BW Media Spotlight

Yesterday we looked at Media Zealot’s takedown of the Decepticons and other threats to the Autobots. This time the Autobots and presumably their allies get their turn in the spotlight. And this is the G1 US cartoon exclusively. That’s not counting more recent things that bother me about the Autobots, like the caste system based on alternate modes when we know they can alter those modes whenever they want, or making the Autobots the bad guys and Optimus just the guy who was less evil than the guy whose slogan was “peace through tyranny” on the tech specs.

Despite having the supposed combined wisdom of the Autobots in his chest for the accessing, Optimus has made his own share of boneheaded decisions. I just know we’re about to hear about that time the Decepticons made a remote controlled duplicate of Optimus and somehow they thought having the two race in tractor trailer mode would help decide who was the real Optimus. Every Transformers fan brings that up for a reason. I’d also expect to see that time the humans so easily believed the Autobots were evil and Optimus didn’t come up with a solution to clear their name and instead left Earth to its fate, did nothing about Ark security, and has lost more to Laserbeak than he has Megatron.

Let’s see if I’m right in part of the The Transformers: Too Stupid To Exist. Prep yourself for the occasional cursing.

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To attempt to get a full week out with all the distractions, I’m going to drop a two part installment of Media Zealot‘s “Too Stupid To Exist” series, pointing out all the flaws in the plans of the villains, and occasionally the heroes. Sometimes you accept stuff for the sake of the story, but that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze those flaws later and see how to avoid them, or at least laugh at how silly it is.

The original Transformers cartoon will always be part of my nostalgia. It’s one of my favorite multiverses as the versatility doesn’t stop with shapeshifting robots. I can’t say I’m a fan of all of it, mind you, even just what I’ve seen. The Skybound comic everyone is drooling over is still too violent for me, and killed off Bumblebee right at the start. The Bayverse and its live-action counterparts rarely care about the robots while focusing on humans that aren’t very interesting. Funny enough, Bumblebee is the exception. EarthSpark I just found boring in the first story and just couldn’t bring myself to watch further episodes. From what I did catch previous shows did the only interesting parts better.

Still, even I made fun of Megatron’s dumb schemes in my Challenge Of The GoBots review because his ideas are kind of odd for a war that was about resource allocation to conquer the universe (it’s an 80s kids show), and we can make fun of him and Galvatron (you debate among yourselves if they’re the same guy or not) for his really dumb ideas. Let’s not forget that the Autobots make their own mistakes, and other factions show up with equally odd plans. Cue the Zealot, who isn’t as fond of the 80s kids show, but still points out that the Decepticons in particular and Cybertron in general lasting 4,000,000 years (give or take a few hours) is kind of silly. Note that there will be a few swears now and then, but it’s not habitual.

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