Courtesy of entertainment and media website GeekDad, we have some more news on the next leg of episodes from the Netflix documentary series The Toys That Made US - which will see LEGO, Hello Kitty, and Star Trek join the Transformers episode (featuring our very own Seibertron!) - in the form of a short interview with show creator Brian Volk-Weiss, which you can read in full
here!
We've selected a few salient points about Transformers specifically below (including the inaccuracies in the reporting, we know there are some), along with some older images we covered previously, to spruce up the post. We also found out the actual air date of the next four episodes, which is in fact June 2018, and not the 'three months' estimate we
reported on earlier this week. Check it all out, and let us know what you think of the series so far!
GD: You’ve had access to a lot of cool things and met a lot of cool people. Have any cool prototypes or one-offs been added to your collection because of access from the show?
Brian: I was very mindful of even not having the appearance of a conflict of interest. We had a lot of people – we had Bod [sic] Budiansky, he’s the Marvel editor who created all the characters for Transformers and wrote every single [ed. note: not entirely true, just initial run] Transformers comic book. I mean, he literally came in with a pile of paper on his lap that turned out to be his original legal pad descriptions of Optimus Prime and Star Scream [sic] and Ravage. I would conservatively estimate he had half a million dollars worth of history on his lap. He took a 3-hour train ride to our New York office just holding these things in his hand! They weren’t even in a folder or a bag! I honestly, and this was very early on in the shoot, I almost said to him ‘Hey, would you sell those?’ and right before I asked him I was like ‘You know what? That’s not appropriate.’ If the day ever comes where we officially will never make another episode, then I will reach back and possibly see if (he) would sell those.
[...]
GD: “How do you decide which properties you choose. Is it based on production numbers, the sales numbers, or the crossover cultural impact? What makes you determine what you cover?
Brian: “The official answer is ‘I use my gut.’ But if I’m to dive into my ‘gut,’ it’s a bunch of criteria. Number one, (has) the toy essentially been in production nonstop since the day it started production? Is this a toy that was big when it started and still big? Second thing: is it a good story? Is the story interesting? Is the story of how it got from A to B interesting? That was a big part. Number three, is there a rabid fan base? Do people dress up like the characters at conventions? Are there conventions? Do they dress up like the character for Halloween? And the fourth (thing) is, I had and idea in my head of like the Mount Rushmore of toys, and I wanted to make sure that every character we did could be on the Mount Rushmore of toys. My wife doesn’t know anything about Transformers, but if you show her a picture of Optimus Prime, she knows who that is. That’s what I call the Mount Rushmore factor.”
