A couple months ago, Canonball brought us a review of Takara Tomy’s Masterpiece Lambor “G2 Ver.”
I tried to avoid that thing like the plague. I failed.
See, I first justified the purchase based on the looks. G2 Sideswipe, as a figure, sports a really nice glossy black paint and red windows. It’s classic Night Rider cool. And in ‘bot mode, the colors carry over a nice inversion of the G1 version, add a Derek Yaniger-flavored head sculpt, spiky tires, and guns. And he does have a certain charm. But that justification is bullcrap because every other Masterpiece figure I own is for the PURE generation, the GREATEST GENERATION, and that’s Gen 1.
But I got him anyway.
Some of you might remember Generation 2, others might know it only by reputation. Me? I was there, man. The line launched in 1993, nearly three years since the last of the G1 product had hit the shelves. The G2 cartoon — which was selected original episodes from the original series repackaged with some CGI cutscenes — ran from 1992 to 1994. Marvel ran a 12-issue series of comics also, and that’s where G2 really got its teeth from. The series was done by longtime Transformers UK scribe Simon Furman and was a direct continuation of the G1 ongoing, including some GI Joe crossovers at launch. It’s still a pretty fun read, and the art duties done by Derek Yaniger and Manny Galan punctuate just how incredibly ’90s this series was. There’s lots of gratuitous character deaths, all manner of robot carnage, and they manage to do “All Hail Megatron” on Earth, even with GI Joe on the job. Ironically, while they canned the series after 12 issues due to less than stellar performance, if the book had been released today and sold the same numbers, it would well out-perform the current IDW books, and probably a fair share of the mainline superhero ones.
The comic succeeded in giving G2 an identity beyond strange G1 repaints, which comprised most of the toy line. For example, Sideswipe’s G2 release does have “comic accurate” colors, but none of the embellishments like the extra hardware of the G2 Autobot logo. In fact, few of the color choices from the toy line were used in the comic at all.
But that’s not to say the toy line was a waste — far, far from it. After the the repurposed molds got the line back on toy store shelves. There was an effort to get some new ideas and innovations out there as well. When the line reached it’s climax in 1994, the next breed of Transformers toys started to peak out from behind the repaints:
The Laser Rods, Rotor Force, Cyber Jets and Combat Heroes figures, in particular, were the first of what we would recognize as “modern” Transformers. They maintained the realistic alternate modes of their predecessors, but combined them with very well articulated robot modes and incorporated “gimmicks” like light-up weapons, firing projectiles, and so on across each sub-group. It was these figures that would form the basis for a lot of what Beast Wars would draw on and improve when it was their turn at bat.
Personal favorites of mine from that era were… well, damn, I really liked just about all of the later figures, come to think of it. For instance, the Combat Hero Optimus Prime and the interestingly-named Combat Hero Megatron quickly replaced my war-weary G1 versions with little concern for nostalgia. These were just plain better toys than a lot of G1.
But if I had to wager a guess, there was one figure in particular that most people remember from the era: Laser Rod Optimus Prime. Incorporating several of the sub-groups’ tricks into one serious Prime, he featured a very faithful Western Star cab, likely the first “long-nose” cab Optimus, that transformed into a very functional and articulated robot, even by today’s standards. He has an internally mounted light-up feature that would ignite his sword or blaster in his right hand. The trailer, with the best Optimus Prime stickers EVER, turned into a massive barrage of disc-launching and air-powered rocketry. If his ‘bot mode had been just a liiittle closer to the classic colors, he might still be on my non-MP figure shelf. And let me just say so here and now: this would make one helluva candidate for a future MP Prime. Because, let’s face it, at some point or another, it all comes back to Prime.
Generation 2 then rather abruptly slid back from the shelves and got lost in the folds of ’90s pop-culture obscurity. It’s interesting to note that being effectively the last pre-Internet incarnation of the franchise, you can’t help but wonder what a few years later might have done for this relaunch attempt. As it is, though, it served as the catalyst for Hasbro to shift gears (and practically companies) and prompt Kenner to launch Beast Wars a short year later. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The Transformers fandom does have a fairly long memory, by necessity, and so it’s not surprising that there have been some BotCon exclusives (2010) as well as some homages in the Generations series. And yet for the most part, Generation 2 is dismissed as a bunch of repainted figures and a recycled toy line.
But you take a look at that Sideswipe and tell me there isn’t something a little special… crazy, sure, but special, about a toy line that inspired an Autobot sports car to invert his colors and give you a gritty grill-shot like that.