Please vote again for your Hall of Fame nominations ... error wiped out this morning's votes

ScottyP wrote:

QBKiller94 wrote:I believe Devastator is an obvious nominee.

Agreed. Something for next year I suppose!

Devastator was supposed to be in the list. I must have replaced him with someone else by accident when I was trimming the list down to 25. Now we've got 26. Oh well!

Please vote again ... after I added Devastator, it cleared out all of the data without warning me that it would do that.

BlackArchnia for hall of Fame

Hot Rod/Rodimus, Blackarachnia, Arcee (G1), Weirdwolf, Rattrap. But seeing as how weirdwolf isnt there i had to go lockdown

QBKiller94 wrote:I don't get the Lockdown love.

Lance Henriksen is really all i need to say but i will add that Lockdown is a bounty hunter that keeps parts of his prey as trophies, in other words hes Bad Ass

Gonna have to go with:

Bulkhead, Devastate, and Lockdown. 3 awesome characters.

Swerve



If one needs more, consider how he's gone from "random name use character" to bizarre new-mold exclusive (still unique in that regard) to one of the most beloved characters of recent history. A rags-to-riches story!

I understand Lockdown is popular right now, but he shouldn't go into the Hall of Fame before classic characters like Devastator, Prowl, Rodimus, etc.

How is Unicron not in the HoF yet? Besides him, I picked Rodimus, Arcee, Cyclonus, and Scorponok.

Whirl
Arcee
Devastator
Lockdown
Blitzwing

Cyclonus, Lockdown, Omega Supreme, Rodimus and Sky-Byte.

Devastator - What's not Hall of Fame material about the first combiner the franchise had?
Prowl - A classic 1984 character, totally worth a spot.
Lockdown - One of the best characters from Animated, so much so that he's made the jump to other media, including a spot in the new movie.
Bulkhead - Honestly this was a random choice... no reason other than I like him...
Swerve - Because Swerve.

They're doing the Hall of Fame voting this year? Well, better late than never.

I know who I want to vote for!

*reads the instructions*

Hrm.

None of them are in the poll.


I get the process that went into making these choices, but... it just... feels a bit limited. Sorta restricted.

Sabrblade wrote:They're doing the Hall of Fame voting this year? Well, better late than never.

I know who I want to vote for!

*reads the instructions*

Hrm.

None of them are in the poll.


I get the process that went into making these choices, but... it just... feels a bit limited. Sorta restricted.

That's because it takes a lot of time to tally up the results when it's a free for all due to spelling errors and discrepancies (Skybyte vs Sky-Byte vs Sky Byte vs Sky-Bite), choices of over thousands of characters over the course of 30 years, and that many people don't follow the instructions about how to format answers, I decided it was best (and easiest) to do it this way going forward, especially since the Hall of Fame has been reduced from an extremely cool event to a brief mention at the end of the Hasbro panel. Without the Hall of Fame presentation which was really awesome the first couple of years, I don't see the point of continuing this any more from a time standpoint.

After some thought, I've gone with the following:

Blackarachnia
Overlord
Rattrap
Sky-Byte
Springer

Unicron, Lockdown and Bludgeon

Cyclonus
Devastator
Rodimus
Sixshot
Whirl

Devastator, unicron, trypticon

GuyIncognito wrote:I understand Lockdown is popular right now, but he shouldn't go into the Hall of Fame before classic characters like Devastator, Prowl, Rodimus, etc.

I agree completely. Lockdown was great in Transformers animated, but I can't give him any extra points for being in the latest live action movie. For all we know Lockdown could end up in the "Michael Bay Hall of Shame" with Jetfire, Wheelie, etc.

