Yes, you heard me right: !

Check out that lovely Bumblebee, for example:

Yep, saw these about a week ago. Some new alternate-timeline comic as I understand it.

Sweetness! The ironclad Shockwave.......pure genius.

-Polycarp

Cool. I may just have to get that when it's out.

Mr Blackhammer

Yeah. He likes steam trains, and he like steamjacks. But he just can't stand a steamtrain that can transform into a steamjack!

Actually, I was refering to robots like this:



and the transforming one:



Since these are actual feats of robotic engineering, you can see why I labelled your criticisms in the "pseudo" department.

I have to say again, transformers (the brand) are (in their fictional universe, obviously not the toys) sentient, alien robots. 21st century human engineering standards DO NOT apply. Or, to put it in terms you might find more applicable to your own line of thinking; the technology that went into their creation and which sustains them is so far above ours (on the order of millions of years) that it might as well BE magic. Imagine showing a car to a caveman. That's about the scale we'd have to be on.

It's also worth asking, based on your argument, if a bipedal structure is so impractical, why does it work so well for us humans? You keep basing your assumptions on present day engineering principles which, as I have already admitted, would indeed make such things (if not completely impractical) extremely limited in scope. To insist that such things would remain so in the future or would be seen as such by civilizations more advanced than our own is more than a little arrogant (by which I don't mean you personally, Grump, merely the assumption in general).

As a B5 fan, you don't seem to have any trouble making the technological leap of faith to allow for things like FTL travel or artifical gravity (the White Star kind, not the Earth Alliance variety). I make them too. Why? Because I think it's cool, just like giant, transforming robots. Cool enough that I don't CARE if doesn't work in reality. I'm not watching Transformers or B5 for reality. That's what the 6 o'clock news is for (which explains why I rarely watch the news, too depressing).

At any rate, I've said my peace. I will make one final point on the subject of transformers though (again, the actual brand, not just any old shape changing robot). Being aliens, Transformers are only "giant robots" when compared to humans. On their homeworld, they come in a wide variety of sizes, from human sized to the size of a sky scraper, so the epithet "giant robot" is entirely dependant on ones perspective.

Wow.

Aren't we....



?


CCotD'