Tonka Gobots v Hasbro Go-Bots

Part 2 of 3: The TV Shows and how they differ By Celeste

Well, this a continuance of my first article in which I talked about the new Go-Bots toys vs the old Gobots toys. In this article I would like to talk about the two TV shows if I may and at the end of this article I would like to know just why Hasbro thought it was a good idea to remake the Gobots in their own Transformers image.

As we all know September 8 2004 marked the 20th anniversary of the original Gobots cartoon and what did Hasbro do? They tried to pass off a new Transformers Go-Bots cartoon as the real thing to appeal to the kids and believe you and me kids will go for anything that the TV pushes in front of them.

The Characters

Let's start with the most obvious thing......The characters. Each side, Gaurdians and Renegades, always comprised 3 or more characters on each side.

The mainstays of the Gaurdians have always been

Leader-1
Turbo
Scooter

Plus some of the not so regulars

Pathfinder
Blaster
Smallfoot
Sparky
Zeemon
Hans-Cuff
Rest-Q
Baron Von Joy

The mainstays of the Renegades have always been

Cy-Kill
Crasher
Cop-Tur

Plus

Fitor
Dr Go
Screwhead
Buggyman
Loco
Pinser

Well, you get the point.

In Go-Bots 2004 there were seldom any conflicts of any sort. Bad story lines and after a few episodes they decided to cancel it. Even 2 years after the fact I'm still trying to find a coherent story line of which there wasn't anything that was coherent about it.

And who goes up against who in Challenge of the Gobots? Well, here's how it breaks down

Leader-1 vs Cy-Kill (The most obvious one are the leaders trying to knock down and beat the hell out of each other.)
Crasher vs Turbo (Yes the right hand bot to each of the leaders usually results in a few head butts here and there and both of them are not really the sharpest knives in the drawer)
Cop-Tur vs Scooter (Yes even the technologically inclined vs the brainless dolt thing is good for a cheap laugh)

Sometimes when other Gaurdians and Renegades join into the fight there's other vs fights.

When Gobots Get The Tar Knocked Out Of Them.

In the TV series Challenge of the Gobots there were such instances where a friend or foe usually got the wholly crap beat out of them. Small Foof is an example of how one of them could get the tar knocked out of them and still live to tell about it.

Trident's Triple Threat

This is probably the first and only time we even get to see Small Foot knocked out cold and the others didn't even know what had happened to her until Turbo was sent to search for her. Lo and behold Turbo found Small Foot after she was knocked out cold by Crasher, Cop-Tur, and Loco. And even after she got knocked out by the Renegades 3 she was still ready for a fight. Go figure about what that knock down did to Small Foot's head?

Duplication

This the episode where Small Foot was run off the side of a cliff and had to use her grappling hook to save herself. In this instance she was falling too fast and her grappling hook was damaged.

Quest for the Creator

How did Small Foot manage to get in the way of a madman? The Master Renegade was accidently released in this episode and he decided to use Small Foot as a shield to make the other Gaurdians do what he wanted them to do. There wasn't too much the Gaurdians could do except watch Small Foot go down with one shot.

Return to Gobotron

While testing out their new toys against the Renegades the Renegades decided to use the four Gaurdians for target practice. Generally Leader-1 would be the first one Cy-Kill would target but in this instance I think Cy-Kill was feeling unusually generous and guess who he decided to target his generosity at first? That's right folks. Cy-Kill deciided to Target Small Foot first and boy did he ever target Small Foot in no uncertain terms. A strange ray gun on a Renegade ship fired a near-fatal shot that caused Small Foot to squak and plummet out of control due in part to her jet packs being damaged. Leader-1, Scooter, and Turbo soon followed suit.

Scooter Enhanced

Well this is the only episode where Small Foot didn't get the crap beat out of her. The Gaurdians had their power suits in storage and Cy-Kill wanted them to use against their enemy so he sent Cop-Tur and Screw Head to distract Leader-1 and Turbo while the others raided the Command Center and captured Scooter and Small Foot and kept them at seperate ends of the Command Center. Unbeknownst to Cy-Kill Scooter could still throw his voice and disguised his voice to sound like Leader-1's voice. This act gave Small Foot an opening to free herself from Cy-Kill and take off cruising with Scooter. If you had seen this episode when it first aired Cy-Kill was ready, willing, and able to kill Small Fot and Scooter if he wanted to but then again why the hell would Cy-Kill do that in front of so many witnesses?

So that's it for now. Next article is the Gobots movie or lack there of.

Comments

Every time people compare gobots to TFs, they always compare apples to oranges. Everyone compares the small gobots to the large transformers, of course the gobots will look bad in that comparison. A proper comparison would be regular gobots vs TF minicars or regular TFs vs "super gobots". If you compare like against like, gobots win. Regular gobots were way better than the TF minicars. Most had more articulation, more complex transformations, and diecast parts. They also looked like more realistic toy vehicles than the chibi little minicars. Regular TFs vs "super gobots" is a closer battle. SGs suffered from head/facelessness & scrawny limbs, but were generally more articulated, plus their weapons always had a place in their vehicle modes too.
Another good comparison is the gobots "puzzler" vs any of the transformers gestalts. Puzzler needed no extra pieces to combine, plus it had a great deal of articulation. In contrast, transformers gestalts always needed a bunch of extra pieces, and most of them were bricks.

The gobots cartoon also gets an unfair shake. It wasn't "as good" as transformers, but it wasn't terrible. In fact, it was quite enjoyable. The only real flaws with it were inconsistant sizes (in robot mode the gobots would be only slightly larger than humans, yet could easily fit a human in the cockpit/drivers seat in vehicle mode), but transformers had size consistancy problems too, and the moronic concept of shooting lasers from their fists.

Go-bots were great for the rest of us who couldn't afford to have our parents pay an arm and a leg for a transformer. those things were wildly expensive for no reason. the gobots were a cheap fill. i had the large vehicle base, leader-1, cykill, etc. i even have the movie battle of the rocklords! woot!

Good article even though some pictures would be pretty cool. I remember watching both Gobots and Transformers in 1984. Whatever happened to all of the good cartoons?

i dont even sink this low compared to The Transformers

The content of the article is fine, but it needs some pictures. Plus some character info would be nice.

I was able to find several images of the Go-Bots online, so perhaps you could add some.

A pic or two would of been nice, but perhaps there are very few Go-bot pics out there.