My turn to speak.
While I do admit that these two have indeed played an important role in TF history, I would think inducting these two so soon seems kinda hasty. I mean, I'd think that someone like Simon Furman (who's worked on TF material for nearly all 26+ years) or Frank Welker (who's voiced a large chunk of iconic G1 characters plus many recent ones) would have gotten in
before these two. It's like, these are getting in so quickly for their recent efforts before some of those who have been with the franchise for a lot longer.
I'm not saying that these two shouldn't get in. Just that they should... wait their turn.
The following, IMHO, should be inducted before Bay/Spielberg (in no particular order, though):
- Frank Welker - voiced the majority of the G1 cast (including Megatron, Galvatron, and Soundwave)
- Simon Furman - penned probably more TF stories than anyone else, and created the Primus & Unicron god concept
- Bob Forward & Larry DiTillio - head writers of Beast Wars, which shaped all future fiction to come after it
- David Kaye - voiced more Megatrons than anyone else, as well as voicing an Optimus Prime (and a Grimlock), and more
- Flint Dille - one of the story editors for the G1 cartoon
- Susan Blu - voiced G1 Arcee and a few other G1 females, but more importantly, voice director for Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and Animated
- Nelson Shin - producer of the G1 cartoon and director of the G1 movie
- Wally Burr - voice director for the G1 cartoon
- Stan Bush - performer of iconic Transformers songs such as "The Touch"
- Scott McNeil - voiced numerous character roles in all of the Beast Era and all of the Unicron Trilogy
- Shōhei Kohara & Floro Dery - designed the original animation models of the many G1 characters (yes, I know about the infamy surrounding Dery's history in the fandom, but he still played an important role in the franchise's origin -- the dude designed Unicron and the Matrix!)
- Margaret Loesch - formers president and CEO of Marvel Productions during the time of the G1 cartoon, in which she served as a producer of it, and is currently the head of the Hub television network.
And, regarding the debate with Mkall, I gotta comment on one thing:
Mkall wrote:If you want to thank anyone for keeping Transformers alive it would be the Japanese who kept Transformers going for 15 years while the US just imported it and dubbed over top of it and re-used the toy molds.
That has only been done for one series thus far: RiD.
If you are referring to the Unicron Trilogy, those three series were not simply "Japanese creations that the U.S. imported and recycled the toy molds". The Unicron Trilogy (and I do mean ALL of it) was a joint venture between both Hasbro and TakaraTomy working together. Hasbro designed the toys while Takara created the molds. The cartoons' overall plots were conceived by Hasbro, while the Japanese were given the reigns in the execution of each show's specifics. Though, there were a few cases of miscommunication between the two parties, such as when Galaxy Force was made as a another reboot instead of another sequel like Hasbro had intended it to be. In fact, the U.S. got the Armada cartoon
before Japan ever got Micron Densetsu. The comics were done primarily by Dreamwave and Fun Publications, both of which were/are American companies.
So, no, Hasbro didn't simply import a bunch of anime that they had no ties to to be used as placeholders for their next big plan. At that time, the Unicron Trilogy
was Hasbro's big plan.
oh, you silly goose! That's one of the most pathetic statements I've read on these boards!
And those're also my thoughts on the timing of it. It obviously wasn't wholly based on these reasons (I think some of the reasons given that would be considered negative were, arguably, also contributors). In the end it comes down to hype, and I don't fault them for taking advantage of it. But again I go back to the top of my post - did we HAVE to have only these two? Couldn't they have dropped it down to two inductees next year?
