I find it quite ironic that after editing Elita’s artwork, her stats all went down

How am I not surprised that Patrick "Pat" "Superstar Artist" "Mr. Talented" "The Transman" "Michiyamenotehi Funana" Lee got into NFTs

Sad thing about the twins from the bayverse, they were originally intended to be hillbillies. The writers strike lead to there not being a full script for the movie, just a "treatment". So the twins characterization was all Bay. Though he would deny it once the backlash hit

"Why do Transformers need mammories?" Black Arachnia. That's why.

My favorite was when they were going to call Nexus Prime “Nexus Maximus”, which was also the name of an “Adult toy”.

The Carbombia thing actually made Casey Kasem quit the third season. He was like, heck no and left.

Ironically, the scene for Skids and Mudflap in DOTM was included in the comic adaptation, where Mudflap takes a Cosmic Rust bullet for Bumblebee and Skids attacks Sentinel to buy the others time to get away, which redeems them slightly, but only slightly, because at least their final act was going to be a heroic one. And yes, Ironhide still dies too.

Mudflap: Skids my brother and fellow philosopher, I bequest of you, no, I plead with you! Do not be racist! Skids:

"We can't have a list of Transformers controversies without going to Japan-" Oh no. No. Stop it. I already know where this is going.

In case you thought "Carbombya" was an isolated incident, G.I. Joe casually used the term "camel jockeies" for middle-eastern desert dwellers.

Naming a transformer, exhaust, is like naming a kid fart.

I view Optimus death as a rare example of "Early loss, long term gain" due to what this brought to the franchise. Did they overdo it with how he died? Absolutly. did it actually have to happen though? Also absolutly in my opinion. I'm still shocked that the movie had this kind of an impact that real psychological papers were made about its effect on children at the time, which led to some even calling his death the boys counterpart to the death of Bambis mother.

Turns out Cliffjumper didn't appear anymore due to his toy being discontinued in 1986. Go watch the basics on Cliffjumper by Chris McFeely. The guy's a living encyclopedia for everything about Transformers.

How the hell did "Trukk not Munky" not make the list? That was a HUGE controversy, if not the BIGGEST controversy in all of Transformers!

Spastic is basically like if Hasbro sold a new fire truck character homaging G2 Pyro as "Retard." Equally offensive, equally fitting for the vehicle modes. It's amazing to think of how British and American English are practically seperate languages at times

As usual, great list, TJ! The controversy surrounding Optimus' death makes me wonder if there was controversy surrounding Dinobot's death.

Optimus's death is not a big thing nowdays, because he always dies in every series.

The only one I didn’t know about was the Elita-One. Some of these are so interesting after the fact. From what I’ve heard, the reason why the Rhino release had the added animation errors was because of the version of the show they used. Apparently the HD final cut of the episodes no longer exist, so what they had to work with were earlier unfinished cuts and final broadcast copies. The final copies were lower in quality, so they just used the unfinished ones instead. The Shout Factory release instead edited the footage and put in the broadcast version where ever it was needed to fix the errors. At some points in the show the quality kinda drops and that’s why. It’s also probably the main reason there hasn’t been a Blu-Ray release of the original series.

I never understood why they didn't upgrade Optimus Prime into Ultra Magnus instead of killing him off and have Ultra Magnus as a separate character. The Ultra Magnus toy was basically a white repaint of Optimus Prime and it combined with his trailer into a super mode so the solution was simple: Have Optimus Prime die in the film and then have the other Autobots search for the Matrix of Leadership in order to revive him and upgrade him into Ultra Magnus, or Magnus Prime or something, just like Unicron upgraded Megatron into Galvatron.

18:04 It makes you pleased that Sentinel Prime agreed with your (and everyone else's) statement.

As a "sleazy artist" myself, That pose IS completely possible to pull off in real life and not a stretch to the imagination in any way. Just sayin'

Spastic is a terrible name for a transformer to begin with.

At least it makes slightly more sense for Elita-1 to do an Escher Girls pose - she's a robot and you can claim that the articulation is part of her transformation.

*Ah, Rhino. Where I got my MST3K tapes and Sailor Moon soundtrack. *KissPlayers.....you know what eventually got me to nope out of it? Just the main character IN GENERAL. The 'plan' was to make her cute but she came off as OBNOXIOUS and the funny thing is, it felt like they were aping a LOT of things from the TMNT OVA/manga including a story where the turtles have to save Splinter from Shredder by going into his body, which ends in a joke....that I'll let you seek for yourself. KP did a story similar to that where the lead girl has the Transformers fight inside her body and the end...everything is PUNCHABLE.

