So recently I did reread the G1 Marvel comics and the most mind blowing thing was Bumblebee/Goldbug.
So Bumblebee is there and in some battle gets damaged and rebuild looking differently. Says he is goldbug now.
The show moves on.
So he changed his name, Ok.
Then goldbug gets smashed in some battle. Later is rebuild into his old shape. Asks the doctor >Hey why did you rebuild me as Bumblebee ? doctor >I liked you more as Bumblebee Names himself Bumblebee now.
The show moves on.
The literal fuck! I have so many questions. How do transformer names actually work? In universe? Why did the writers write it like this? What was their motivation?
Oh and all wikis don't mention this or talk about it. WTF! Was the name change some copyright related stuff or ??? I simply want answers!
Hasbro just wanted a new toy with Goldbug and the cartoons and comics had to work around it.
A few years later, Hasbro begins to realize that fans want to see the older guys back and so Bumblebee returns. The cartoons are gone in the US, so only the comics had to work around it.
Ryan Evans
huh thats pretty fucky
Juan White
interesting what is the source for this? because the wikis are empty of this info.
>the comics had to work around it. The only WTF moment has to be the way he is changed back. I mean if he asked to be rebuild differently it be fine however he simply accepts whatever the doctor pushed on him.
Also serious medical breach of ethics if you ask me.
The most strange thing in all of G1 comics.
Juan Long
I mean it's kind of beggars can't be choosers. His conscienceness was temporarily transferred to an RC car. Because comic book writers or the early 80s didn't know shit about data storage. Also Optimus Prime was on a floppy disk for a bit.
Hunter Anderson
>I mean it's kind of beggars can't be choosers. Are we talking in universe? >His conscienceness was temporarily transferred to an RC car. I know this was more realistic because they removed his robotic brain and placed it there. So its cool.
What was the most unrealistic part about it was that he was capable to use the lights of the RC car as eyes. Light bulbs are not cameras writers.
Kevin Brooks
Wait would the naming thing mean transformers name themselves after how they look at the moment?
Because this makes more sense the more you think about it.
Nathan Hall
The entire WTF sequence compiled for your pleasure.
>I preferred your identity like this so I arbitrarily decided to change you back without informing you.
If you think of their outer forms like clothing I guess its OK but this is a bit creepy.
Liam Jones
Can we talk about Goldbug's feet? They make no fucking sense. Each foot is half of a car. He has a complete car if he puts his legs together. Where the fuck does the rest of his body come from? Where does it go when he transforms? Does he shrink when he transforms, or does his robot form just have tiny clown car feet?
Zachary Rivera
>OK but this is a bit creepy. More like bizarre and ethics violating. I told you it was the most WTF thing in the whole Marvel comic.
Carter Miller
I think you're reading a bit too much into it. By that point bee and other legacy characters were rereleased as pretenders, so by that point as far as the toys were concerned he was back to being bumblebee. It's just Furman trying to tie up continuity I guess
Landon Gutierrez
O Oh Ho ho ho I never noticed it and now I'm laughing thanks. I think we have to look at the toy first.
Aiden Rodriguez
>back without informing you. Imagine getting hit by a car and when you wake up in the hospital the doctors cured you, also gave you a sex change operation because they felt like it.
Ethan Jones
Could have make the doctor say : >Made you back to Bumblebee for like you wanted before the accident Or make the characters imply it in some way.
Austin Jones
The Bumblebee toy was retired in 1986 which back then usually meant the character was forcibly retired from both comics and cartoon (which is why Transformers the Movie killed off so many characters, because their toys were taken off the shelf to make room for new ones).
However, the following year they designed the Throttlebots, a set of motorized small autobots that effectively took the market space that Bumblebee and the other minibots had filled (same price point). And apparently somebody at Hasbro had the cheeky idea of making the VW bug Throttlebot into a new version of Bumblebee. I'm not sure it's ever been documented who did it or why, but the biography for the new "Goldbug" toy said he was a rebuilt Bumblbebee.
So as a result of this the comics and cartoons (which always trailed behind the toy releases because they needed a lot more ahead time to affect changes) had to come up with a reason to turn Bumblebee into Goldbug. In the US comic he was blown up by Gi Joe in the hilariously almost-out-of-continuity GI Joe vs the Transformers crossover. If you only read the core Transformers comic you never saw the change, he was just Goldbug without comment one day. In the Uk they didn't publish that story so they made their own story where he was blown up by Death's Head.