Here's how I voted:

1) Devastator - The first combiner in the transformers universe and a great G1 toy. The only negative for this guy was the horrible treatment given to him by Michael Bay (See: giant balls). A hugely popular character who should have been put the HOF much earlier than this.
2) Prowl - I'm a sucker for the G1, season 1 cast, but Prowl also was reborn as a kick-ass ninja in Transformers Animated. He's got a lot of great toys from G1, to Animated to last year's Masterpiece. He's in.
3) Omega Supreme - Omega Supreme was the first giant character and paved the way for Metroplex, Trypticon, Fort Max and Scorponok. He's the Wilt Chamberlain of the Transformers world and was a coveted G1 toy back in the day. "Omega Supreme is invincible!" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1psVfPb6uA
4) Cyclonus - Galvatron's badass second in-command. Smart and loyal. If Megatron had Galvatron instead of Starscream, the Autobots would have been in trouble. Just a great character all-around who's held up well over time.
5) Rodimus - He edges out Arcee and Unicron, but it was a tough call for me. As a matter of principle, I can't go against the Matrix of Leadership.

Bulkhead
Rumble
Alpha Trion
Rhinox
Computron

Putting Lockdown in now would be the equivalent of putting a pro athlete into their HoF while they're still actively competing, imo.

Astrotrain

Blitzwing

Blurr

Cyclonus

Prowl

Wish Cheetor or Rhinox was on the list but I understand why Rattrap was there.

Even after the explanation for why this site is using the poll format (apparently as opposed to tallying up nominees from the lists in these comments), I see several posts that continue with the lists. Am I correct in assuming that those lists aren't getting folks anywhere on this site?

If so, I would still welcome discussion on this topic. We can all talk about why Swerve is the idol of millions!

G.B. Blackrock wrote:Even after the explanation for why this site is using the poll format (apparently as opposed to tallying up nominees from the lists in these comments), I see several posts that continue with the lists. Am I correct in assuming that those lists aren't getting folks anywhere on this site?

If so, I would still welcome discussion on this topic. We can all talk about why Swerve is the idol of millions!

The poll is the only data I will be collecting on Monday. If people are posting their nominations but not making selections in the poll, then their "nominations" will NOT count. Hopefully the people who have posted their nomination in their post have also selected their choices in the poll.

1. Swerve
2. Whirl
3. Tailgate
4. Sky-Byte
5. Thundercracker

Thundercracker ftw! Decided for Sideswipe, Blurr, Blitzwing and Prowl.

Would rather Bruticus over Devastator purely because Starscream's Brigade being my favourite episode.

Voted. Devastator, Unicron, Omega Supreme, Blitzwing, and Scorponok. I'd be happy if Blackarachnia was completely forgotten about.

I don't like when voting contests have you pick from a set list. This is who I want, Sideswipe, Skywarp, Windcharger, Prowl, and Cyclonus. All generation 1.

SideswipeSkywarp wrote:I don't like when voting contests have you pick from a set list. This is who I want, Sideswipe, Skywarp, Windcharger, Prowl, and Cyclonus. All generation 1.

Well, unless you vote in the poll, none of those will be counted.

None of my first choices were in the poll either, but I went with what was available.

Devastator
Omega Supreme
Thundercracker
Rattrap
Prowl

Bludgeon
Rodimus
Sky-Byte
Unicron
and....
Whirl
It does suck that I can't vote for T-AI from RID.

It seems that when you put in Devastator, it "bumped" my choices to the next previous vote, such as Omega Supreme instead of Overlord, Ravage instead of Rodimus, Springer instead of Swerve. Odd...

Kup
Rodimus
Sunstreaker
Cyclonus
Rhinox

Kup98ss wrote:Kup
Rodimus
Sunstreaker
Cyclonus
Rhinox

Kup, Sunstreaker, and Rhinox are not options on the poll. Please select choices based on the poll.

I did when i voted. These are just my favorites. Thanks for looking out though.
I voted for

Rodimus
Springer
Rattrap
Prowl
Cyclonus

I voted for Blitzwing, Blurr, Prowl, Sideswipe, and Thundercracker. My favorite characters from the list.

I voted for bludgeon, cyclonus, scorpinock, devastator, and sixshot. My main vote was for bludgeon, who is my favorite pretender and one of the coolest decepticons. He also did a lot in the old comics.

I know there hasn't been a toy yet, and the character is only a couple years old... But I'd love to see Rung on the ballot next year

ASTROTRAIN- Dudes a train/spaceship. Nuff said
BLITZWING - Threes a magic number!
DEVASTATOR - One titan formed by six smaller and equally badass guy. Why isnt the franchise all about this guy?
LOCKDOWN- So cool he got placed back into G1. That's a lot of love!
RATTRAP - A kinda seedy, creepy personality isn't regular heroic material but this guy does it so well. I also used to have pet rats so this guy kinda cheats to get my vote!

