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Based on tons of evidence, I didn't know Japanese culture had anything besides robots!

We already have reversible robots.. Why not reversible computers?

"Apple Toast-Or! From G5 Power, to nice warm toast, back to G5 Power again!"

LOL... but... isn't your username from one? (granted it was from the movie based off the series but...)

What worse about Grimlock, check out his stats. Somehow I dont remember his intelligence being a 10. Another thing...is it just me, or is practically every one of those things now a "combiner"? Oh well, its better than Pokemon.

Scooby Doo didn't "begin" the Transformers resurgence. Transformers never actually died out -- Hasbro's been keeping the brand active ever since the mid-80's, in one form or another.

What's new here is the activity with the "Generation One" line of toys, from the mid- to late-eighties before "Generation Two" and, eventually, "Beast Wars". And the reason is simple: all the fans who've been actively demanding DVD releases of "Transformers: The Movie" for years and snatching up mint-in-box versions of every TF toy that's come out since 1990 are now in their mid- to late-twenties, with oodles of disposable income. It's now economically feasible for a company to release the entire first season of TF cartoons on DVD, or for a fairly small company to license a new comic book based on the original toys, because the fans now have money and even the people who haven't thought about TF since the movie was released have enough money to start reliving their childhoods.

If Hasbro decides to re-release the original G1 toys the way Takara is in Japan, rest assured there will be a sizable audience of buyers. Meanwhile, the new "Armada" toys, comics and cartoons coming out are being targetted towards children, not collectors (despite reusing many G1 names and faces) -- because, hey, they're still toys, right?

There's just something about these toys that people love, and never forgot about. You ask me, it's the attention to detail -- all of the G1 vehicles were modelled on real cars, trucks and planes, and even the Dinobots and Insecticons were identical enough to their organic counterparts to impress. The robots were a bit chunky (okay, a lot chunky in most cases), but still beautiful in their own way.

These are exactly the reasons I love the "Robots in Disguise" toys, incidentally -- authenticity and elegance, with the added bonus of much, much more posability for the robots. "Armada" may take the posability tack, but the vehicles aren't "real" anymore and the robots are far less elegant. I may buy them, but probably not. G1 is where it's at for me.

Screw the kids. Optimus prime needs to be in my computer room next to his 20 year old brother.

It's a bit of a dilemma, you see. On the one hand, every time we make some change to our daily routine because of this despicable terrorist act--dropping episodes, delaying the premiere of shows, editing the World Trade Center out of the Spiderman movie altogether--we are in some small sense handing the terrorists a victory, acknowledging that they've affected us exactly the way they wanted. On the other hand, people should have a right to watch TV to try to forget the tragedy for a while and destress from the whole thing without being reminded of it by what's on the set.

Hopefully the pre-emptions and delays will be only temporary, for just a month or two until such time as people are a little less sensitive. The Buffy episode that was delayed over Columbine was eventually aired, after all. The networks did pay money for these shows, and they'll want to use them sooner or later.