As such, here are the five characters (or sets of characters in some cases) that I feel have been given the shaft. If you disagree with me, or have your own ideas, please let me know in the comments here, and have fun reading :)
5. Cosmos
First on the list, Cosmos! Yes, everyone loves the little fella, but let's face it, we love him because he's essentially a joke, his roles within the media over the years can basically be summarized as "Space Taxi" or crowd filler.
Even his essential counterpart amongst the Decepticons, Astrotrain, has made more of a role for himself than just the "Space Taxi", given that he took on a role as Decepticon leader in one episode of the cartoon, and even acted as god to some Titan aliens. He's even had a fairly vocal and prominent role within the IDW continuity in recent years, unlike our pal Cosmos who has only just started appearing as more than a background character (and even that is just a glorified space camera).
Also, let's not forget his nonsense alternate mode and the fact that these guys are meant to be in DISGUISE. I suppose it did work well during the Mars Attacks crossover though....
4. Jawbreaker
I know what you're thinking! Who?
This guy has had it so bad, that out of all the regular release single figures (excluding playsets, and one of the Mutants) he never appeared ONCE in the IDW Gathering or Ascending comics, not even in a cameo. To put this simply, they had space for Manta Ray, a McDonalds Happy Meal toy, but not a full sized regular release toy!
This problem has even been around for longer than this, where his only fictional appearance ANYWHERE (bar his Sourcebook profile) has been in a recent Collector's Club comic, where he used Ratchet's Beast Hunters toy character model, and even that was a minor role.
3. Hot Shot
Oh Hot Shot, for a few years you were a main character in basically all the Transformers cartoons, you spawned a popular internet meme, and everyone loved you, what could go wrong?
The Movie came out, and Bumblebee replaced you as the main character, then suddenly everyone forgot all about you, that's what!
Sure we've had a handful of toys based on your past appearances (Universe 2008, Prime and upcoming AOE) but that's nothing to what it was even a few years ago
For those of you who are unaware, when Transformers Animated began, it was planned for Hot Shot to be a main character, but following the release of the first movie, he was replaced with Bumblebee, sure he was later shown in an episode in Season Three, but he, and the rest of his team were pretty much just recycled character ideas and models
2. Sentinel Prime
You may not have been expecting Sentinel to appear here, but hear me out.
Ever since the Sentinel Prime character has been fleshed out (beyond just a dead arm in Dreamwave, or just a flashback death scene in Marvel) he has been typecast as a relative jerk, or just utterly unlike-able.
The IDW G1 version was a bully former security guard who was the Senate's figure head. In Animated he's a former friend of Optimus with a massive ego problem, and of course in Dark of the Moon, he is a traitor who kills Ironhide in a violent way (spoilers btw).
It has become somewhat impossible to think of Sentinel as anything other than amoral or just a horrible individual, and for that, I'm sorry for him, as I'm sure he wasn't originally envisioned this way!
1. The Twins
Now here's the big one, or should I say two. Skids and Mudflap from Revenge of the Fallen. The two of them act like children who are wannabe gangsters, and the world turns that into them being racist stereotypes of black people.
A culmination of this complain was that the duo were written out of their role in Dark of the Moon (where they would have been killed alongside Ironhide, protecting Sam and Bumblebee from Sentinel) and, if you haven't noticed, there have been little to no mentions of Twins in Transformers since then (even Sideswipe and Sunstreaker aren't seen together too much now) and this is just stupid
What is really bad about this particular situation is that the characters themselves were an interesting take on Cybertronians, and could be seen as having been influenced by the internet (as was established to be how they learned to speak English) to acting this way, perhaps even due to things like chat rooms and forums.
Their battle against Devastator in ROTF was also pretty entertaining in itself, and was a good pay-off for the characters existing.
There you go guys, I hope you enjoyed this topic, and let me know about any points of view you have on this subject. If you have any ideas for a future "article" for me to write on, then please let me know
Thanks for reading! :)
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