Saturday Six – Favorite Generation 1 Transformers

Welcome to the Saturday Six, where each week I let you get to know me a bit better with the help of a list. Any idiot can do a Top 5 list, which is why I kicked it up a notch to a Top 6. This week’s topic: Transformers

So this week marked the release of the new Michael Bay Transformers movie. I honestly couldn’t care less. I used to be a huge Transformers fan back in the day. You could almost say I was a Transformers hipster, as it were. Back in college, I spent weeks downloading episodes, including horribly subtitled episodes of the Japanese only series of Scramble City, Headmasters, Masterforce, Victory, and Zone. I watched all of them back to back over the course of several weeks, including all of Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and Robots in Disguise, which amounts to nearly 400 episodes. So I know of what I speak when it comes to Transformers. Michael Bay knows nothing of Transformers, and Transformers 2 is the only movie I’ve ever almost walked out of. While the movies may have soured me, I think everyone can agree that the original 80’s cartoon was chock full of craziness and awesome characters and can never really be duplicated, no matter how many times Hasbro tries.

1. Optimus Prime – I’m sorry, you just can’t do a Transformers list without Optimus. As I’ve mentioned before, I still cry every time he dies in Transformers: The Movie. Peter Cullen just plays him with such gravitas that he sounds so damn sincere and awesome. He’s pretty much everything a role model should be, and he’s my hero.

 

2. Grimlock – Look, I am not immune to the shiny dinosaurs. While he sounded like he had a learning disability, in certain continuities, Grimlock was actually the leader of the Autobots, even if he almost never transformed out of Dinobot mode.

 

3. Blaster – While Shockwave was awesome, is there anything more 80’s than a giant orange boombox that speaks jive? I submit that there is not.

 

4. Starscream – It’s all in in that voice. I don’t think he would have been half the character he was, nor the show nearly as successful, had anyone else been cast in the role. Sure, he sounded exactly like Cobra Commander and he never actually managed to do anything right, but you always wanted him to.

 

5. Fortress Maximus – The absolute largest Transformers toy ever made, or at least it was until the recently released crazy sized Metroplex. Sure, he was only in 4 episodes in the American cartoon, but he’s quite important in the later Japanese series, even leading the team. Plus, his head composed of a Transformer, whose head itself is also composed yet another Transformer. Well, actually Spike Witwicky turned into a cyborg. The cartoon got really crazy at the end. I actually have a Korean knock off version of this I spent $150 dollars on.

 

6. Scourge – He was dumb enough to try to use the Autobot matrix of leadership, even though he is clearly a Decepticon. As one might expect, that didn’t turn out to well.

 

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook