Except that, if memory serves me, the Transformers movie killed off Optimus at least a year before GI Joe failed to kill off duke.
I'll have to find it but there was an interview with the guys who made G.I. Joe where they talk about exactly what I said. They wanted to kill off Duke since his toy line was ending and they were convinced G.I. Joe fans were mature enough to handle it. Suits didn't like it and made them add that line in at the end. Then they went ahead and did it for Prime. Heh.
Which clearly shows what SurfD was saying. It wasn't until after the reaction to Prime's death that they backed out of killing off Duke.
Quote
The younger Transformer fans freaked when Optimus Prime went to that big junkyard in the sky; there had been nothing in the tone of the story that indicated it could take such an ominous turn (yeah, Orson Welles was going to eat the galaxy, but that was all a fun Star Wars-ish romp; it wasn't like somebody you knew and liked was going to bite it). Parents howled in protest to Hasbro, and Hasbro decreed G.I. Joe: The Movie be slightly re-edited and re-dubbed to indicate Duke survived (that clunky "We just heard Duke's going to be all right -- yea!" ending).
er, I wasn't arguing about the time line. :P
"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
Author
