"Thrilling 30" Springer (2013)

It has often been said that The Transformers: The Movie cribbed liberally from concepts used in Star Wars. Although it's not the case that everything can be connected one-to-one between the two movies, it's really not a huge stretch. For some examples, Unicron is the Death Star, Hot Rod is Luke Skywalker, and Arcee is Princess Leia. By this analogy, Springer is pretty obviously Han Solo. At the very least, scriptwriter Ron Friedman had one of actor Harrison Ford's roles explicitly in mind. A draft of the movie script actually calls Springer "a very muscular and bantering 'Indiana Jones' type" (go to page 14, bottom of the page, to see the quote).

Studio Series Sweep (2021)

I haven't exactly been kind to Scourge in the past few months. Despite being one of the most prominent of the new characters created for The Transformers: The Movie, I find that he was never given much of a personality. In my review of Scourge's Titans Return figure, I blamed some of that on his being given command of a group of identical troops, called "the Sweeps." But while I find Scourge's personality rather forgettable, the toys he's been given in recent years have been interesting takes on the movie's character model. So, given that Scourge's Studio Series toy was given a redeco (and slight remold) as a Sweep, this seems an opportunity to redress the balance.

The Hard Life... Lives, Plural... of Professor Martin Stein: A Follow-Up

A lifetime ago...  more than 17 years, as it happens, I wrote a trio of posts about the then-history of Firestorm, arguably my favorite super-hero, specifically through the lens of Professor Martin Stein, who for much of Firestorm's history was one-half of the composite character. I observed that Stein had really been put through the ringer, and indeed when I was writing in 2009, it wasn't entirely clear what was going on with the character. I later learned that this was more or less the reality for the writers, as well. DC's publishers really didn't know what to do with the "old guy" (as they sometimes derogatorily referred to Professor Stein, despite the character having been consistently middle-aged at the most). Now that Firestorm is back on comic book shelves again, and selling extremely well by all indications, it seemed that it was time for a follow-up. While I'll try to avoid significant spoilers for the current series, be warned, I consider anything more than a few years old to be fair game.

Generations Selects Cyclonus & Nightstick (2022)

As was the case with both Scourge and Galvatron, Cyclonus was created when Unicron changed an existing Decepticon's body into a new warrior, but the identity of the Decepticon who became Cyclonus has been the source of debate for many years. Was he previously Skywarp, which would be consistent with Scourge's transformation from Thundercracker, or was he in fact Bombshell, who was the first and most prominent of the two Decepticons seen being reformatted into Cyclonus-like forms in The Transformers: The Movie?¹ Perhaps it doesn't really matter, since (like Scourge) Cyclonus' antecedent is generally assumed to have been dead prior to reformatting, and the subject was never brought up again until self-conscious fan-oriented fiction came along.²

Fall of Cybertron Ultra Magnus (2012)

Most of the original characters introduced in The Transformers: The Movie were actively created for the movie, and indeed had their robot modes mapped out even before toys had been designed for them (very much the opposite of the usual process at the time). Ultra Magnus, who seemed to serve a "red herring" role in the movie as the heir apparent to the role of leader of the Autobots after Optimus Prime was killed, was the exception, in that he was created to be attached to a pre-existing mold, which itself was created for the Diaclone line (as was the case for many of the first couple of years' worth of Transformers toys) as the "Powered Convoy," released in Japan two years before the Transformers themselves began to come out. While the Diaclone "Battle Convoy" came to America as "Optimus Prime," the "Powered Convoy" (which shared the same basic truck cab as "Battle Convoy"... only in white... but came with a new trailer which could combine with it to form a larger robot) became the original "Ultra Magnus" toy.

This feature is not about that original toy, which I haven't owned in many years.^*

Family Feud at 50

Family Feud set from 1976-1981.
Art by "wheelgenius" on Deviant Art

The classic game show, Family Feud premiered on July 12, 1976 on ABC. While it's run since then has not been entirely uninterrupted, it's been on the air far more often than it's been off of it. There are so many episodes now in existence that there are two distinct 24/7 streaming channels, each devoted to a different era. Family Feud is so deeply embedded in our culture that it's fair to say that the phrase "Survey Says!" immediately brings the show to mind for the vast majority of people, and that if one mentions "three strikes," there's nearly as much of a chance that one will think of this show as that they'll think of baseball.

Titans Return Scourge (2016)

When Megatron was transformed by Unicron into Galvatron in The Transformers: The Movie, he was not the only character given an upgrade. Thundercracker, one the original Decepticon jets, was reformatted into Scourge, although unlike Galvatron having been Megatron, Scourge is almost always considered a new character entirely, and no one seems to care about his having previously been Thundercracker except as a strictly academic exercise. The usual explanation for this is that Thundercracker was dead when his corpse was used to create Scourge, but since Thundercracker was clearly still alive when tossed out of Astrotrain, I really don't see why we should assume he simply "fell offline" while floating in space when Megatron didn't.^* Such are the thoughts of the obsessive Transformers fan....