Pokeformers



Pokeformers is a derogatory term often used to refer to the Armada toyline or its accompanying fiction by members of the Transformers fandom who weren't particularly fond of the series. The term is a portmanteau of the terms "Pokémon" and "Transformers".

Fans began referring to Armada as "Pokeformers" because the whole premise of the entire show is collect as many of those stupid little Mini-Cons as possible, which is like, a total rip-off of "Gotta catch 'em all!" from that retarded Pokémon show. Also, because, you know, Pokémon and Armada are both stupid kiddy shit for babies, not awesome hardcore stuff for the mature adults who are the ones who really buy all the Transformer toys. Seriously, if you don't like something—anything—just say it's like Pokémon. That will totally win the argument.

Yeah.

In some fairness to those who do refer to Armada as 'Pokeformers', Hasbro did announce prior to the line's launch that they were deliberately targeting their Pokemon fans with the new line and the Minicons. This wasn't a bad move, really, considering how successful Pokemon remained at the time, and might have even worked as a theme to some degree, if the Minicons had hadn't been utterly disposable in the cartoon series.



In truth, the comparison between the two series is of some limited merit: many early Armada episodes were driven by the search for Mini-Con storage panels (though the focus shifted pretty dramatically away from that about halfway through the series). The show brought some quasi-anime aspects to Transformers, mirroring the style's predominant popularity at the time in the US (though this was hardly unprecedented). And like the titular Pokémon, the Mini-Cons are small, adorable, surprisingly powerful in combat, somewhat slavishly bound to their "owners", and given a rather limited range of linguistic expression (though this was not an entirely new concept, either.)

Many of these comparisons apply primarily to the cartoon series. In the comics, Mini-Cons were every bit as verbose and articulate as their larger brethren. The comics furthermore did not play up the search for Mini-Cons nearly so much as the cartoon; the Mini-Cons were more akin to fugitives on the run than hapless objects to be collected.

It could be fairly stated that both Pokémon and Armada both simply tapped into a tried and true marketing approach to sell their product. Furthermore, Armada was far from the first to Transformers franchise to use the "Collect them all!" approach; it has been a common marketing theme of the Transformers brand (actually, every toy franchise) since its inception.