Fandom

The Transformers fandom is the most intelligent, discerning, sophisticated and important group of people in the world today. Without their charitable support, Hasbro would be forced to mothball the Transformers brand and would probably enter bankruptcy, taking the entire world economy with it.

Accomplishments

Among the amazing discoveries and conclusions of the fandom are the following:

• The Transformers brand is hanging onto life by the most fragile of threads, and any attempt to do something new will ruin Transformers forever.
• Liking things is stupid. If you had half a brain you would realize how terrible everything is and complain about it endlessly. Further, this is rational and constructive behavior. Hasblo will never learn and get things right if we don't save them by telling them how stupid they are.
• Literally everybody hates Playskoolish neon colors, therefore toys will sell better if they are entirely black.
• Any feature included or removed for safety reasons is a slap in the face to true fans.
• Children are not an important segment of the Transformers market.
• Prototypes and test shots that are clearly stamped with the words "not for sale" are actually totally fine to buy over eBay from people in China. There is nothing remotely shady about this.
• It is possible to determine with complete certainty that a product/franchise/work of art will suck as much as eight months before said entity is completed, much less shown to the public or actually released.
• The most important thing for the brand to do is release homages of Generation 1 characters over and over and over and over and over.
• Any homage of a Generation 1 character which is not given the name of the original character is a direct insult to all fans.
• Any character which is given the name of a Generation 1 character which is not an homage to the original character is a direct insult to all fans.
• Any character which is given the name of a Generation 1 character and is also an homage of the same character but who doesn't behave exactly like the Generation 1 character is a direct insult to all fans.
• Because all fans have an inalienable right to own every toy, toys which would never be released under normal circumstances should never be given a chance at release through exclusive channels. It would be better for the toy to never be released at all than for some people to get to enjoy it.
• Optimus is a truck, not a monkey.
• Armada? I think you mean Pokéformers.
• Bayformers are much less realistic than Generation 1 Transformers.
• Dreamwave's artwork was AWESOME as long as sales were high. Once the company started going downhill, everyone had suddenly always been fully aware how AWFUL Superstar Funana's art was right from the start.
• Japan is much more important and profitable market than North America. Nobody likes Europe, not even Hasbro.
• Takara products are always superior.
• Hasbro ruins everything Takara does.

The Anti-Fans

They obviously wrote the above "Parody", so let's see if they can take the heat.

The Anti-Fans are a group of insecure 20-30 something year olds who believe taking a more pessimistic, corporate worshipining position somehow makes you more mature. They operate on the larger boards, especially TFW2005 and Allspark which have very strict moderation; so they can get away with being very annoying without anyone attacking them or pointing out they're full of rubbish. They seem to make a living off mocking gripes of the fandom, because like, come on, what's more immature than collecting children's toys and complaining about them? Probably complainining incessantly about fans. But that's not the point!

The most famous Anti-Fans include It'sWalky, author of the Child Pornography comic strip [i]Shortpacked[/i], Khan, and Ben Stiller.

Beliefs and Practices:

• Hasbro are YOUR GODS. They're not 100% perfect, since you have to think they have one or two minor, insignifcant flaws just so you can say "I don't worship Hasbro!" after you just spend 300 words tearing into anyone who points out Classic Starscream's deco looks like shit.

• The movie is to be revered as the best thing that ever happened to the fandom. They were doing us a favour by completely disregarding the original designs and personalities of the some the original characters, hiring one of the most "MTV" directors in Hollywood. Anyone who hates the movie is a "hater", according to Don Murphy, Nelson, and the easily impressionable half of the fanbase that picked up on this bizarre form of viral marketting, and should be boiled alive.

Apprently, disliking and liking something are not the flip side of the same coin as we've been led to believe. Oh no. If you hate things, it makes you evil, since it's easier on the peons' brains to think "Hate=Bad" than considering any level of complication.

• Going by this reasoning, the sheer prospect of Mariah Carey releasing a new album would generate enough Evil to raise Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Hitler's moustache from the dead. And turn Simon Cowell into some kind of fire breathing Demigod.

• Generation one was, like, cool in the 80s man, but it's no good now. I mean haven't you see the cartoon!? The like, plot is totally whack. I don't know exactly where but this guy told me and I think I kind of remember something about the Constructicons not being explained. The several hundred issue Marvel comic alternately does not exist, or is shit(without any explanation as to why, of course).

This is why there are still constant slews of toys, comics, wallclocks and lampshades based on G1, yet comparitvely nothing on the much less well recieved Armada series - just to rub it in our faces how rubbish it is.

• Constant fixation on the TAKARA SUPERIOR thing, failing to realise that most fans consider both Hasbro and Takara equally hokey.

• Outright ignoring the fact that Hasbro fails to release slews of Transformers related product in Europe, and charges 2 to 3 times for it, for no logical reason, which harms sales horribly. Hasbro know what they're doing! I mean how do stay on top if they keep fucking up!? It's not as if they have brands like Transformers, GiJoe, and Marvel Legends that millions of kids and collectors will buy no matter what!

