The Ultimate Guide (Transformers)

Rating:
Summary: These Transformers ARE more than meets the eye!
Review: When I first picked up my copy(today) I thought "I'll just pick it up for Nostalgic Value and to put on my coffee table along with every other DK book" This book rocks!!!! It has like every thing Transformers ever! It has Transformers things that came out like 2 months ago! Thats really suprising to me. This book has toy guides, episode lists, detailed character bios, and comic book runs! My nitpicks about it are...
1.No prices on the toys(I have about 100 of them!)
2.Episode Listings only have about 10 eps for every season. If youre going to do it at all,do it right!
3.Major characters get 1/4 of a page bio. Bumblebee NOOOOOOO!!!!
Anyway, buy this book if you like any form of Transformers. If it be G1,Beast Wars, or even Armada...

Rating:
Summary: You lost me at "Ultimate"
Review: When looking at an item such as this you have to factor in three things:

1. Transformers (or any toy, TV show, movie, etc. with a fan base) is personal. Not everyone will like everything all the time and what one thinks is fantastic another will hate.

2. A writer makes promises to his/her reader that should be kept. Mr. Furman tried, but fell flat. Let me explain with some selling points from the back of the book: "Cross-section artworks of the inner mechanics of the TRANSFORMERS". Yes, both of them..there is only 2 such drawings in the entire book (Prime and Megatron) and there are fairly forced explainations of the inner workings. "Extensive reviews of the toy lines, TV series, and comic book chronologies". These are extremely brief..2 pages for the TV series season one (12 episode recap with scarcely more than a paragraph each), 2 pages for season 2 (12 episodes, again the same), 2 pages for the Marvel series (issues 1-37). 37 comic issues in 2 pages is an "extensive review"??? Add to this a quote from page 8: "The saga has spawned many inconsistencies and divergent storylines, but now, at last, the one true history can be revealed". Guess what Furman was referring to...yep, Furman's comic script. A tad biased and not really appropriate for a guide that covers all storylines. Another troubling section is the toy coverage seeing that all this *is* based on toys. Let's take Generation 1 for example, only 16 characters are shown in toy form (multiple Primes and Megatrons). Many of the toys actually show paint and sticker wear. This may be a bit unprofessional since it is the "ultimate" guide and they can't get a First Aid with a readable decal?

3. Finally the question: What generation are you? 77 pages are devoted to G1 - G2 and 64 pages are Beast Wars and beyond. People that don't like Beast Wars will be bored with almost half the book and the same for people uninterested in G1. If you are a fan of both then you probably already know 98% of the material presented.

Hope this helps and I apologize if I was harshly negative, but people do expect something top notch when the word "Ultimate" is tossed around.