One thing about Pat Lee you forgot to mention is that he also took credit for other artists' work.

I can see Hasbro making the twins in Studio Series, after all they made Jar Jar as a deluxe figure in Black Series, a character that was a controversy of titanic proportions in comparison.

I was about to call you out on "Western artists sexualizing Transformers" then I was like....nope we're early in NO WAY Kiss Players gets a pass. I was rewarded for my patience. As far as IDW Arcee the story was supposed to make Jhiaxus this mad scientist monster, but almost everyone I know found the story presented confusing, gross, and just not a good idea.

I was alright with Optimus dying, don't get me wrong I was sad. But it showed us that when a hero falls, there will be someone with a strong will to raise the occasion. For those of us who are older, we understand. I can see why kids were upset though. Optimus is just too good to die, so he gets invincible plot armor.

"very disgusting pose..." tf you mean disgusting

Kiss Players was just awful. The closest thing to a saving grace for that wretched part of the franchise was that despite the art style, the girls in it were in fact adults. I'm not kidding. The writer, Yuk Ohshima, originally wanted to make Atari an elementary school student, but Takara objected because she wouldn't be legally eligible to get a driver's license. (Yes, seriously.) Since the main characters all are allowed to drive in that story, this means they are at least old enough to get a Japanese driver's license, which would be 18. It's still awful, but it makes the disgusting sludge a tiny bit less bitter.

What i always love about the random name choises,is the fact that its actually fits the character sometimes,which is really funny as hell(like armada thrust who his name was originaly used for a g1 conehead)

I think TJ is conflating two different Simon Furman Arcee stories. The story where she's created to appease human feminists, _Prime's Rib_ (yes, really), was a Marvel story, not IDW, and did not involve a male Transformer being converted. In the IDW story where Arcee was originally male, _Spotlight: Arcee,_ Jhiaxus did the conversion because "science for science's sake". So yeah, Simon Furman fucked up Arcee _twice._

A recent one that I think of is Barricade's slogan. As we all know, Barricade's slogan in the movies is "To Punish and Enslave," which fits his "bad cop" motive. However, recent figures of Barricade has the slogan completely remove from his vehicle form, in particular of both wfc figures and the Buzzworthy reissue of the Studio Series figure. The slogan was even inconsistent in The Last Knight, shifting to "Serve and Protect" or "Keep Calm and Hail Megatron" Of course this is to avoid any suggestions of police brutality since it has become more prevalent in recent times. This is more like *avoiding* *potential* controversy but it is quite questionable how Barricade was able to keep his slogan for so long as police brutality isn't a new thing. While I do worry how this might affect how frequent Barricade will appear in the franchise, I think this was a good move on Hasbro and Paramount to make this change.

It’s funny when people try apply “woke” BS to these great 80’s gems. The best decade ever.

If Hasbro makes studio series figures of “the twins” I will probably have to buy multiples of them, to use as sort of man-made transformers drones, so the Autobots or Decepticons can start mashing into them. I would be so happy that those two would eventually get what they deserve for even existing in the live action movies.

So Pat Lee killed Dreamwave Comics.

Dreamwave is in the Holy Book of Grudges

Also, why were parents surprised with Optimus's death? They LITERALLY straight up spoiled it in the marketing! All the trailers for the movie that I've seen have the announcer say "DOES OPTIMUS PRIME DIE????" at some point in the trailer.

Fun Fact: In the Bayformers comics, Sentinel Prime actually KILLED Mudflap and Skids.

Was surprised there was no "Truck Not Monkey" in here. Would love to see that included in a possible part 2

In way of toys I remember the Punisher gun transformer had some backlash, and Scattershot of the Technobots had some similar issues.

According to Reno wilson in an old huffington post interview he and Tom Kenny based Skids and Mudflap off of posers who try to hard to "Be black" almost like the uploaded too much kevin federline data

Exhaust wasn’t the only toy that advertised cigarettes, G1 Mirage also did(with them replacing the ‘Citanes’ name from ‘Gitanes’, a French cigarette company, in fact it was unique as Ligier was the only French team that had cigarette sponsorship as the team owner had friends in the French government)

It seems most most things with jhiaxus in make me think "Gee, axe us"

Carbombya is pretty disrespectful, but holy hells did I just wake the house from laughing.

