Picture the scene. You’re 8 years old. You like cars and you like robots. It’s the mid-eighties, your hair is bigger than your dad’s credit card statement and everything’s good. The biggest debate is whether Megatron could kill Darth Vader and you wonder if that kid who says his dad works for a toy company and owns a full size Death-Star is actually telling the truth. Yes, in these days of iPhone that, Digg this and Credit Crunch the other, it was a simpler time.
Transformers, as you all know, were the best toys of all time and now, fast forward to the dark days of 2009 and there’s a glimmer of hope as of last night, Michael Bay’s trailer for the new Transformers film is released, getting us all excited about the film coming out in June.
Looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?
To celebrate this occasion, we went into the loft, cried that our parents had thrown out all of our old ‘toys’ and then went online to see what the old-school Transformers were really like back in the day and came up with this list, a list of the crappest Transformers and their cars:
9) Blurr
Remember Blurr? He was the fastest Transformer of them all. He was blue and spoke in a way that was more annoying than working from home on a snow day. Check out this picture if you don’t believe me on how awful he was. Words cannot explain the annoyance of this crappy invention. And, as a toy, his car was rubbish, looking like a load of mints stuck together.
Blurr - why would you dress up as him?
8) Astrotrain
This is a toy that your parents loved, firstly it was the toy of two non-violent things: A train and a space shuttle. How can you fight with that? It was heavy though, so you could possibly hit your brother over the head with it. Astrotrain reminds me of Nightboat from the Simpsons – how could he get anywhere unless there was a railway track?? Rubbish.
All aboard train crap
7) Soundwave
Another piece of rubbish. Not a car, and not even able to move under his own steam, so a bit suspect on being on our list, he was a walkman when they were cool. I guess now he’d be an Ipod touch. Hang on a mo, he’s evil isn’t he – he’d probably be a Zune then. He couldn’t even really speak; only is noteworthy due to his ‘relationship’ with Megatron.
Soundwave - the first gay Transformer?
6) Rodimus Prime
He was a red truck-thingie. He had a lot to live up to, replacing the truck that was Optimus Prime in the original movie (not the one that came out a couple of years ago, the one that came out in 1986) all the fans hated him and his toy was rubbish. It was like a drumstick on wheels. Fortunately even the toy makers saw that he was crap and bought Optimus Prime back in charge through a very convoluted method that only children under 10 can tell you about.
A robot that looks like candy! How marvellous!
5) Wreck-Gar
Is it fair to put him on the list of rubbishness? He did have the voices of both Eric Idle and Weird Al Yankovic and his whole mantra was to recycle everything. Well, the end result was that he lived in his own filth and never learnt to read and write properly, which meant he spoke in TV speak, or to put it another way, like Yoda if he’d been whacked on the head.
He transformed into a motorbike. But, could you play with it? Nope, as you needed a rider, and that didn’t come with it. Even using Barbie didn’t work. Useless.
You can see his legs! His legs!!!
4) Bumblebee
A pretty effeminate robot – and why was he named after an insect when they’d not been on Earth at all? He was a Volkswagen Beetle in the old days and a Chevy Camaro in the new film. They all had one thing in common – they were always yellow and always had an unhealthy interest in people, wanting them to be friends and all that. Why is he rubbish? Come on. He’s a yellow Beetle that wants people to be his friends – do I need to say anymore?!?
Stick to your own species, freak.
3) Jazz
I think this was an opportunity, especially in the film to add some ethnicity into the robots. But Jazz was rubbish, talking like white people think people in the ‘ghetto’ talk like, he was just annoying. And quite rightly was killed off. As a toy car, he was a Porsche 935 which is well cool. That’s his problem, he was trying to be too cool and ended up being naff. I cheered when he was torn in two in the film.
Ethnic gone wrong
2) Ultra Magnus
Oh…we’re getting into the dregs now. Ultra Mangnus was so rubbish, he wasn’t even able to be able to take over the leadership when the driving drumstick was in charge. As a toy he was a car transporter and it seems that everyone did their very best to get rid of him, but someone loved him and kept him going. If you got this present for Christmas, you knew your parents hated you.
Was supposed to be excellent, but hated by all
1) Arcee
Come on! It was a female Transformer – called Arcee! How did that get past everyone?! Which writer was having an argument with his imaginary wife/girlfriend to come up with that as a name?
She was rubbish. Remember what it was like being 8? Girls had fleas, and the colour pink would burn your skin – so why would you wanna play with this pink car? Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
As offensive to women as it is to men. Well done!
Any Transformers that we missed out? Which ones did you think were rubbish? Let us know by commenting below.
