Transformers

• 1. Introduction

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  Transformers had earned more than ¥2 trillion, about $25 billion, by 2011. That figure places a line of shape-shifting toy robots among the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The property is produced by the American company Hasbro and the Japanese company Takara Tomy. Its heroes, the Autobots, fight its villains, the Decepticons. Both sides are alien robots that can fold themselves into vehicles and animals. Toys came first. Animation, comic books, video games and films followed. Over the decades the story has been retold so often that fans track separate universes the way historians track eras. Where did the robots come from? Why does the war on their home planet, Cybertron, look different in a comic than in a cartoon? And how did one corner of the franchise in Japan become something many of its own Japanese fans publicly disowned?

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• 2. Borrowed Robots

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  In the early 1980s, two Japanese toy lines, Micro Change and Diaclone, sold robots that turned out to be ordinary vehicles, electronic gadgets or weapons. Hasbro bought those toys and partnered with Takara. In 1984, the rebranded figures reached Western stores as Transformers.

  A toy needs a story, so Hasbro hired Marvel Comics to write one. Marvel's editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, drafted an overall storyline. He then gave the job of inventing the characters to the writer Dennis O'Neil. Shooter was unhappy with the results, although O'Neil did coin the name Optimus Prime. The assignment passed to Bob Budiansky.

  The look of the robots came from somewhere else entirely. Shōji Kawamori, creator of the Japanese anime franchise Macross, designed most of the Transformers mecha. North American viewers knew Macross as Robotech. Kawamori hit on transforming mechs in the early 1980s while working on both Diaclone and Macross, with the VF-1 Valkyrie as a famous example. His Diaclone designs later became the basis for Transformers.

  Budiansky's version of the backstory was soon to meet a television cartoon that refused to follow it.

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• 3. Two Versions of Cybertron

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  The Ark and the Nemesis are the two ships that carry Optimus Prime, Megatron and their finest soldiers to prehistoric Earth. Fans later labeled the 1984-1993 era Generation 1, or G1. In the comic, the crews awaken in 1985, while Cybertron hurtles through the Neutral zone because of the war. At first the Marvel comic sat inside the main Marvel Universe. Spider-Man and Nick Fury turn up, and one story visits the Savage Land.

  The television series arrived at about the same time. Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions made it, with Hasbro Productions joining later. From the start it contradicted Budiansky's backstories. On screen, the Autobots are searching for new energy sources when the Decepticons attack and they crash. Marvel's version has the Autobots destroying a rogue asteroid heading for Cybertron. Shockwave stays loyal to Megatron in the cartoon and holds Cybertron in a stalemate. In the comic, he tries to seize command of the Decepticons.

  The Dinobots, the Constructicons who merge into Devastator, Omega Supreme and the turncoat Jetfire, called Skyfire on television, all got different origins too. Even the spark of life differs. The comic gives Prime the Creation Matrix. In a two-part second-season episode, The Key to Vector Sigma, the cartoon offers the ancient Vector Sigma computer and its guardian Alpha Trion for the same purpose.

  In Britain, the mythology kept growing. British writers introduced Primus, the creator whose body is the planet Cybertron and who is locked in a feud with Unicron. Arcee, a female Autobot, appeared even though the comic insisted Transformers had no gender. Her backstory said the Autobots built her to answer human charges of sexism. Soundwave even broke the fourth wall on the letters page to scold the cartoon for getting history wrong.

  The American comic ran for 80 issues until 1991. The British weekly reached 332 issues, plus several annuals.

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• 4. Unicron and the Movie

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  The year 2005 is when The Transformers: The Movie takes place, and the 1986 film killed off its own hero. A fatally wounded Optimus Prime hands the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus, then drops it as he dies. Hot Rod catches it and becomes Rodimus Prime. Unicron, a planet-devouring Transformer, fears the Matrix. He rebuilds a badly damaged Megatron as Galvatron and remakes other Decepticons as Cyclonus, Scourge and the Sweeps. Rodimus uses the Matrix to destroy him.

  The film drew celebrity voices. Leonard Nimoy played Galvatron, Scatman Crothers voiced Jazz and Casey Kasem voiced Cliffjumper. Orson Welles gave Unicron his voice, and Eric Idle led the Junkions as the character later named Wreck-Gar. The band Lion performed the theme, and "Weird Al" Yankovic added a song to the soundtrack.

  The third season picked up from the film with a new origin. The Quintessons had used Cybertron as a factory, and their robot workers rebelled. In time the workers became the Autobots and the soldiers became the Decepticons. This appears to contradict what the first two seasons showed. Popular demand brought Optimus Prime back by the season's end, and a three-episode arc closed the series.

  Japan refused to let the story stop with the American finale in 1987. Broadcasters there added an original video, Scramble City, then commissioned new shows: The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, Victory and Zone. Illustrated magazines carried Battlestars: Return of Convoy and Operation: Combination.