In the cartoon he was just rebuilt as Goldbug in the Rebirth, the final mini-series.
Then in 1989 the Goldbug toy had been retired and hasbro actually designed a new Bumblebee toy, part of the "Classic Pretender" line which brought back a bunch of popular characters from the early days of the line. New toys for Bumblebee, Grimlock, Jazz and Starscream. The cartoon was over by then, but the comic was still going and so had to turn Goldbug back into Bumblebee to match his new toy. So Goldbug and the other Throttlebots all got murdered by cosmic-powered Starscream and then rebuilt as Bumblebee (now with PRETENDER POWERS).
So yeah it's all about what toy was on the shelf.
Nolan Torres
>So yeah it's all about what toy was on the shelf. Thanks my other suspect was Hasbro getting into legal battles over the name "Bumblebee " was this ever a thing or am I misremembering things?
Also this should be on the wiki all it has is tfwiki.net/wiki/Goldbug >1987 — Goldbug, the new name for the Autobot Bumblebee when he was rebuilt into a Throttlebot in Generation 1.
Really no explanation to the background.
Justin Jenkins
Toys to the explanation. Mystery solved.
Looks like the toy version was less elegant in his looks and the writers took creative liberties.
I'm honestly shocked this wasn't answered like this sooner. Almost more than anything Transformers, the Marvel stuff was very VERY beholden to what the new toys were at the time, it's what spurred pretty much the entire thing forward.
Hudson Powell
I know, only I did not know that some joker at Hasbro wrote on the box "he is Bumblebee rebuild" and Marvel needed to deal with this.
Did the same joker decide to write on pretender Bumblebee "he is Goldbug rebuild" to fuck with Marvel writers even more ?
Marvel writers did not deal with this in a good way.
It's even crazier in IDW where Bee and Bug are separate characters, like Megatron and Galvatron...
Jose Cook
People like to wax poetic over G1, but they had a LOT of clunkers. A lot of it had to do with technology for making toys being way more advanced now, but a lot of them were just bricks.
Josiah Myers
I personally headcanon that Transformers change their names when they undergo a major life change.
And, of course, that their Earth names are somewhat inadequate translations of complex Cybertronian sounds which convey a whole range of meanings about a person.
He also didn't ask to be changed into his new form back in the day; that's when he took the name Goldbug. He felt more secure in himself. This body is even stronger than that one. Maybe he should have taken the name Scarab or something.
Asher Fisher
>If you think of their outer forms like clothing I guess its OK This is the first time I see this theory or interpretation.
Transformers has lots of name changes Orion Pax -> Optimus prime Megatron -> Galvatron
its it me or would it be more normal if they adopted a true person name and a body name? So that Galvatron and Megatron have the same person name however have different body names?
kind of like they did deal with scorponok in the comics they mostly refer to him as "scorponok" however he is also Lord Zarak. since he kind of is Lord Zarak.
Would a true personality name and body name distinction like this be a good thing even if they mention the personality name not so often?
Matthew Smith
>Can we talk about Goldbug's feet?
That's a sentence you barely ever read without it ending in some fetish stuff.
It's not like that. He's just stronger plus some cosmetic changes. Notice he claimed himself he was Bumblebee again, but nobody forced him to change his name back.
And the Throttlebots were worse than most. They didn't even have proper arms. Despite being twice as large as the original mini cars, who at least could raise their arms.
>He also didn't ask to be changed into his new form back in the day I was always interpreting it like transformers decide to change their names form time to time so it only coincided with his rebuilding.
>I personally headcanon that Transformers change their names when they undergo a major life change.
Was there something even in canon that explored how cybertronians see names and life in general? Can be a interesting cultural exploration.
The more ithink the more: >Wait would the naming thing mean transformers name themselves after how they look at the moment?
Makes solid sense in universe and outside of the universe. out of universe because Hasbro gives different names to different looking toys. in universe Well i just watched beast wars 1 episode and the robots basically decide on their names after getting their alt forms while looking how they physically look now.