Comment by Phil Leggetter February 2, 2009
I’ve got to say that I generally disagree with your choices here. The main saving grace is that your choice of No. 1 naff Transformer is probably correct. I know you’ve got a car thing going on here but some of the Transformers you list were great characters which surely offsets the things that let the toy down.
My main objection is that you are slagging off a lot of the Transformers that were the main characters in the original 1986 Transformers the Movie that I think completely rocked! The 2007 version isn’t bad but has nowhere near the story or scale of the original move. Give me Orson Welles, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy and Frank Welker (plus the obvious) any day of the week. Give me Unicron, Cybertron, Cybertron’s moons, Earth, The Planet of Junk and two massive battles! Wow, I’m going to get the DVD out after this.
Anyway: Blurr, Arcee, Kup (who doesn’t get a mention – good), Hot Rod/Rodimus, Springer and Ultra Magnus were a new group of Autobots who were main characters in that great movie. Ok, Blurr is a bit annoying, but isn’t that just because the guy doing his voice (Scatman Crothers) just repeated the same line over and over again. That’s not Blurr’s fault, it’s the fault of the guy who write the script. The toy may have been crap, I don’t know. Ok, I’ll give you Blurr too.
Astrotrain – the toy does look pretty pants! In the movie he transports the defeated Decepticons back to Cybertron and needs to “jettison weight”, whereby Star Scream gets rid of Megatron and we gain Galvatron. So, he has his purpose. I can only assume that the toy was that terrible that for you it justifies the No.8 slot.
Soundwave – What planet are you on? Soundwave is a great Transformer. He was there at the very beginning. He is a vital part of a majority of the Transformers stories. And… And.. And he can eject other small Transformers out of his chest. That’s Awesome! “Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage, Ramjet eject!” The toy wasn’t bad either. If I remember correctly you could get small cassette transformers (mentioned in the quote) and put them inside his cassette deck. No, he’s not a car but he was a great Transformer. You’re just plain wrong with this one.
Rodimus Prime – Have you ever seen Transformers the Movie?!? “This is the end of the road Galvatron”. He even gets to say Prime’s quote of “Autobots, transform and roll out” and it works. He also has a pivotal roll in bringing Optimus Prime back to life in The Return of Optimus Prime (brought back to life, eventually, by a Quinesson…..). So, NO, he’s not one of the worst Transformers ever (but his toy did look a bit like a mobile home, hmmm).
Wreck-Gar – Again, the toy may have been rubbish but that doesn’t mean he was one of the worst Transformers ever. He is the leader of the Planet of Junk/the Junkions. As you mentioned, he was voiced by Eric Idle, which IS cool. If his arms fall out he can just stick them back in again with some special blue glue (using his legs?). Now that’s cool, not crap.
Bumblebee A.K.A Goldbug – He wants to be friends with people so he’s rubbish? What? He’s one of the first Transformers and deserves to avoid this list on that fact alone. You just can’t put any of the Transformers that were on the Ark, which crash landed on earth with Prime, in the list. Period. Oh, and he’s a VW Gold…
Jazz – How can anybody say that Jazz is one of the Worst Transformers ever? Jazz wasn’t the best in the new movie but they got the character wrong. Jazz has been in Transformers since I can remember and killing him off was just wrong. His toy WAS great. It was one of the first Transformer toys to be made and wasn’t all plastic like the more recent ones. He was on the Ark AND he’s a Porsche.
Ultra Magnus – Firstly his toy was actually pretty cool. He could fire rockets. He was bigger than Prime. His cab was exactly the same as Prime’s and Prime was a great toy. He “couldn’t take over the leadership when the driving drumstick (Rodimus Prime) was in charge” What? Do you mean that he couldn’t open the matrix of leadership after Prime had been killed because it wasn’t their “darkest hour”? I got an Ultra Magnus one Christmas and my parents still speak to me, and I’ve just double-checked, like me. You ain’t justifying this one buddy! I think he gets a bad rap – leave him alone.
So, I’ll give you Arcee, Blurr and, at a push, Astrotrain. Personally, I’d list Wheelie and any of the Insecticons. I’m also surprised that the non-car Dinobots didn’t get a mention.
Nice opinion-provoking post.
Pingback by Phil Leggetter - Software Consultant » My reply to: Which is the worst Transformer February 3, 2009
[...] follow Chris Garrett on Twitter and he posted a link to a blog post about the worst Transformer. As a kid I really liked The Transformers and felt compelled to defend some of them. I posted what [...]
Comment by konop February 3, 2009
this post is rubbish. Soundwave is one of the greatest transformers of all time, arcee was hot and bumblebee???? How could anyone hate on bumblebee????
Comment by Niko February 3, 2009
Well I would have included Megatron for his inability to transform into anything without bending the rules of physics. kind of defeats the whole object.
