Hasbro-er, Unicron-Devours the Gobots

I found this video a long time ago, and I wish it had better video quality. The bad sound quality, on the other hand, enhances it a bit in my mind.



If you don't know what I mean by poor sound quality enhancing the audio, there's a bit in the TF:TM soundtrack rip that strikes a dischordant note, and it somehow suits the scene perfectly.

If you experienced the original Transformers, you've probably encountered their early competitors/prototypes, the Gobots. (More information here.) The Gobots' descent into relative obscurity is mostly deserved-their cartoon was like Scooby Doo with giant alien robots instead of people dressing as ghosts all the time. (Okay, it was more serious than that. But the quality was fairly similar.)

It should be noted, however, that the Gobot footage in this video is from the one piece of Gobot fiction that was actually pretty decent, Battle of the Rock Lords. (Yes, their best fiction involved them crossing over with guys made of rock who turned into rocks. Get over it.) Some people will probably try to shoot me for saying this, but I think BotRL was slightly better than most episodes of the Transformers cartoon I've seen. (Helpful hint: You can't shoot me through your monitor.)

And it's not like Gobots was a bad idea-Transformers is essentially the same one, but different. (The main variation comes from the Gobots being human cyborg alien robots, whereas the Transformers are living robot alien robots.) It's just that Gobots had an atrocious execution of the idea, whereas Transformers had a resonant and effective one.

Just to prove that there were occasionally nifty Gobots, here's a clip from an episode of the cartoon:



Pathfinder (the female spaceship) and Buggyman (the... buggy bad guy) are two of the three greatest Gobots. Buggyman is more competent and has more attitude than the entire rest of the villainous cast combined (later in the same episode, he singlehandedly rescues his incompetent leaders from four Guardians, although the animation could be interpreted as him killing them and committing suicide, as he was using a gun that conferred invisibility on its targets), and neither he nor Pathfinder have ugly Gobot faces. The other coolest Gobot is another Renegade named Bugsie, who is cool because 1) his toy looks like the devil (his appearance in the cartoon was decidedly different, although still nice), and 2) we never see him get clobbered like the rest of the villains. (At least, not in the only appearance of his I've seen, from Battle of the Rock Lords. Of course, this was because he kept mysteriously vanishing during fight scenes where the Renegades were supposed to lose, only to mysteriously reappear afterwards, often retreating from the same battle he wasn't seen fighting in.)

Probably the worst part about Gobots, though, is that Tonka, its original propietor, wasn't very bright when it came to legal issues. Why?

They claimed that Mighty Orbots (see intro here) was infringing on their copyright, but ignored Transformers. This is incredibly stupid for a host of reasons.

1. Mighty Orbots had far more in common with costumed superheroes than Gobots. The robot transformations were from robot to bigger, stronger robot that looked similar.
2. Mighty Orbots had more in common with Voltron than with Gobots, as a team of robots that combined into a bigger robot. (Granted, Gobots did this later on in their franchise, and so did Transformers, but it was simply the natural evolution of any long-running robot toyline with links to Japan.)
3. Transformers had almost everything in common with Gobots, the only truly significant difference in concept being the whole cyborg vs. robot thing. The execution differed only in quality, no matter what other Transformers fans might tell you.
4. Transformers cleaned Gobots' clocks in marketing, product charisma (most Transformer toys were considerably bigger than most Gobot toys, with creepy exceptions, and also had cool weapons and stuff, which Gobot toys did not), and of course the media (aka the marketing).
5. Mighty Orbots' toyline was apparently never produced (just as well-it would have been awful), and only a single thirteen episode season of the series aired because of Tonka's lawsuit.

I'm sure I could go on, but I won't, because hardly anyone cares about Gobots. Or Orbots.