The Arcee idea was fine, the only thing wrong with it was the constant backpedalling that *made* it really offensive.

When Hasbro brought back Optimus in the third season they learned a lesson; "Don't kill of Optimus Prime unless you plan to bring him soon". Apparently Takara didn't get the memo because when they killed him again in The Headmasters it took years to bring him back in Return of Convoy(Ginrai doesn't count because he was a new character).

I honestly would be interested in a Dreamwave video in general. I did not know half of the crap Pat Lee did.

13:26 I can already see someone doing a certain Encanto song parody right about now.

Goodness, the treatment of Arcee and female Transformers by Simon Furman is truly disgusting. I know he and Mairghread Scott got into an argument on Twitter about it. I've honestly stopped liking him after learning about the very flagrant misogynistic and transphobic tendencies.

The only ONLY argument I can give for spastic is in the uk it’s also a term for a car engine problem here in the uk even slag is a term here for waist metal but the problem with both spastic and slag is it’s the derogatory terms for both Words most people are aware of hence the problem

A bit off topic here, but I'd like to thank TJ for his deep dive into BBTS. Thanks to his video I now own Alternators Rodimus!

I yelled some very bad words when Prowl was killed . Prowl was my favorite it was sad to see him go . still wish all the Transformers that wasn't going to be in Season 3 they showed kiloed off . Funny part me & my friends all say Cyclonus is Skywarp in season 3 you see all 3 Insecticons . Then we all had different ideas who else was killed of Camera in the Movie .

5:00 Just buy the Selects release, it's cheaper.

On the subject of Kiss Players. Regardless on your feelings about it, you CANNOT deny that Ohshima is a genius toy designer. The dude made MP Dinobot and MP Sunstreaker, two of the best MPs ever made.

imagine the first time you make a marvel movie you kill spider man. imagine the first time you make a star wars move you kill Han solo. in fact didn't Jobby the hong once make a joke about both films killing off beloved characters to sell toys?

Do another one of this! The whole thing that happened to all the botcon stories alone...

I agree with this list for the most part, with the exception of the first 2 & I'm gonna get some hate on my opinion on these. 1. I would recommend the Shout Factory DVD's over the youtube channel in terms of watching them in just the physical is better then digital, cause there may come a day the youtube is not around anymore or the channel is taken down or episodes removed, with the DVD's you will always have them in hand & never lose them. 2. There is nothing wrong with sexualization of a character, Transformers has gone long pass being a children's property & is a market for all ages of people - young & adults, & there are artist & viewers who enjoy the sexy aspects of the female characters & even sometimes the male ones (especially Starscream). So if they want to draw them sexy, they should have all the right too do it & should get NO backlash for it & if they do, it's things like this that give certain people the power to throw hate & controversy at the artists when they have done nothing wrong. If you don't like it that's fine I'm not telling you to like it, but this constant of "it's degrading & disgusting" is quite harmful towards those artists & people who enjoy that stuff.

I stopped at mid-video to go look at that Russell Howard clip and that was freaking hilarious

As an Englishman the Overrun controversy amuses me so much, I laughed for about 5 minutes after learning about it, clearly the word “tact” has never been said in Hasbro HQ

It's weird, Simon Furman usually writes female human characters in a perfectly normal way that doesn’t define them as characters by their gender.

I'm sorry, but Carbombya made me burst out laughing for a minute straight when I heard it.

I mean when you've had a successful Toy Brand for about 40 years you would have had to run into more than a few roadblocks over the decades.

I pushed the kiss players back into the darkest corners of my head and thoroughly suppressed that they ever existed. And I completely forgot about them until this video

11:29 Chris Mcfeely's got you covered.

If this character had been named “Squirrley“ or, I don’t know, dragstrip!

A lot of these controversies I already knew but the ones I didn't know surprised me. But for some reason I can't stop laughing

The female Transformers are Descendants of Solus Prime.

21:28 Ironically, that’s the plot for spiderverse.

Night was indeed sentient after bombshell tweaked her. I have the MP-55 & took that stupid car off her back & OMG! What a difference it made. She is now so pose able.

@14:53 You think that writer dude thought "Well they are called *TRANS*-formers for a reason" when making the plotline?

