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Was Transformers more popular than GI Joe?
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12-07-2008, 08:46 PM
swafus
Sunsword = Fabulous!
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Portland, ME
Posts: 3,628
I was born in 77 so I was there for the star wars action figures in all their glory which abruptly ended in '85. Sure the Lucas machine wanted to keep on rollin' and so we got a "handful" of droids and ewoks figs. in 85-86. Trust me when I tell you that Star Wars was old-hat for me by then. In 82, I was there for the very first G.I.Joe commercial for the toys and comics. I had all of the original figs and was Joe-crazy for the next 7-8 years. In 84 the Transformers hit really hard on the basis of their concept mainly. 2 toys in one was what I remember telling my mom when I first learned about them. They undoubtedly ruled the x-mas shopping season that year! Optimus and Megatron kicked the hell out of Joe in 84 without a doubt. 85 was a banner year for both lines. In 86 Hasbro wanted to move forward with all new characters for Transformers to help infuse more excitement into the property as it was starting to wane. They used the animated movie as a launch point for this and felt the wrath of 8 year olds everywhere when they tried to kill off Optimus. They brought him back a few years later but the damage was done and transformers without Optimus was pretty much a joke. Then they tried to get really gimmicky with "quadruple-changers" , "pretenders", and all of the humongous characters. Meanwhile, the Joe movie came and went (straight to video) and the franchised kept chugging along pretty much unscathed. I mean, they totally got into wacky-land with all the super sci-fi and cobra-la crap, but it was still a very popular line. The DIC cartoon gave it a much needed jolt and the Marvel comic series was always a big seller until around issue 115. By then the cartoon was cancelled and the line was pretty much done for the time being. Transformers even tried staging a comeback by piggy-backing on the Marvel GI.IJOE comic in the latter part of the series and was unsuccessful.
Considering all of this, I have to say that although the Transformer light bulb burned twice as bright, it also burned half as long. GI.Joe was more popular and had a more successful run.
swafus
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