Still no love.

Rodimus has my vote. A hall of fame character should be iconic, Lockdown may be cool and all, but he's hardly iconic.

Fshep89 wrote:I know there hasn't been a toy yet, and the character is only a couple years old... But I'd love to see Rung on the ballot next year

To me there is a big difference between a popular character and a Hall of Fame character. Guys like Lockdown, Rung and Drift have a lot of merit and are popular today, but they've only been around for a really short time. The Transformers brand is 30 years old and Hall of Fame inductees should be characters who've had a major impact on the universe over time.

Putting Lockdown or Rung in the Hall of Fame over characters like Prowl or Devastator is like putting Mike Trout in the baseball Hall of Fame before Babe Ruth or Ted Williams. It's like putting Ahsoka Tano in the Star Wars Hall of Fame before R2-D2 or Chewbacca. I'm not saying they're bad characters, just that we need more time to review their importance in the overall universe.

While I agree that "popular" isn't enough, I think that unique contributions to the brand qualify as "HoF-worthy," even if a character hasn't existed for 30 years. I'm not a Rung supporter, but I can see a case to be made for his uniqueness that would be worth considering.

Likewise, I think Swerve has a unique and bizarre history (and that, yes, over most of the length of the franchise), even if it really is only the IDW version that's actually become popular.

The Transformers Hall of Fame was great idea when it was born in 2010. It allows Hasbro and Transformers fans the opportunity to celebrate some of the quintessential characters that have dotted the Transformers Universe over the last 30 years.

However, Hasbro has dropped the ball. Hasbro needs to take measures to better regulate the fan voting and make the Transformers Hall of Fame induction into a premier event that will energize and entertain the fan base on a yearly basis.

Currently, Hasbro lets all the fan sites conduct the nominee voting how they see fit. I've been looking at the different Transformers sites and how they're handling the voting. It's a hodge podge with no two places following the same exact course. Hasbro should put some more guidelines in place to help these sites out. If weak candidates get into the HOF, then no one will take it seriously and it won't feel significant or important. There needs to be more direction and oversight by Hasbro to prevent this.

This is what I would do to improve the Transformers Hall of Fame process:

1) Tighten up the eligibility rules. For example: Make it so all Transformers characters who made their debut in the universe within 10 years of the vote are ineligible for HOF induction. So any character that debuted from TV, movies, video games or in the comics after 2004 would be ineligible this year. This would cut down the number of eligible characters so voters can concentrate more on the merits of who's left. This would also ensure newer characters would have to wait their turn before being considered over more established characters. (I saw Windblade getting votes on some sites and she's been around for about three minutes! ) However, this doesn't hurt characters like Arcee who are older, but were given more to do in recent series like Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime.

2) Hasbro should come up with a list of 25 nominees for the fan site's users to vote on. Voters should be allowed to pick up to five nominees via online polls. Seibertron.com does a great job using a poll to collect the data. It's clean and user friendly. But I think Hasbro should set the list of 25 nominees to keep the names uniform across all sites.

3) Hasbro should announce who the top 10 candidates are after the first round of voting and then let the fan sites have a second vote. To me, this is important. You may have voted for 3 guys the first time who didn't make the cut down to 10. Now you have the option of voting for someone else. This is similar to how the NFL makes its cuts for its Hall of Fame.

4) Hasbro should announce the top 5 from the second round of voting and have the fans vote for the winner of the fan vote on their Facebook page.

5) Finally, Hasbro should have a fancy ceremony (with an open bar!) to announce the inductees into the HOF and they should give out additional awards. Maybe give out yearly awards for top comic, top artist, best new character, best performance by a voice actor, best toy domestic, best toy international, etc., etc. Hasbro should set up a live stream feed for all the fan sites to use so even fans not in attendance could watch. Make it a REAL event to get people excited and reward your writers, artists, engineers, actors, etc. for their hard work.