Can’t believe that fella is defending Rodimus, though- I remember watching the movie(first ‘un) hoping that The REAL Prime would come and save the day.
Comment by Adam Snider February 3, 2009
Phil, chill out, man! This is just a bit of fun. Try not to take it so seriously.
Pingback by Can You Mix Work and Pleasure in Social Media? | The Blog Herald February 4, 2009
[...] was the worst Transformer (answer: Arcee – it was [...]
Comment by Dave Stopher February 5, 2009
Think Astro Train was Crap!!!
Comment by heavymetalwar March 13, 2009
There were 3 that transformed into a deception camera that were quite bad. Preceptor was awful, i also dont like the pretender range. Characters that transform into gun were good characters but were poor toys. Always felt sorry for laserbeak, ravage, ECT as they only had animal modes or to b a tape. Then there were micro master combines that were only the tail end of a jet lol I like the idea of duocons they were a tank and jet combine to make one robot but they don’t do anything by themselves. And don’t forget octain who could become a jumbo jet or oil tanker. Omg I’m scared. And don’t even get me started on the action masters who didn’t transform into anything but there weapons did. And I just hate the cone head jet cons like ramjet
Comment by bob June 24, 2009
Edit this to this list:
10) Autobots (despite being a bunch of retarded losers who are outmatched in every respect, except optimus prime, they always win … retarded)
9) Female Transformers (What’s the point. Its not like they reproduce through sexual intercourse … retarded)
8) Omega Supreme (I transform into a giant base … ummm … I still dont’ get it.)
7) Galvatron (lets replace Megatron with a Megatron ripoff … )
6) Scorponok (a giant scorpion? that’s retarded. oh, wait, there’s more? My head is a transformer too! retarded.)
5) Blaster(hey, guess what? Autobot fanboys want a boombox just like Soundwave … )
4) Grimlock (dinobots. what a horrible idea)
3) Rodimus Prime (a winnebago? come on)
2) Bumblebee (this guys is just a loser)
1) Jazz (shut the hell up you annoying idiot)
Comment by Gareth Crew June 26, 2009
I think with the new film, I’m gonna have to add some more to the list:
5) The Fallen – he’s rubbish, all he’s got is that big stick thing
4 & 3) Skids and Mudflap. Nuff said
2) Wheeljack. Ok, we’d all try and hump Megan Fox’s leg, but come on!
1) Arcee – again! What???!
Comment by ZeldaTheSwordsman October 3, 2009
You don’t like Transformers much, do you?
Comment by Jade November 29, 2009
This is one of the worst articles i have ever read. Blurr is my FAVORITE transformer! TONS of people love Blurr! And Soundwave! And Arcee! And… seriously?! BUMBLEBEE?! How the crap could you hate BUMBLEBEE?!?! He’s the best Transformer EVER! Whoever wrote this article, you have some SERIOUS issues.
Comment by Gareth Crew December 1, 2009
@Jade – I wrote the article – guilty as charged. I have a pathalogical hatered of the G2 ‘bots. Blur being my most hated. I mean, fast talking – what?!?
@Phil Leggetter wrote an excellent rebuttle to this piece, check out his comments.
Comment by Jump February 7, 2010
This was a waste of time. You haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.
Comment by Rao May 17, 2010
Seriously you are a f***ing moron. Calling Soundwave gay and rubbish. Did you ever check Transformers and did you ever like it? Never seen a more stupid blog/poll or whatever you would like to call this, before.
Comment by Seeker Nami July 11, 2010
Where did this guys come out from?
That moron just listed some of the greatest Transformers of all time! He had no childhood at all or what?
Blurr is my favorite character ’cause he is the fastest and speaks funny. Soundwave, Jazz and Bumblebee are ICONS of the Transformers G1 era.
I do agree the Pretenders, Duocons, Targetmasters, Perceptor and Reflector AND femmebots were a bad idea (what do they need women for anyway? as far as I’m concerned no machine needs sex). But it’s just not right to read something like this. He is definitely NOT a Transfan and I’m sure he just wrote the topic because he watched the newest movies (mainly to take a look at Megan’s ass.) and only then remembered the TFs still existed.
Oh, and for a G1 purist -like myself-, Bay’s movie SUCKS!!! All it has is neat 3D modeled characters and special effects. But even when the movie is called Transformers, we get to see more of the stupid humans and that slut girl than we actually see the bots. Now THAT is rubbish ¬¬
Comment by herbert secrest March 24, 2011
your an idiot and a phony you never even saw the orig. cartoons did you. your list is full of s..t rodimus was the baddest as they came and yeah i still own my ultra magnus and quit picking on bumblebee he’s the best in a jam. if you want to get serious the stupidest ones ever made were the sharktacons and the stuntacons what an optimus prime rip off.