I take issue witht he 'tf's lack childhoods' approach to this article.
We've got several examples of references to TF babyhood, including 'weak as a protoform cybertrone' and 'so easy a freshly-fissioned protoform could use it.' Not to mention US#69's 'Mecha-minder,' used as the equivilant of pram. The first two you might thrug off as overly idiomatic, but the third starts movign things into the actual realm of what TF babyhood is like.
Of course, this seems to raise a couple ugly specters, re: sparks. This all seems to speak to how protoforms are created. Transformer life is created when you TAKe a protoform and tune it to a power source (or jsut use th matrix) to give it a spark. Does this mean Transformer babyhood is.... soulless? Clearly, SOMETHIGn exists prior to this, the protoform have some sort of growth and nurturing proscess prior to being sparked.
You can argue that once sparked, a Transfomer is now an 'adult,' but the new Vlassics specs seem to place 'primary programming' as the watershed point for this, which is presumably some time after being sparked. Is there a childhood-period between sparkign and programming? I dunno, but the article shoudl at least note that such stages exist. -Derik 08:23, 16 September 2006 (UTC)