21:25 that's how I felt as a kid when Ultimate Spider-Man killed off Peter Parker and replaced him with Miles Morales. Not kidding, it wasn't until the Spider-Verse movie that I was even willing to give that character a chance, I was that bitter about it.

No mention of the worst combiner ever, by an outlier comic, The Beast Within. The Beast was a attempt of a Dinobot combiner, and there was a lot of controversy over it.

It would be like adding actual abs to Optimus prime in place of the truck grill. Weird.

The saddest thing about those "stereotypical feminists" in the Marvel comic? I've seen too many feminists living up to that stereotype. It's how Rey happened. If you look at what people defending the sequel trilogy, specifically Rey, it sounds a lot like the kinds of things "Straw Feminists" say in older shows.

Bay being racist? No way!

Does the Beast qualify as a controversy? I know there's a general agreement among the fandom that it never happened.

Thank god we got rid of the robotic minstrel show that was Skids and Mudflap

I got two main thoughts about #8 and 4, and #1. I apologize if it's an essay. You know, your adoration for Titans Return Arcee, in my experience, has been a counterargument to both the issue of female Transformer sexualization and IDW Arcee's "sex" being explained as being trans. While many in a couple of Discords I've been to have mostly praised that Arcee as a great toy, there are those who accuse it of being a "femboy" just coz it's a Blurr remold. Of course, whether they were trolling or not, the idea that a take on a traditionally female character coz it's not feminine enough is kind of baffling when feminizing them has not worked more than half the time, since it just leaves them as bad shellformers. Truth be told, I only liked Generations Arcee, WITH the black detailing among the white and pink, because it was a good take on a design I ultimately never liked from the start. And considering that, of the mass release toys, only Animated and Prime have made designs that were good in balancing feminine design with, the fact that TR Arcee follows Road Rage's design philosophy by using a male character's body and still looking respectable feminine, but not overly sexualized, is also what drew me to the toy, as it does POTP Elita, even if that toy isn't that good by any means, and there's a new, better (but smaller) one anyway. But no matter how not "traditionally feminine" Arcees can be, it's pretty clear that no one can make her a transwoman anymore, given how much awful baggage Furman's stories for her carry. The idea has become far too loaded to safely use. I'm surprised that you didn't bring up Blackarachnia when talking about #8, though I wonder if it's coz being sexualized is the very point of her character, no matter what version, so she's probably the only female character that gets a pass for it. With Optimus, the biggest good that could've come out of it was Hot Rod's growth into a hero in his own right. Problem is, the combination of treating the characters as mere merchandise and thinking kids would feel the same (despite giving Optimus a played straight death scene), getting Hot Rod involved in how he dies in the stupidest way, and Hot Rod's hero's journey reward being too high, despite his otherwise great character and displays on why he's WORTHY of being a heroic leader, the poor guy's potential as a character, as a LEADER and Prime, to be loved in his own right without baggage was very hamstrung. And it doesn't help that those like Brandon Eastman will do their damnest to give him hell just for "what he did".

10. And I thought the OG DVD set (And the Hulu version) for the original Thundercats cartoon not having music in episode 2 was bad. 9. Yeesh! 8. Reminds me. NEVER let someone like Greg Horn draw ANY female Transformers! 7. Yeah they changed Slag's name. This seems really stupid. 6. Remember how in Transformers Deviations they didn't show Cliffjumper & Jazz being saved after they wound up being eaten by Unicron when he consumed moon base 1? Now I can imagine an alternate timeline where Cliffjumper's first demise was in the 86 movie. 5. Remember folks. This was happening after the Unicron "Trilogy" wrapped up in Japan. 4. Not sure what's worse. This. Or the Futurama episode "bend her". Though I think something Torkulon said sums up my thoughts on this "That was so terrible I think it gave me cancer" 3. Remember. Sentinel Prime slaughtered them in the Dark of the Moon comic. 2. Not sure if this is worse then Ken Penders forcing the Archie Sonic comics to reboot in a crossover with Mega Man of all things. 1. And to think that they ended up changing the fate of Duke in GI Joe The Movie after the backlash Optimus Prime's demise got. And then the way Optimus perished in the Marvel comics was arguably worse because he blew himself up after what hapened to some NPCs in a video game.

As soon as I saw the title, I knew Spastic would be somewhere in here. EDIT: Holy shit, you like Russell Howard too?!

Brit here, Spastic really isn't that bad of a word.

