Transformers Prime Looks… Huh

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With less than two weeks before the channel is officially set to debut, Hasbro finally updated its website for the Hub and the new Transformers cartoon Prime. Mainly, it’s a shit-ton of character designs; TF World has them all, but I wanted to show a few here on TR. You can see a bit of the Bayformers influence in Optimus’ robot mode above, but that doesn’t particularly bother me; what bothers me is that his vehicle mode appears to be cel-shaded, while his robot mode is normal, if a bit over-textured, CG. The discrepancy between the two freaks me out.

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Here’s Arcee. She looks like a stunt double from the old ’90s anime Bubblegum Crisis, which probably drives a few of you insane, but doesn’t bother me either. Check out a few of the Decepticons after the jump.

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Megatron is some ridiculous alien plane — following Bayformers’ decree that Megatron absolutely refuses to be a robot in disguise.

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Soundwave is awesomely creepy-looking, and his stealth spy-plane form makes sense, too. Frankly, if I can’t have Soundwave as a boombox — and I can’t, because it’s 2000-fucking-10 — I am 100% down with this. So my only worry?

The kids.

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Why does Hasbro insist on throwing in some goddamn rugrats in their Transformers cartoon? I say this, of course, as an old nerd bastard, but I know for a fact I would have felt the same way when I was an 8-year-old bastard. Robots are awesome; children aren’t. And it’s obvious that Hasbro isn’t even trying, since they’re following the generic male lead, spunky female co-lead, and nerd character triumvirate used in 90% of all cartoons ever. Every moment spent on these characters is a moment not spent on giant transforming robots, and for a show called Transformers, that shit is not cool. For all the rest of the character designs, make sure to head to TF World, and thanks to Sango for the tip.