R.E.V.s Existed, I Swear

Transforming robot toys are generally pretty popular, but not every transforming robot line is popular. Just like other 'sure thing' products, sometimes they'll be a transforming robot line that just doesn't take off. Playmates launched R.E.V.s (Radically Engineered Vehicles) in 2006, and by all accounts, it wasn't a bad idea. Seemingly combining Stickfa's, Microman, and Transformers gimmicks into a pretty neat toy line.

I'd like to say R.E.V.s stuck around for a year, but in all honesty, I don't really remember seeing them for more than a few months. There's not a whole lot about them online either. I've got the green motorcycle guy, and can't remember his name or find it either. Aside from very few pics and videos, it's like it got Mandela Effected out of reality.

In retrospect, I wish I'd bought some more of the toys. My focus was on other things and they slipped through the cracks of my attention. I do remember thinking the one I did buy was neat, it's a cool toy. The guy can ride his motorcycle or merge with the parts. That's a pretty solid robot based toy and by all means should have sold better. Maybe on the other side of that Mandela Effect, it's enjoying a long running sucess.

A RID in time

For some reason Robots in Disguise (the one from 2001) has gone down as one of the more obscure lines in the history of Transformers. It's weird as for the most part as it was reasonably popular. Sure some of the toys were overly complicated, but boy did those molds get a lot of use for a few years there. The cartoon was silly, but generally well liked. In fact, I don't know why silly is a bad thing. Something can be light hearted and still feature mature story telling. I wouldn't call the cartoon mature story telling, but it certainly was a fun show to watch.

In fact most people were really looking forward to it coming out. I can understand people who weren't around at the time not being very aware of it, but a lot of us are still around. I had a ton of fun hunting down all of the toys. After it was over and Transformers had moved onto Armada, RID was the comparison those who didn't like Armada made often. They liked RID so much and found the toys to be so much better and now... poof. It's just gone from popular memory.

The show cannot be released on video due to a ridiculous amount of legalities and probably a lack of interest in some of the folks involved. I hope that one day it does get an official release, it 'd be nice to have a legit copy of the show. It was a good TF series that got treated unfairly by history. It'd be nice to see it get some love again. 

The Magnus Effect

A recurring argument within the Transformers fandom is things like Blue Bluestreak, Transformers the movie in widescreen, and other various things. While such things as false memories can be spread easily and gain traction quickly (hey... I do remember that come to think of it) a lot of people believe in such things as the Mandela Effect creating such instances (Berenstein Bears... what do you mean Berenstain Bears?... wait what?). Now such things are usually be dismissed by people who'd rather say such things as 'Occam's Razor' instead of 'the simplest answer is usually the right one', which I guess is less words but non-the-less super duper pretentious. It's Halloween time, it isn't the time to be serious and super logical. It's a time to be spooked and laugh at yourself when the ice maker scares the crap out of you.

Look, they were the Berenstein Bears ok?

The Madella Effect is kinda spooky in theory and the idea of it can really get you thinking of various times in your life where you swear something was different than it is. My point is maybe there's plenty of these reality holes all throughout Transformers and we can't help but thinking these various things because maybe it really happened in a timeline we were previously in. Perhaps a good part of our current population is from an alternate reality that they were transported from when theirs was destroyed and because that's just the way it works. We are don't know any better as our perceptions of things have always been one way. I mean, when so many people swear they saw TFTM in theaters and it was in widescreen... there's got to be something to it. And when I mean something to it, I mean of course the most crazy thing possible and not something logical.