Arcee
cyclonus
devastator
unicron
lockdown

QBKiller94 wrote:The Transformers Hall of Fame was great idea when it was born in 2010. It allows Hasbro and Transformers fans the opportunity to celebrate some of the quintessential characters that have dotted the Transformers Universe over the last 30 years.

In general, the idea of tightening the rules has merit. But some of these things... it just obvious that Hasbro won't ever do.

Re: #1, Hasbro's not about to implement a rule that would leave all of the live-action movie characters out. This, of course, is besides the fact that, as far as they're concerned, movie Optimus Prime and G1 Optimus Prime are the same guy.

Re: #3-5, I just can't see Hasbro going to that kind of effort. To them, this is something to throw together quickly, maybe have a bit of fun with, but not something that they likely see any "return" on investing a lot of time and resources into. Having to actively go back to update a Hall of Fame site so many times (as required by #3 & #4), or do the fancy ceremony thing (per #5)... it's just not going to happen. I just can see them seeing that they get anything out of all that work that would be worth it to them to do. "Making fans happy" just isn't going to cut it.


Now about things that aren't a matter of "Hasbro won't do this," but are just my own preference....

#2 has merit, although being able to pick 5 out of 25 is far too many. If only as few as 25 are on the list of nominees, then I'd say no more than 2 or 3 choices per voter should be allow.

Re: #3... I do appreciate the attempt to nuance the voting a bit. I may vote for, say, either Ratchet or Bumblebee over Wheeljack each and every time, and 60% of fans may feel as I do (this is all strictly hypothetical of course) but Wheeljack may end up winning the vote because all 40% of those other folks like him, as opposed to either Ratchet OR Bumblebee, taken individually, and thus each of them only got 30% of the vote. That said, I'm not sure this is my favorite way to do this. I'd rather vote according to a point system or some such. Say, if I get three votes, I can give 3 points to my top choice, 2 to my second, and 1 to my third. Highest number of points (not votes, per se) would win. I'm sure there are other ways this could be done, and it's worth discussing.

#4: A lot of fans are already upset that the final vote is going to be on Facebook (rather than a more universally accessible web page). Personally, it's no great problem for me, and Facebook is pretty widely used, but I think it's worth mentioning.

And, again, pretty much nothing about #5 is likely to ever happen. It's just not.

QBKiller94 wrote:The Transformers Hall of Fame was great idea when it was born in 2010. It allows Hasbro and Transformers fans the opportunity to celebrate some of the quintessential characters that have dotted the Transformers Universe over the last 30 years.

However, Hasbro has dropped the ball. Hasbro needs to take measures to better regulate the fan voting and make the Transformers Hall of Fame induction into a premier event that will energize and entertain the fan base on a yearly basis.

Currently, Hasbro lets all the fan sites conduct the nominee voting how they see fit. I've been looking at the different Transformers sites and how they're handling the voting. It's a hodge podge with no two places following the same exact course. Hasbro should put some more guidelines in place to help these sites out. If weak candidates get into the HOF, then no one will take it seriously and it won't feel significant or important. There needs to be more direction and oversight by Hasbro to prevent this.

This is what I would do to improve the Transformers Hall of Fame process:

1) Tighten up the eligibility rules. For example: Make it so all Transformers characters who made their debut in the universe within 10 years of the vote are ineligible for HOF induction. So any character that debuted from TV, movies, video games or in the comics after 2004 would be ineligible this year. This would cut down the number of eligible characters so voters can concentrate more on the merits of who's left. This would also ensure newer characters would have to wait their turn before being considered over more established characters. (I saw Windblade getting votes on some sites and she's been around for about three minutes! ) However, this doesn't hurt characters like Arcee who are older, but were given more to do in recent series like Transformers Animated and Transformers Prime.

2) Hasbro should come up with a list of 25 nominees for the fan site's users to vote on. Voters should be allowed to pick up to five nominees via online polls. Seibertron.com does a great job using a poll to collect the data. It's clean and user friendly. But I think Hasbro should set the list of 25 nominees to keep the names uniform across all sites.

3) Hasbro should announce who the top 10 candidates are after the first round of voting and then let the fan sites have a second vote. To me, this is important. You may have voted for 3 guys the first time who didn't make the cut down to 10. Now you have the option of voting for someone else. This is similar to how the NFL makes its cuts for its Hall of Fame.