Didn't the cartoon also have some sort of contract dispute with the voice actor for Bumblebee and left him without speaking lines for an entire season until Goldbug's debut? Was this due to Bumblebee being retired or something unrelated...?
Asher Johnson
They are Transformers, they transform.
Jayden Cook
>He's just stronger plus some cosmetic changes. Notice he claimed himself he was Bumblebee again, but nobody forced him to change his name back. interesting however they stick with the name after their body is changed and practically never mention their old names even if they did not wish for the change.
Noah Rivera
Not that I know of. I would assume he wasn’t talking because they weren’t selling him anymore.
John Taylor
how well did Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime sell back in 1986, I wonder...
Ayden Hall
Pretty Face was one of the best mangas ever and I will fight you.
>Thanks my other suspect was Hasbro getting into legal battles over the name "Bumblebee " was this ever a thing or am I misremembering things?
Nah, I doubt it. This was before they had to name characters shit like "AUTOBOT IRONHIDE" because "Ironhide is too generic"
Ryder Brown
>The most strange thing in all of G1 comics.
That would be the fact that the Transformers had never heard of... water. This despite it being a cure for their deadly space rust parasites.
>interesting what is the source for this?
Hasbro has always dictated the toys they want to sell. The licensees get a press pack - box art, turnarounds and scaling, maybe a copy of the toy - and are told when it's coming into stores. The license then has to be fulfilled so the licensee makes the necessary changes. This is basic marketing.
With the Marvel comic, it ran on for a lot longer than anybody ever expected - it was originally a four-issue limited series, but it was so popular it ran for... 80 issues? Which is almost seven years instead of the projected four months. In the UK, which has a weekly rather than monthly comic market, this meant hundreds of issues and a lot of extra stories had to be written and drawn, which all had to fit around the main Marvel continuity because that was what Marvel's house policy was. By the end of that time the toys weren't even selling that well - most of the newer lines were flops compared to the early years - so a free hand was had with what to do with old characters. Most of them had been put "into stasis" after being horribly injured in the kind of apocalyptic battles most kids would have loved to own enough toys to recreate, only to be resurrected and thrown at Unicron as Powermasters, the latest toy release, in the final few issues.
Samuel Wilson
>Pretty Face I knew that i had heard something with a similar premise before.
Connor Rogers
Casey Kasem quit the cartoon (he played Cliffjumper and various other characters) because he didn't like the depiction of the Middle East (he was of Druze background and had a lot of friends and family over there). To my knowledge Cliffjumper and his other characters were never given speaking roles again.
Jordan Morris
Don't think so. Cliffjumper's voice actor Casey Kasem jumped off the show tho over the "Carmbombya" fiasco so despite them keeping Cliffjumper alive in the movie (because Kasem was a celebrity voice), Cliffjumper never had another line.
Jazz stopped speaking and appearing in season 3 because his VA Scatman Crothers passed away.
Dan Gilvezan who did Bumblebee was still on the show tho, just doing other voices. I assume Bee just didn't get any lines because he had no toy on the shelves.
About the only character in the cartoon who continously appeared and had speaking lines DESPITE not having a toy on the shelf was Soundwave. Motherfucker lasted the entire run of the cartoon (and the whole of the Marvel comic too)
William Bennett
I'll never say the original Bee toy was shit, ever again!
>Also Optimus Prime was on a floppy disk for a bit. its weird how the comics were usually more serious than the cartoon but then they'd pull shit like this
>the only character in the cartoon who continously appeared and had speaking lines DESPITE not having a toy on the shelf was Soundwave. Motherfucker lasted the entire run of the cartoon (and the whole of the Marvel comic too) Soundwave vs. Blaster was babby's first console war.
>some mini-casette will have the ball bearings to challenge fort max for the name
Josiah Campbell
Moreover the comics show that becoming a pretender with a living shell has certain benefits, which was part of the gimmick of the toyline
Cameron Barnes
where does optimus' trailer go?
Juan Smith
A pocket dimension that only he can access.
Aiden Bailey
This will fuck with you, IDW has it where Galvatron and Megatron fight each other and it isn't time travel shenanigans. The bodies just become their own thing.
"Call it PERSONAL PREFERENCE" sounds like one of those 70s lines that basically means "I couldn't do it any other way, so I'll pretend I did it deliberately this way"