  Marvel copied the film by killing Prime and Megatron in the present day, and Grimlock took over as Autobot leader. The Headmasters limited series took the setting to the planet Nebulon, and the main title later revived Prime as a Powermaster. In Britain, writer Simon Furman built movie spin-offs around the time-traveling Galvatron. When Furman took over the American comic, he declared the British Megatron a clone.

  In 2009, Shout! Factory packaged the whole G1 cartoon into a 16-DVD set named the Matrix of Leadership Edition.

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• 5. Beasts and Publishers

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  Five issues of the G.I. Joe comic in 1993 set up the next revival, a twelve-issue Marvel series called Transformers: Generation 2. It existed to help sell a new toy line. Its story claimed the robots once reproduced asexually until Primus stopped it, because it had produced an evil being called Swarm. The arc ended with an alliance between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Its final panel introduced the Liege Maximo, an ancestor of the Decepticons. Furman did not resolve that cliffhanger until the Transforce convention of 2001 and 2002, in an exclusive novella titled Alignment.

  Beast Wars arrived in 1996 and swapped the cars for animals. Three hundred years after the Great War, Optimus Primal's Maximals and Megatron's Predacons crash on a strange planet with two moons and a dangerous level of Energon. They take organic beast forms to avoid going into stasis lock. Writers Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio wrote the first episode before learning that G1 existed. They then used it as a historical backstory. The second moon turns out to have been built by an alien race called the Vok, and the planet turns out to be prehistoric Earth. Its destruction gives some characters "transmetal" bodies. The sequel, Beast Machines, revealed that Cybertron has organic origins.

  Japan faced a scheduling problem. The first Beast Wars season ran 26 episodes, but the second Canadian season had only 13. To fill the gap, Japan made two series of its own, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo. A 2006 IDW comic, Beast Wars: The Gathering, later confirmed the Japanese shows as canon.

  Dreamwave Productions started a new comic universe in 2001, drawing on Marvel's work and the cartoon. Its War Within miniseries revealed that Prime had once been a clerk named Optronix. It also made Primus and Unicron siblings, once a single being called the One. Meanwhile, G.I. Joe crossovers kept multiplying. In Devil's Due's version, COBRA Command finds and reactivates the Transformers. Dreamwave imagined the robots in a World War II setting.

  Dreamwave went bankrupt in 2005. That left the third War Within volume half finished and a planned bridge comic between Beast Wars and Beast Machines unmade. IDW Publishing rebooted G1 from scratch the following year and handed Furman a clean slate. After sales slipped, IDW restarted with All Hail Megatron, and by 2012 it ran three ongoing series. In 2022, IDW lost the publishing rights. Skybound Entertainment began its own version in 2023.

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• 6. Kiss Players

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  In 2006, the Japanese artist and writer Yuki Ohshima launched Kiss Players, a line built on a controversial gimmick. Transformers gained power-ups when human girls kissed them and fused with them. Because it was the only Takara line between Cybertron and the live-action movie, it effectively became Japan's main Transformers line for that stretch.

  The plot begins with the Earth Defense Command, formed in 2003 to pair humans and Autobots. In 2005, Rodimus Prime flings Galvatron out of Unicron, and the Decepticon leader lands in Tokyo and flattens the city. The Command is reborn to drive all Transformers off Earth. It builds an anti-electron field and a team of 48 artificial robots called Autoroopers. It recruits young women infected with Galvatron's cells to partner with them.

  Three heroines carry the story. Marissa Faireborn fights the Command beside a revived Optimus Prime, now in a body resembling a Dodge Ram pickup. Shaoshao Li, once a top Kiss Player, joins the resistance after discovering secret experiments on other girls. Her partner is Hot Rod, who stepped down from leadership out of guilt over Tokyo and now resembles a Ford GT. Atari Hitotonari joined the Command after her parents died and fell into despair. She meets Ne-04, an Autorooper shaped like a Mazda RX-8 who shares her feelings.

  Despite the girls, the line targeted older men. The toys carried an "ages 15 and up" warning, and the three-part manga was far from child-friendly. A weekly radio drama completed the package. A second phase, Kiss Players Position, softened the tone. It turned the girls into a pop idol group alongside three mini-cassette robots named Glit, Sundor and Rosanna.

  Reactions ranged from disgust to comic mockery. Several Japanese fans worried that American fans would assume such material was normal in Japan. Ohshima himself admitted that he chose the approach for shock value.

  The ideas did not vanish. The Autoroopers appeared in Transformers: Animated in 2009, and a toy line followed at Botcon in 2011. Glit's white and blue colors inspired the Shattered Glass version of Ravage. Sundor received a new figure in 2012 in the Fall of Cybertron line. The Transformers Legends manga later brought back Atari and Shaoshao.

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• 7. Michael Bay's Machines

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  Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in the 1980s television series, returned to the role in 2007 for the first live-action Transformers film. Michael Bay directed, and Steven Spielberg was executive producer. Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Megan Fox and Tyrese Gibson led the human cast, and Hugo Weaving voiced Megatron. Reviews were mixed to positive. The film earned about $709 million worldwide, ranking fifth among 1007's releases...

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