[Boy Blunder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nitelife

Because its lazy name slapping. Because matt trakker was white. They coulda made hondo the new leader or had matt be part of a bigger organization and his boss be black. I think its mainly fans are tired of seeing race/ gender swapping of long established characters as it does not truly expand a brand/line/product and just panders to the vocal minority.

True expansion comes from creating NEW characters not just lazily slapping a pre-established character's name and history onto a different body.

The only thing I'm seeing is a bunch of whiny not!kids complaining that something was changed without giving a valid reason not to change it.

Hell, I loved MASK when I was a young'n, but I couldn't pick out a damn one of them out of a line-up without their vehicles nearby. I still can't, because the vehicles were as much, if not more, of a selling point. Whatever depth of character there might be with Matt, it certainly didn't stem from him being as generically cookie-cutter as nearly every other major 'strong male' team leader from cartoons of the era. I didn't even watch Centurions all that much, but you'd better believe that I remembered that Tom Selleck-looking Max Ray a helluva lot better than I remember any of the droves of blonde white dudes in other cartoons.

But I saw one image of Matt in the new comics, and I actually took notice. Certainly more than I ever could remember noticing him in the old days.

Do I think there need to be more new characters, as you said? Absolutely. But I also know, just as you probably could figure out, that newer characters are a hard sell, and to get them off the ground, you still need audience investment. And a good way to get them to come in is to give them a change that catches their eye. And even with all the crying here, they still have your attention. Might not get you reading the book/buying the toy, but you're only one out of many, many people.

And I'm sorry, but the whole 'lazy name slapping' thing has been around for too long to be a viable argument any more, especially when a great number of those 'name-slaps' have grown more popular than the original use of the name. Any peek into the Transformers fiction will show you that.

I'm seriously looking at Matt Trakker's personality and history, and not seeing anything tied to his race or cultural heritage. So why not change him? He's still the same character. Getting chapped about it isn't doing anything but drawing attention to the unwillingness to accept change.