Review of Transformers G1 DVDs by Rhino Entertainment

 

Anybody who ever got into Transformers in during the turn of the millennium like Beast Wars, Robots in Disguise(2001), or Armada were curious of the original incarnation of the show. At the time, there was no streaming and not everyone was aware of the Netflix DVD rentals at that point.

So the only way to legally watch the original was to either watch the VHS tapes or get the DVD set.

In the early 2000s, Rhino Entertainment released DVDs of the original Generation 1(or G1) Transformers and oh boy, it is terrible.

I'm going to explain, there is two different types of prints, the broadcast masters and the pre-broadcast masters. The broadcast masters are the ones usually the ones that air on television, sadly that have degraded over the years. Rhino wanted to release the series looking all shiny looking and clean, so they used the hardly used pre-broadcast masters.

The problem of the pre-broadcast masters is it's the beta version of these episodes. It has numerous animation errors before cleaned up and be ready for release for television.

I get animation errors were very common in 80s cartoons but at these were actually fixed and the fault can be blame on Rhino. So here's several examples of Rhino terrible mistake.

The red Cliffjumper briefly morphs into yellow Bumblebee and back to his red Cliffjumperly self

Instead of using their eye lasers, the Dinobots starred the rocks into exploding.

Starscream morphs into Skywarp.

This was a commonly found mistake found on the Rhino DVDs, you see Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker colors mixed up several times.

Trailbreaker is red.

Instead of Starscream shooting, it's a jetpack wielding Mirage using his invisibly powers.

Grey fingers

Give me your missing face.

Megatron is a KISS fan

This one scene have Megatron hovering a few feet from the ground.

Double Starscream

They waved goodbye in the vehicle as the door closes and somehow appeared in front of those doors.

The worst episode affected was the season 1 finale, Heavy Metal War. The story is Megatron challenged Optimus to a one-man duel and if Optimus loses, the Autobots will leave Earth behind. However Megatron is clearly cheating by gaining the special powers of his Decepticons. Each individual Decepticon has a special chip in their chest and we see Starscream reach in and grabbed thin air.

There was one scene where Megatron suppose to use Skywarp's teleportation ability to avoid Optimus throwing a giant bolder at him but going by the Rhino release, Megatron somehow has phasing powers. I don't know any Decepticons that has the power to phase through objects. 

Another controversial thing Rhino did is adding unnecessary sound effects that were not present in the original release like blasters and explosions. This wasn't from the pre-broadcast masters, this is something Rhino added on their own.

As infamous as George Lucas' changes to the original trilogy are, at least Star Wars is his creation, his characters, and his story. The guy has the right to change his stuff whether we like it or not. Rhino on the other hand have no hand in creating G1 Transformers and put in a bunch of pointless sound effects.

The DVD sets have some extras. Commercial bumpers(with the new sound effects). PSAs where the Transformers give life lessons to kids and saying "And knowing is half the battle." Yep, they stole from G.I.Joe.

Other extras is footage of the Transformers convention going at the time. Interviews with writer Earl Kress, comic writer Simon Furman, voice actor Michael McConnohie who played Tracks and Cosmos and later in another show voiced in RID2001 as Hotshot and Ironhide.

Also, you can tell when these DVDs were exactly made, because they have an interview with the infamous Pat Lee. *sighs* Once apon a time in the early 2000s, Pat Lee ran an independent comic company called Dreamwave Productions.

Optimus has a long neck, tiny torso, humongous hands and feet.

Dreamwave obtained the license of Transformers comics. Few years later, the company declared bankruptcy, several employees were never paid even long before the bankruptcy, and alot that money before the bankruptcy was spent on fancy Porsches and supermodel girlfriends. So you can see why Pat Lee became one of the most hated men, also his art sucks.

Back to discussing the rest of the extras. There's the opening to Transformers Victory, commercial bumpers to Transformers Victory, and a Easter egg to listen to the closing theme of Transformers Victory.

Transformers Victory aired in Japan in the late 80s, it is a loose continuation of the American G1 Transformers that ignored the 4th season. 

So why are we seeing extras from a later incarnation of Transformers?

Oh yeah, there is another interview I forgot to mention, voice actor Neil Kaplan who voiced Optimus Prime from 2001's Robots in Disguise. 

Imagine you got a DVD set of the original Star Trek, hoping to find an interview with Spock, Bones, Scotty, or Sulu.

But you get an interview from this actress who is completely unrelated to the development of the original Star Trek.

What's funny is during the interview, he said his show's Megatron regular voice actor was unavailable for a few episodes and Neil voiced him and told his viewers if you want to know which episodes he voiced Megatron, you have to find the Easter Egg on the DVD.

To this day, no Easter Egg was found. Maybe it was meant for RID2001's DVD but due to the series being a Saban dub, it's owned by Disney and getting a DVD release is tricky.

The DVD releases of Seasons 3 and above were better received as well as later incarnations like Beast Wars and Beast Machines. I'm glad that Rhino isn't releasing any versions of Transformers with incomplete animation in it's beta stages and..Oh wait..

 The DVD sets of Transformers Armada was also full of incomplete animation in it's beta stages. However that's because Cartoon Network gave the show a deadline and we got the show six months before the Japanese version aired and have horribly rushed dubbing. Sadly, Rhino or any other DVD company treats any version of Transformers as a American cartoon and not an anime, so don't plan to have a DVD in Japanese.

Yeah I know I went off subject again. The good news is Shout! Factory is now in control of releasing G1 Transformers on DVD. They went out of their way to clean up the mess that Rhino has made. If you want to get G1 Transformers on DVD, get it from Shout!, not Rhino. 

This is a quote from their DVD insert,

"Transformers DVDs released prior to our 25th Anniversary Edition were missing animation seen in the original broadcast. We did extensive research, found the discrepancies between the original broadcast masters and the restored masters used for the last DVD release, reinserted the correct animation, and color corrected it as best we could to match the shots before and after. But because a one-inch master tape simply can't hold up to the quality of the restored masters, you may notice occasional shots—or even scenes—in some episodes that seem slightly softer than others. Just take comfort in knowing that laser blasts have been reinserted, backgrounds have been corrected and Starscream is Starscream once again."