4) Hasbro should announce the top 5 from the second round of voting and have the fans vote for the winner of the fan vote on their Facebook page.

5) Finally, Hasbro should have a fancy ceremony (with an open bar!) to announce the inductees into the HOF and they should give out additional awards. Maybe give out yearly awards for top comic, top artist, best new character, best performance by a voice actor, best toy domestic, best toy international, etc., etc. Hasbro should set up a live stream feed for all the fan sites to use so even fans not in attendance could watch. Make it a REAL event to get people excited and reward your writers, artists, engineers, actors, etc. for their hard work.

The way you put itthat sounds like a fantastic idea and um how would this work for the majority of Unicron trilogy characters?

QBKiller94 wrote:To me there is a big difference between a popular character and a Hall of Fame character. Guys like Lockdown, Rung and Drift have a lot of merit and are popular today, but they've only been around for a really short time. The Transformers brand is 30 years old and Hall of Fame inductees should be characters who've had a major impact on the universe over time.

Putting Lockdown or Rung in the Hall of Fame over characters like Prowl or Devastator is like putting Mike Trout in the baseball Hall of Fame before Babe Ruth or Ted Williams. It's like putting Ahsoka Tano in the Star Wars Hall of Fame before R2-D2 or Chewbacca. I'm not saying they're bad characters, just that we need more time to review their importance in the overall universe.

I completely agree with this, but I wouldn't quite call Devastator a "Hall of Fame character" since, well, to be brutally honest, he's not a character.

He is what he's always been: A plot device. He's never been explored as a person, only used as a living weapon. He's as engaging as a Power Rangers Megazord, which are awesome because of how they look and what they do, rather than for who they are. His appeal is on the surface rather than at heart.

QBKiller94 wrote:The Transformers Hall of Fame was great idea when it was born in 2010. It allows Hasbro and Transformers fans the opportunity to celebrate some of the quintessential characters that have dotted the Transformers Universe over the last 30 years.

However, Hasbro has dropped the ball. Hasbro needs to take measures to better regulate the fan voting and make the Transformers Hall of Fame induction into a premier event that will energize and entertain the fan base on a yearly basis.

Currently, Hasbro lets all the fan sites conduct the nominee voting how they see fit. I've been looking at the different Transformers sites and how they're handling the voting. It's a hodge podge with no two places following the same exact course. Hasbro should put some more guidelines in place to help these sites out. If weak candidates get into the HOF, then no one will take it seriously and it won't feel significant or important. There needs to be more direction and oversight by Hasbro to prevent this.

This is what I would do to improve the Transformers Hall of Fame process:

A LOT of what you describe is how it used to be done. For the first two or three years, what you're asking for was the standard (though, Point #1 was never going to happen).

There used to be a wide fan vote on each site with each user posting their top 5 choices, and then once those were tallied, the result of that first round were sent to Hasbro to create a second round of voting, in which Hasbro.com would post the top five nominees of tallied up from the results of every fansite, and let users come to vote on which of those five they wanted to win, every day.

Then at BotCon, there would be a fancy ceremony with speeches, video montages, and other goodies.

It went on like this for three years... then came 2013. By this point, Hasbro had laid off many employees, including Rik Alvarez and his entire department, which was the very group of people who were previous responsible for handling the Hall of Fame. Ever since then, the Hall of Fame has felt like a pale comparison of what it once was. A poorly imitated shadow of the past.

Now the voting process comes so much later, is far less organized in unison between all the sites, and far more time-constrained than it used to be. Gone are the second rounds and the ceremonies as well. Same with the auto-inducted characters and humans. No more human inductees, period.

Now the whole thing has been reduced to an offhanded mention in the larger Hasbro panel, which focuses more on toy reveals and other media.

Needless to say, the glory days of the Transformers Hall of Fame seem to have come and gone before they had a chance to really take off.

G.B. Blackrock wrote:
In general, the idea of tightening the rules has merit. But some of these things... it just obvious that Hasbro won't ever do.