• Collectors do not matter. YOU do not matter. What you want does not matter. It is WRONG to fantasise, or want to be treated fairly for your lifelong support of Hasbro/Takaras product. You are the dirt beneath Aaron Archer's feat. You deserve to be rolled up and smoked by Don Murphy, or spend the rest of your days cleaning Michael Bay's enormous penis.

• Failing to realise that you probably should do what the collectors want, since kids will buy it anyway and feel all grown up buying collectory stuff.

• Instead of forming logical arguments as to why Transformers fans are so ridiculous; just make a shitty comic where a character based on the author gets increasingly angry at a misrepresentation of a particular practice of the fandom. This gains you loyal followers to do your arguing for you, but also makes you look like a bit of twat.

• Believing that the movie was anything more than a badly scripted Popcorn flick that invetibly broke all kinds of records simply due to the fact that it had lots of stuff blowing up in new and exciting ways, or claiming that Transformers could NEVER have been anything more than a rubbishy Popcorn flick, with no reason as to why. Once again, the Marvel comic book does not exist.

• The designs had to be changed to get across the idea that this is a bold, new, grown up Transformers, yet the plot and jokes are just about as immature as you can get.

• The new designs are the only way the Transformers could work in live action. Don't you remember all the complaints about the Ice-skating Transformer and how shit did!? Well we were all thinking it! We have absolutely no evidence to prove it but... it just looks SO cartoony!

• Literally translating "G1 based" to mean taking the cartoon models. rendering them in 3D and sticking them in a movie with some cheap shaders on. I have no idea how ANYONE could be stupid enough to think that's what fans want, especially since half the fun of a movie is to see how they tweak the designs, but what have you.

• Following from the last point, failing to realise the other half of the fun of a movie is to see the characters we've grown to know and love in a movie. As long as it's GIANT ROBOTS THAT FUCKING TRANSFORM, it's Transformers. Not Gobots. Or Roadbots. Or Macross. Or those Gundams that sort of Transform.

• The bizarre notion that people actually think for themselves when being blasted full on with Hollywood hype designed to do exactly the opposite, and that anyone trying to get someone else to re-asses their own opinion is being a total NAZI.

• If it makes a lot of money, it's good and was done by geniuses. Generally, right wing economics are aces. This is probably why Hasbro rip off Sweden on the cost of Transformers, obviously, to prove that socialism could never work.

• Change is good. Any change. For any reason. G1 should be left behind where it is. I mean, it's not as if Spider-man, X-men, Fantastic Four and other similiarly ridiculous comic booky type things have remained in the same universe for decades.

The argument that if something changes, the reason for someone being a fan of it may no longer be there, doesn't hold water. They just ignore it and make more comics about TAKARA SUPERIOR.

• PLASTIC. Constantly making fun of anyone who suggests that certain Transformer toys look "playskooly". The reason for this is that many Transformers toys appear "cheap" because of the use of somewhat translucent plastics which swallow details, which only appears to have been recently corrected(since the Animated toys use less detail). Anti-fans never really deal with this properly, going off on some stupid tangent or just making fun of the very assertion that a greedy corporate entity would cheap out on plastic or deco designers.

Pointing out that Hasbro's Marvel Legends shows the same symptoms as their Transformers did, and that other lines had much better paint apps for your money, gets them very angry, and to claim incredible knowledge of the toy making procedure, yet never sharing it with any of us, especially the bit of how it's so much different for Hasbro than it is for Toybiz. Eventually, they just call you insane and ignore you, since nobody has to defend their weakly formulated support of sub-par toys to an insane person.

• They almost always make out the cry for better paint apps to mean "EVERYTHING IN BLACK". Which is kind of funny, because these people also tend to support the movie, which has the motto EVERYTHING IN BLACK OR GREY. Attempting to improve the paint apps on Transformers will have them suddenly turn into Spawn figures, probably due to the evil magics of the GEEWUNNERS.

• This general irritating idea that "Generation 1" was just a phase of Transformers, and not the original, defining series. The fact that it was the only universe that was truly expanded through twice as many cartoons, hundreds of comics, hundreds of toys, and that pierced the mainstream and is still often harkened back to today, doesn't matter in their quest to feel more mature and piss on everyone that's stuck in the 80s. Because our current generation is SO MUCH more exciting. With all the crappy consumerism and cheesy pop music in our current era, it's nothing at all like the 80s with iPods and crappier non-mainstream bands.

• Failure to pay attention that Beast Wars was an entirely different context to G1, so many of the same defenses for it do not apply to the movie/other new cartoons.

• Names mean nothing and can be assigned to any character at any time. For instance, it would have been acceptable to call a short black guy with purple Mascara "Optimus Prime" in the movie, and it wouldn't have ruined Prime's public image, at all.

• Starscream is a rubbish character and the only interesting part of him that he's a traitor. All the millions of fans he has don't count since they're all gays and girls.

History

It got its start as an organized entity in the 1980s through the establishment of unofficial fan clubs, most notably TransMasters, but it wasn't until the mid-1990s and the beginning of the Internet boom that fandom (both of Transformers and in general) took off. Starting in alt.toys.transformers and then expanding into innumerable web-based fora, the once tight-knit fandom is now too large for anyone to really know everyone. But would you really want to?

External links

• Shortpacked! - A webcomic which frequently documents the academic findings of various fandoms.
  
  
  From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.