Rated X wrote:That I know. But there’s a reason those "G1" episodes never succeeded in the West.
It's not that they didn't "succeed" in the West. It's simply that they never aired on TV in the West at all. Hasbro at the time had no interest in bringing over the Japanese shows after the American G1 cartoon itself had already died. The Rebirth ended with just its three episodes since networks were no longer interested in the Transformers cartoon. Had the American show been able to continue, it would have. And had the American show continued, Japan wouldn't have had to create its own cartoons. But since the American show died off, Japan wanted more and so went and created their own shows. But we in the West didn't get what they made because Transformers was dead as far as American television was concerned. It would have been too costly for Hasbro to import, redub, and air the Japanese cartoons since they'd lose more money from those shows than they would have earned.
Thankfully, the G1 comics were still going strong at the time, but I digress.
As for the list of choices to vote on that Star Saber won against, 7 of those 11 characters are mainstream American characters since one of those seven is Fortress freakin' Maximus, one of them is Powermaster Optimus Prime's Japanese counterpart (who basically looks just like Prime), and the other five are all the Optimuses from
Beast Wars,
Robots in Disguise (2001),
Armada,
Energon, and
Cybertron; all of which were successful mainstream cartoons that aired on American television from 1996-2006. Only the remaining four of the choices can really be considered obscure characters, as far as casual fans are concerned.
And hey, if Star Saber hadn't won, the winner would have been the non-G1
Transformers: Armada Optimus Prime, who came in second place. So those who want the MP line to stay G1-only, be glad that the winner was a G1 dude.
