I would be remiss in my role as chronicler if I didn’t bring up a counterpoint to a previous perspective on why this first pitch, and presumably the one after it, is so far removed from the show we already had with the miniseries and continued to have with the show we finally got. In the comments of part one the owner of the Sunbow/Marvel Archive wrote in to challenge Chris McFeely’s take (which he quoted from Marvel Comics’ Jim Shooter) on why Sunbow and Marvel Productions went with such a radical change. It was his statement (or her–this is the internet and I wasn’t given a name so I’m covering my rear) that Marvel Productions “simply did not have the legal right to look at development work Marvel Comics created for their client Griffin-Bacal, until Griffin-Bacal contracted them to create this network pitch”. So what Jeffrey Scott was doing was doing the best he could with what he got.
I’m not so convinced, mostly because that would have been a really dumb decision on someone’s part. You’d think you’d want your client to see the story they approved for the toys used in the pitch to the network. That same backstory was on the packaging and promotional material already out in stores, plus Sunbow and Marvel already worked on the miniseries, so unless the timeline is really weird they should already know what happened in the first miniseries. This could explain why the second pitch is closer to what the toys were doing, and one change we’ll start seeing here was CBS’s fault, but whose to say Shooter had all the information when he made the quoted comment? I wasn’t there, but I have to at least acknowledge this new data in the name of fairness. In the end you’ll have to decide. We’re here to talk about Deceptions.
Speaking of part one, the backstory tells us that the Decepticons are now all dead, possessing machines on Earth like Starscream did in season 3. I’m not going to compare it to his mutant spark, an idea that started with Beast Wars while season 3 just called it his ghost (his namesake in the early episodes of Transformers Energon also got to be a ghost), and I made my comparison last time to other uses of the idea. The Decepticons would have been the “villain of the week”, which I guess would be their way to get the other toys in despite the Decepticons at the time being fewer in number than the Autobots even without packaging goofs like the red Bumblebee or the car that was neither Bumblebee nor Cliffjumper. (Fans named him “Bumblejumper” for years until Dreamwave officially named him the shortened name “Bumper”, which is a better name in my opinion and now I want one because he was a fun character in that comic.) That’s not the only thing different about the Decepticons in this story. Remember than cannon that was stolen from the Russians in the backstory?
BW Media Spotlight 
Being Kenough
Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com
I was hoping to save this in the currently nonexistent buffer I’ve been trying to put together since things settled down but…let’s just say I’m having a bad day and move on.
I am not the target audience for the Barbie movie because I’m a man who used to be a boy. That doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for it as a story fan and toy collector, though. I only played with Barbies once with a neighbor (oddly not with my cousins or even their kids), but I do respect that there’s some serious history behind this toyline created in 1959 by Ruth Handler. Barbie is supposed to be a model/actress/occasional musician, with fellow model Ken as her beau. We’ve seen celebrities date and marry co-stars before. The girl has a whole history with friends and little sisters.
And Greta Gerwig ignored all of it.
Instead she decided to make a story that treats the dreamworld as a problem, pushing for Barbie to enter the real world and learning to be her own person. That kind of ignores the various animated movies, specials, comics, Little Golden Books (they actually used pictures of the dolls for the images), games, and other media that existed for years. It’s a shame because the franchise who once bore the tagline “we girls can do anything” opted to reject Barbie’s world in favor of what appears to me as a weaker message. I could almost get myself to watch prior Barbie content if the story is good. The movie just doesn’t appeal to me and, not surprising for modern Hollywood, seems antagonistic to what your average militant feminist sees in Barbie’s world.
However, some defenders of the movie has actually looked to Ken’s story arc. Instead of the fun-loving boyfriend he and the other Kens (because Gerwig also didn’t notice that Barbie’s world includes guys not named Ken, as if every doll is supposed to be all of Barbie’s world and not just an excuse to sell a new outfit for as much moolah as Mattel can get out of the parents) are basically the purse puppies of the Barbies. That is until he undergoes an actual character arc. It’s not surprising that fellow Y chromosome bearer Literature Devil would focus on Ken’s journey. It does sound interesting, but not enough to get me to watch the movie. Enough out of me, though. Let’s hear from LD.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on October 2, 2025 in Movie Spotlight and tagged Barbie, commentary, Ken.
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