You're right, it's unlikely Hasbro or their PR people would go through this amount of effort, but I think there is a longterm PR/brand benefit for them. The actual cost would be relatively low for them, especially in years 2, 3, 4, etc. once they have the planning and processes in place. The voting stuff is just your basic streamlining of process and data.

The first few years of the HOF Hasbro had small ceremonies at BotCon and then last year it was a slide on a power point presentation. They should put more effort in if they want to get any benefit out of it. The key is to finish off the Hall of Fame voting promotion with an event, just like ESPN does with the ESPYs. The ESPYs were lampooned and laughed at when ESPN first put them on, but now they're a valued event by ESPN.

G.B. Blackrock wrote:Re: #1, Hasbro's not about to implement a rule that would leave all of the live-action movie characters out.

My proposed 10-year eligibility rule wouldn't exclude all live-action characters, just characters making their Transformers Universe debut in 2007, 2009, etc. They wouldn't be eligible until 2017, 2018, etc. The live-action movies make everything a mess because there are characters who share names with former characters but are nothing like them. I tried to come up with a good example, but most of the characters have pre-movie debuts.

G.B. Blackrock wrote:I'd rather vote according to a point system or some such. Say, if I get three votes, I can give 3 points to my top choice, 2 to my second, and 1 to my third. Highest number of points (not votes, per se) would win. I'm sure there are other ways this could be done, and it's worth discussing.

That works too. I'm for anything that starts with a Hasbro list and then gets a few rounds of fan voting. Hasbro could get some good PR value out of it just like EA Sports does with its prolonged Madden Cover Vote on ESPN.com.

G.B. Blackrock wrote:#4: A lot of fans are already upset that the final vote is going to be on Facebook (rather than a more universally accessible web page). Personally, it's no great problem for me, and Facebook is pretty widely used, but I think it's worth mentioning.

Great point! I don't understand why they did it this way rather than have the vote on Hasbro.com. Why give Facebook the traffic and exclude non-Facebook users? Dumb.

Also, why are two inductees voted by the fans? I liked it better when they had 3 or 4 inductees picked by Hasbro and one picked by the fans. Fans screw shit up all the time (i.e. Baseball/NBA All-Star voting, Peyton Hillis on Madden Cover, etc.). Hasbro is sabotaging its own promotion by giving us, the fans, too much input. Hasbro should set the table with hand picked inductees, and let us decide on one each year.

You make a good point about Devastator not being a fleshed out character. He's very two-dimensional for sure. That said, he's a still a character who has greatly impacted the Transformers Universe. Whether you want to induct Devastator or the Constructicons as a whole, I still think they're worthy. Besides, the G1 toy was tremendous!

Sabrblade wrote:There used to be a wide fan vote on each site with each user posting their top 5 choices, and then once those were tallied, the result of that first round were sent to Hasbro to create a second round of voting, in which Hasbro.com would post the top five nominees of tallied up from the results of every fansite, and let users come to vote on which of those five they wanted to win, every day.

Then at BotCon, there would be a fancy ceremony with speeches, video montages, and other goodies.

It went on like this for three years... then came 2013. By this point, Hasbro had laid off many employees, including Rik Alvarez and his entire department, which was the very group of people who were previous responsible for handling the Hall of Fame. Ever since then, the Hall of Fame has felt like a pale comparison of what it once was. A poorly imitated shadow of the past.

Now the voting process comes so much later, is far less organized in unison between all the sites, and far more time-constrained than it used to be. Gone are the second rounds and the ceremonies as well. Same with the auto-inducted characters and humans. No more human inductees, period.

Now the whole thing has been reduced to an offhanded mention in the larger Hasbro panel, which focuses more on toy reveals and other media.

Needless to say, the glory days of the Transformers Hall of Fame seem to have come and gone before they had a chance to really take off.

Thanks for adding context and filling in the blanks with detail, Sabrblade. My assumption was that the driving force behind the event had left the company, but I didn't know it to be a fact until your post. A Transformers Hall of Fame is a great idea that, if executed well, could be valuable to Hasbro. It's a shame it's likely going to die on the vine.

Devastator - for G1, Devastator was a game changer
Blackarachnia/Airachnid - Really a well thought-out and interesting character in all her iterations
Unicron - the dominant evil force spanning universes