MovieChat Forums > Transformers (1984) Discussion > G.I. Joe and Thundercats are better.

G.I. Joe and Thundercats are better.


I'm not writing a hate post, but I cant help but feel Transformers is one of the weaker 80s action cartoons. I still enjoy it. Its fun, but its nowhere near the quality as G.I. or Thundercats. Even Ninja Turtles.

Joe and Thundercats have better animation, better and more cohesive stories and events. Re watching Transformers I'm shocked at how choppy it is not only in story, but animation as well. Its just not as well produced as other shows of that era. I still like it though. The characters are what keeps it from being a waste and it is rather fun to watch. But I'm a little shocked this is the reigning champ of 80s cartoons.

My rankings:
The Real Ghostbusters 10/10
Thundercats 10/10
G.I. Joe 9/10
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 8/10
Transformers 7/10



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Gotta disagree with you on the animation. As someone who owns dvds of all three shows, Thundercats is definitely at the bottom in terms of animation.

Thundercats easily has the better story arcs, but its animation is the weakest.

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I honestly don't see how. The animation in Transformers is stilted, choppy and very uneven. Thundercats had much, much more fluid animation.

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Trust me. Even my wife, a huge Thundercats fan, laughs at the animation. Recycled scenes and characters action scenes with very little movement are far more abundant than in Transformers.

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Just about any 80s cartoon compared to the abomination of animation that was Carnage in C Minor is going to look good. Any episode done by Akon tended to be subpar animation wise.

While episodes like Call of the Primitives looked fantastic but the story was awful. It kept up the 3rd season trend of making Grimlock a joke, the matrix was now sentient and living in a cave and Unicron was in fact made by some fugly midget.

The quality of Transformers was inconsistant, season 3 being the biggest offender.

The Real Ghostbusters became tainted as soon as it became Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters and then they had the junior Ghost Busters appear in the show.

GIJoe was a little too USA is AOK for international tastes. I can take it in small doses. Its hilarious when its renamed Real International Hero or Real Action Hero.

Ninja Turtles suffered the same fate as Ghost Busters really, went on too long and ran out of ideas and just got stupid. I still remember the episode where victory was achieved by thinking positively about mothballs.

Thundercats was one of the shows I remembered as being a lot better than it was. Kinda like how Spaceballs is an awesome movie when you're 9 but not so much now. I have only seen a handful of episodes recently so I may be being a bit harsh as these eps could easily have been the "Carnage in C Minor" of Thundercats.

One cartoon that I still enjoy but everyone seems to have forgotten about is The Visionaries, the only thing really letting the show down was that the good guys were utter morons and the villains were so much more interesting.

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I can't say I really remember the animation in Thundercats, I only remember it being one of the many toy-advert-toons of the 80s (of which Transformers is one too of course!).

When you're a kid you don't notice stuff like animation. The reason I preferred Transformers was simply because I loved the toys and was immersed in that world. Whereas Thundercats, like He-Man, just didn't have cool enough toys to interest me.

An exception would be The Real Ghostbusters which was so well-written, and had a great movie behind it, that I enjoyed it despite not being remotely interested in the toyline.


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Where GI Joe wins in animation and stories, Transformers wins in characters and script...and yes there is a difference between story and script.

I have all of the GI Joe series so it isn't a vs. deal with me but honestly, that show annoys me more often than not. If Cobra would have won once in a while or if some of the characters would have died it would have been so much better. Cobra NEVER wins for more than about 5 minutes at a time until something *beep* up or one of the Joes completely thwarts them. At least the Decepticons win a few times. Megatron actually took NYC for a while and the Decepticons even got into politics and became beloved of America while getting the Autobots thrown off the planet for a couple episodes.

Plus the time Megatron brought Cybertron into orbit with the Earth which probably killed millions and caused trillions worth of damage.

Transformers loses because they killed off too many characters and became weak.
GI Joe loses because they never die and Cobra is too much of a failure. When watching it, I am always frustrated because Cobra never does any better. Maybe I prefer the villainous side of things.

Thundercats and He Man were kind of silly. I watched them both but they didn't hold my imagination like the others. I think what bothers me most about Thundercats is Snarf. I tend to hate shows when they feel like putting on a cute lovable dumb looking mascot type of thing to help the show along.
In my opinion Godzooky is the antichrist.

The Turtles and Ghostbusters were awesome, but a completely different type of show. More of a straight comedy. You may as well have put The Simpsons in that list as a 10/10 too. I've always felt like the Turtles really helped shows like the Simpsons get started. There is more of a link between those two than you may think.

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Things like Cobra never winning and people never dying shouldn't be held against shows like this imo. Its obvious no one is going to die in a kids cartoon, so I was never upset they never did. For my money, G.I. Joe is the best action cartoon of the 80s.

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I haven't seen too much of G.I. JOE, and I never cared for THUNDERCATS.


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Re watching Transformers I'm shocked at how choppy it is not only in story, but animation as well. Its just not as well produced as other shows of that era.


Transformers had its flaws, but Season 1 was better than most animated series at the time. Try comparing it to Challenge of the GoBots or Turbo Teen. Season 2 was mixed, with some poorly animated and written episodes. Season 3 was mostly bad. It was such a disappointment going from Transformers: The Movie to the Season 3 opener "Five Faces of Darkness". Season 4 was awful.

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Two major knocks against G.I. Joe & Thundercats:

G.I. Joe- for 2 world dominating/defending factions, no one ever got killed. Soo... yeah.

Thundercats- Mumm-Ra just kept reincarnating himself of whatever after defeat.


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To add to how lame Cobra really was, they couldn't even compete against the actual US armed forces. During the Serpentor origin mini arc, culminating in trying to takeover Washington DC, most of Cobra didn't even think it could be achieved. They were right, & they couldn't even hold the city.
Not exactly global domination that, save for some secret super weapons on occasion, being sabotaged &/or destroyed by G.I. Joe before chaos.
Both sides seem to be factions of good & evil, neither able to conquer nor utterly save the world.

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I love G.I Joe & Thundercats but I consider Transformers the best cartoon ever made. The only thing the franchise did wrong was deciding to kill off all the best characters in the movie and it made season 3 suck because of it. So season 1 & 2 of Transformers is my all time favorite. G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Voltron, He-Man & Battle of the Planets would all be tied for my 2nd favorite series.

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