HUB

[Rollo Tomassi]

You find lots of neat old stuff in the attic.

[anarky]

I think Roller only got used in the original miniseries. It tried a bit too hard to showcase everyone's abilities and such. Though I never had a toy that could turn its hand into a mace, grappling hook, or blowtorch.

[Ran]

So tonight on Batman, Aunt Harriet was kidnapped. The "crooks" tied her up over a pot of burning oil and demanded $100,000. I guess they didn't think highly of Aunt Harriet.

[anarky]

Y'know, if I hadn't been a kid when they were originally on, and there weren't awesome toylines and far better comic books based on the same characters, I would've hated GIJoe and Transformers. Those shows are both shit. Transformers especially has some of the worst animation I've seen, and so many obvious miscolorations.

Still, I love those shows, shitty as they might be.

[Ran]

Y'know, if I hadn't been a kid when they were originally on, and there weren't awesome toylines and far better comic books based on the same characters, I would've hated GIJoe and Transformers. Those shows are both shit. Transformers especially has some of the worst animation I've seen, and so many obvious miscolorations.

Still, I love those shows, shitty as they might be.

I know exactly what you mean. Tonight they are showing Jetfire's intro episode. His logo keeps changing from Autobot to Decepticon and red to purple every 2 seconds. Seems like his size isn't consistent either. Then there is Prime's trailer randomly showing up and vanishing when he's in vehicle mode.

[anarky]

If I'm figuring the dates properly, GIJoe is on the second miniseries. The first had all the Wave 1 figures plus Duke, Baroness, Destro, Trip-Wire, Doc, Cover Girl, and possibly Airborne. Clutch was already in his second uniform, but I didn't see Grunt to know whether he had his second yet. Cover Girl was blonde. The Skystrikers were a major plot point, but Ace was nowhere to be seen.

Now, the current series is introducing the rest of the Wave 2 characters (Spirit, Mutt, Roadblock, etc), but has also debuted Flint, Snake Eyes' second uniform, Lady Jaye, and Shipwreck. These were definitely Wave 3, since the figures had the heads that could look up and down.

Does this mean we had to wait a full year for a Flint figure?

[Ran]

Yojoe says Flint didn't come out until 1985. I guess that sounds right because I remember him being one of the "newer" Joes in the cartoon/figure line.

[anarky]

Six more interesting things I caught tonight:

1) Though they were given names initially, the Dinobots appeared to literally have the brains of dinosaurs before getting those doodads installed. Curiously, Wheeljack was shown working on those things early in the process of building the Dinobots. So why didn't he put them in in the first place, or bring them up when Prime ordered the Dinobots to be deactivated? The Dinobots are given the power of speech when they're installed, which, obviously, makes them far more useful. Also, Grimlock doesn't refer to himself in the third person a single time.

2) When the Autobots are deactivated, Wheeljack reactivates them by drying them off with Sideswipe's flare gun and then recharging them with Bluestreak's "volts." So, let me get this straight. I can buy that one of the four main Autobot warriors (meaning those whose function actually is "warrior," IIRC, just Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Cliffjumper, and Windcharger to begin with) could put his gun on low power, but the only Autobot gunner carries a gun that just, effectively, recharges his enemies? No wonder they can never beat the Decepticons.

3) When the Autobots arrive at the dam, all of them are shown transforming from car to robot. Except Bluestreak, who drives up as a car, is seen transforming from robot to car, and then is seen in the next frame as a robot.

4) For that matter, seriously, the number of major fuckups in Transformers better have cost someone a job. Characters are routinely miscolored (sometimes even switching colors mid-scene), speak in the wrong voice, or appear when they're established to be elsewhere. One random yellow Seeker foot in this one could mean Sunstorm appeared. It's pretty much a given that the number of Decepticons varies; sometimes, it's just the core members (Megatron, the three main jets, Soundwave, Lazerbeak, Rumble, Ravage, and the three components of Reflector), rarely Frenzy or Buzzsaw show up, often there are a few unexplained Decepticons who look exactly like Reflector components (as many as six at a time), and occasionally there are random unexplained extra Seekers. Seriously, the quality control is embarrassing.

5) In the original GIJoe miniseries, Breaker had an exaggerated southern accent. Very appropriate, since he's from Gatlinburg. Clutch has a nondescript, plain voice. In the second miniseries, Breaker has apparently become mute, and Clutch speaks with the original Breaker voice and accent. Which makes no sense, since he's from the same city as Bruce Springsteen.

6) Buried in the credits of GIJoe was the name Bruce Timm. He apparently did backgrounds. The name may be familiar as one of the main architects of Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League.

[Diabolical]

Do you really think anyone gave a shit about quality and continuity?

They were just 22 minute commercials designed to entertain 7-year-old.

[anarky]

I'm just saying, without the context of watching them as a kid, I can see why they never caught on with adults in the 1980s.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I'm just saying, without the context of watching them as a kid, I can see why they never caught on with adults in the 1980s.

Yeah, they weren't Emmy winners for sure. But they did their job. Somehow I got suckered into buying the same F-15 Jet six times because each one had a different "personality". Well played Hasbro. Well played.

[anarky]

And tonight's GIJoe featured a lone Crimson Guardsman. Another character introduced in the toon about a full year before he saw plastic.

Of course, CG's were introduced in the comic about the same time, though their costumes were different. Very similar to HISS Drivers at first, IIRC.

[Ran]

I like how they are skating around the Arctic shooting the laser core to keep it away from their enemies instead of shooting at each other.

[anarky]

Some of the shit they show, though.... It's like, "We've got Transformers, and GIJoe, and Batman, and Batman Beyond, and Fraggle Rock. That's most of our budget. What else can we get really dirt cheap? The Men in Black cartoon? The shitty Honey I Shrunk the Kids show? Take 'em. People will be too busy praising our other stuff to care."

[anarky]

I learned something new, something new today!

Browsing through tfwiki.net, I learned that the original masters of the show (Transformers, though this presumably affects GIJoe as well) were in shitty shape. Kid Rhino "restored" them using unfinished animation and touching it up, which led to an insane amount of errors--complete miscolorations that hadn't been in the original show, non-moving scenes, wonky sound effects, flipped images. The recent Shout Factory releases were re-restored, taking the Rhino versions, comparing them to old tapes of the show, and fixing most (but not all) of the errors.

One error I specifically looked for was Bluestreak's backwards transformation in "SOS Dinobots." That was an error unique to the Rhino version. So The Hub is airing the Rhino versions. So, while not Emmy-worthy, they weren't quite as bad as they appear to be from this.

They're also airing out of order. Today's episode was the first appearance of Skyfire since he "died." There was no explanation; he was just there. That's what made me look up all this, since I vaguely remembered an episode with Sideswipe digging him out. Sure enough, there've been a few skipped episodes already.

Not a major gripe, but you'd think the company that owns them and the network would air the best versions possible, in the correct order.