manipulating sound and being a rationally composed infiltrator for his allies, who sometimes can enjoy a bit of humor and unexpectedly loves music as well. Unlike other characters, i don't think i hate a single version of Soundwave, even the ones that are rather lacking (such as the Bayverse iteration. Some versions of Soundblaster are still Soundwave, so i don't count them as different characters, despite the different appearance and name.)
The time was when One was hot and needed advertising, WFC and FoC would’ve been perfect advertising material, cheap too.
Personally I'm tired of niggertron. The insistence on shoving the fact that he's black in our faces at every opportunity took me out of the film.
Really? I thought he made an excellent "young" Megatron.
Megatron's very intentionally supposed to evoke the Nazis (look at the helmet and G1 alt mode), so by making him a nigger, you absolutely ruin that. Like at every possible opportunity they shoved his niggerness in our faces with stuff like the ape head twitch when he gets mad and the Malcom X bs.
I agree with this and it also makes me question what the fuck happened with advertising and Hasbro. Did the concept of it get evicted from their psyches? Some people have speculated that the old Activision games will be released slightly before Reactive or alongside it. Personally i've stopped caring about Reactive and would rather just have another Cybertron game as implausible as that might be.
Rent free.