Whenever a conservatory comes up around fembots. I role my eyes half the time... As more often than not it's people that are complaining about a toy they're not going to buy nor is marketed at kids. While, some artists do take take things a bit far and should be critiqued but, the outerage can get overblown especially with figures aimed at adult collectors. Seriously, over than the poses the original Windblade model kit design wasn't even that "bad"! And now we don't have Windblade before she came to earth! (And Nicee isn't even official at all! If you don't like what you see getting produced don't waste your breathe/time typing out stuff just. Don't. Buy. It. That signals far more to companies than words do!)

The female Transformers thing was something that also really annoyed me Aside from it usually being handled poorly, it also bugged me that the dudes would have crane booms for arms, scopes for eyes, or wheels for legs yet the 'fembots' would be the same hourglass figure with clearly defined human stylings. Sadly it's still not done and over with yet...there's those model kits where the dudes are hyper stylised and dynamic, yet of course the fembots are even MORE humanly styled to the point where they don't even look like they belong in the same franchise anymore.

Wow Simon Furman was kind of sexist.

My advice about the Transformers Kiss Players is go visit the Basics on Transformers channel, there is a video there that covers on that. I believe that channel is runned by Chris McFeely.

Being British, the second you said spastic, I had to pause as I was laughing at the pure ignorance of hasbro.

From what i've heard Skids and Mudflap were intitially meant to have a scene where they adopt their personalities by connecting to a Library's public internet and absorbing 2000s internet culture into their memory cores- they thought they were "cool gangsters" but that scene was removed so the lack of context made the two characters seem extremely offensive. It's really sad because I remember Reno Wilson(Mudflap) and Tom Kenny(Skids) having a really fun time writing lines for the two characters to get the concept across. So it wasn't Micheal Bay who dictated the writing for the characters- it was the two voice actors co-creating the dialogue through improv. I hope this does bring more light over Skids and Mudflap as characters- I never liked them personally but having a better understanding of what the concept behind the two of them was meant to be(Young angsty teens that wanted to be cool internet gangsters and failing at it) makes me more accepting of them. If you want to see Skids and Mudflap be actual good characters- read the IDW movieverse comics- they are actually alright there.

If you think about it Optimus prime saved duke from G.I. Joe

I thought for sure the famous Bob skir misquote would show up.

honestly I'm fine woth sexualized transformers, as long as it's aimed towards the more mature/high end collectible side of things. althought at the same time I really prefer when they make bulky women transformers as they make for better figures in general.

I'm so hooked on these top tens

Tacklewaver is still a funny transformer name, he is one of the combinations of the landcross combiner members

6:55 with Strika being the notable exception.

Slag is a bad word in the US too lol

If my recollection is correct for #4 In the old Marvel UK Transformers comics Simon Firman wrote Arcee's origin to be also the same. She was built to satisfy angry feminists, and by the time the Autobots decided it was a mistake she had proven herself. But in those comics they had the creation matrix, which could make new transformers, so she was built and programmed with a female identity. Adding the wrinkle she was and autobot forced to transition and the operation drove her crazy? Way to make a slight cringe idea into a horrible violation dude...

Love the video! I do remember the "Spastic" incident... And yeah, I am from the UK... The term is used to describe people with Cerebral Palsy, but was hijacked to refer to anyone with any form of Mental illness or Birth Defect such as Downs Syndrome etc... And even one of the largest Charities helping people with such conditions changed it name to SCOPE. Amazingly, While it is obviously a DEEPLY Derogatory Word, I wish they had kept the name as it is a word I feel needs to be "Depowered" and that might actually have helped a little. And, Yeah... I also DISAGREE with them changing "Slag" to whatever it is now... Sure, Slag CAN MEAN a Woman of ill repute, but it's also Waste Products from Steel Creation or Coal Mining... And that in the UK and US I feel is one of the biggest issues with Derogatory words - We give them power by being offended! Get offended when they are used offensively but otherwise - Ignore them! I mean, God help any US folks who happen to be LGBTQ+ if they ever come to the UK and find out we still sell "F**gots" - Its a Meaty Ball in Gravy, always has been! Sorry folks but Context does matter! Great Video TJ

My UK friends call him Slag themselves. If you call him Slug they are quick to say Slag

So that’s how the dream wave era of transformers comics ended.

About Carbombya City, is it really that strange that a town has more cattle then people? I willing to bet there are quite a few town in Europa and North America where they have more pigs or cows then they have people. The name, no debate though.