Action Blast 1
| This article is about the Universe (2008) flash cartoon. For the programming block, see Action Blast!. |
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 Look what we found under the couch! | ||||||
| "Action Blast 1" | ||||||
| Airdate | November 10, 2008 | |||||
It's like "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1", only in Flash and with random character models!
Synopsis
Optimus Prime relates a history of the early war with all the excitement and eloquence of someone using a teleprompter for the first time. He tells how Cybertron once was at peace, but political corruption led to an energy crisis that split the Transformer race in two and began an unstoppable war. At this point, Megatron arose to take command of the Decepticons. Thankfully, the Autobots happened to stumble upon a lost ancient relic known only as the "Matrix", and it provided the Autobots with a new leader of their own: Optimus Prime. Searching for more energon, the Autobots took to space, and the Decepticons followed. They battled in space, and the Autobot ship crashed on modern-day Earth. Everybody survived and trans-scanned Earth vehicles with their eye-beams, and now their war continues...
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
Other notes
Animation or technical errors
- Not really a glitch, but it is rather primitive Flash animation. No one moves so much as glides across a static backdrop.
- Likewise, there is little flow to the art style, which seems to change from scene to scene.
Continuity errors
- The continuity presented here is clearly based on early Generation 1, especially the beginning of "More than Meets the Eye", but in its short run time, it manages to throw enough new spanners into the works that it decidedly does not fit any pre-existing continuity.
Transformers references
- According to Hasbro's TFWiki.net Q&A answers for March 2009, Optimus Prime was voiced by Ron Hayden. Hayden appears to have been the same voice used for the soundbox included with the 2006 "DVD" release of the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime figure, as well as the early version of the movie Optimus Prime Voice Changer helmet.
- Character models seem pulled at random from a variety of sources: Classics, Generation 1, Alternators, IDW comics, and just plain made up outta nowhere.
- Headscratchingly, not a single character shown is based on an actual Universe toy. Even Starscream, whose Classics toy was redecoed in Universe, has his Classics deco.
- The Autobot and Decepticon ships are clearly the Ark and the Nemesis from the Generation 1 cartoon. The Ark, in particular, is nothing more than an especially blatant re-drawing of the ship's original animation model.
- The Transformers arriving on modern-day Earth (rather than 4 million years ago, as in Generation 1 material produced in the '80s) and scanning vehicles themselves that they are then immediately able to transform into (as opposed to using external technology and having to be physically rebuilt) are concepts that were likely borrowed from latter Transformers series. Optimus Prime's scanning mirrors his Armada counterpart's in this respect.
Trivia
- What exactly is an "action blast"?
- This "webisode" was one of several cartoons parodied at the BotCon 2009 MSTF panel.
