Transformers: What I Think It Needs to Succeed

How many of you know about Transformers... aside from the Michael Bay films?

Better yet, how many of you know about Transformers outside of the Bay movies AND the original cartoon?

Chances are, the general public has forgotten anything that wasn't the Generation 1 cartoon (The Transformers) or Michael Bay's live-action reimagining. That's not say shows like Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Transformers Animated, Transformers Prime, or even the anime Unicron Trilogy (Armada, Energon, and Cybertron) are bad or obscure, but it speaks to how certain iterations of a brand can color an audience's perception of the aforementioned brand for year after year. Unfortunately, the current perception of the brand is that Transformers is dead.

It's certainly not dead in toy form, as evidenced by the glut of 15% Bumblebee 85% everyone else figures still on shelves and ravenous collectors seeking to find the "best" versions of their favorite characters (I should know; I'm one of those collectors). And despite the current lack of a movie or TV show, the comics from IDW Publishing have been decent sellers for almost 16 years straight. However, with the production of future live-action movies being in limbo and no new cartoons having been announced... many have just assumed that the franchise has nowhere left to go.

I'd have to disagree.

As a Transformers fan of 7 years, I've found that yes, the Generation 1 cartoon holds up (animation errors and occasional nonsense plots aside). I've scoured the sardonic archives of TFWiki.net for information on the brand's history, and I've watched the Transformers: The Basics series from Irish Transformers historian Chris McFeely. Needless to say, I'm a bit of a Cybertron connoisseur. And as far as I'm concerned, there's a lot of fight left in the Transformers brand.

If Hasbro plays their cards right, they could easily bring the brand off of life support and restore it to its former glory. In this article, I'm going to list four ways in which Transformers, as a brand, could be improved upon. I hope you'll be able to make sense of it- we fans tend to sound ridiculous to newcomers.

In the words of Japanese fan favorite Star Saber, "let's say go!"

PREAMBLE- A Brief History

It was the early 1980s. Japanese toy company Takara was struggling to bring their "Diaclone" and "Micro Change" lines to the United States. Unlike the super-robot lifeforms they would later become, the robots of Diaclone and Micro Change had no personality. They were just big chunky drones that turned into cars, trucks, jets, tiny cars that could fit in your pocket, construction vehicles, military vehicles, robot dinosaurs, devices common in the 80s (cassette players) and even a Walther P38 pistol. Look, the Japanese loved The Man from UNCLE at the time.

While Diaclone and Micro Change had built-in stories (the Diaclone bots were facing off against the evil "Waruder" invaders while the Micro Change guys were robots the size of the objects they turned into), there were no real characters for American kids to latch onto. That all changed when a trio of curious Hasbro employees visited the Tokyo Toy Fair in 1983. Hasbro and Takara had worked together in the past, what with the former's GI Joe figure inspiring the Henshin Cyborg line. Things came full circle when Takara's downsized Henshin Cyborg figures (renamed to Microman due to the diminutive scale) influenced the new direction taken by Hasbro's relaunch of GI Joe.

Joe aside, the Hasbro representatives were smitten by the Diaclone and Micro Change figures. This prompted Hasbro and Takara to strike a deal, allowing for the former to establish a new storyline and actual characters. Gone were the piloted Diaclone mechs and life-sized Micro Change bots- in their place were the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons of the planet Cybertron. And much like their relaunch of GI Joe, Hasbro partnered up with Marvel to produce both an ongoing comic and a cartoon.

The result was The Transformers, an international collaboration unlike anything the world had ever seen at the time. See, Hasbro and Takara to this day co-produce the toys and accompanying media. Not everything lined up as intended (the 1986 movie didn't release in Japan until 1989) and Takara couldn't release everything we Americans got due to licensing issues, but things have since changed for the better.

(Well, there were toys that looked significantly different and/or were exclusive to Japan up until 2018, but more on that later)

Those are, to borrow the title of Chris McFeely's web series, the basics on the Transformers brand's origins. There's a lot more I could mention (like how the 1986 movie only existed so Hasbro could clear out the 1984 range of characters or how Takara diverged from Hasbro's narrative halfway through the original run), but I don't want this to be like my Thomas retrospective. Instead, let's go through the cliffs notes.

• The original Transformers line ended in 1990 due to both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles leaving Hasbro shell-shocked and a slew of ill-conceived (but well-intentioned) gimmicks
• Beast Wars and Beast Machines revitalized the franchise for a short while, but the latter's dark tone and unconventional aesthetic forced Hasbro to go back to the drawing board (similarly, Japanese audiences were repulsed by the cyborg animals that dominated the back half of Beast Wars, prompting a return to vehicular bots)
• Hasbro and Takara worked together for a trilogy of anime series- only for Takara to brand the third installment as a standalone series, forcing Hasbro to hastily rework the now-disconnected series into something resembling a "finale" for the trilogy in the US
• Michael Bay's film series based on the Transformers brand establishes a "new normal" for the franchise despite middling critic reception that only got worse with each movie
• Hasbro starts using the Bay-verse as a basis for American Transformers media... with mixed results

With that out of the way, we now have some background for my four main points.

POINT ONE- Streamline the Lore

For the uninitiated, understanding Transformers lore is a daunting challenge. Between contradicting creation myths, needlessly complicated biology for the titular robots in disguise, the difference between Micromasters and Mini-Cons, how toy gimmicks are interpreted in the accompanying fiction, and the number of alien relics hidden on Earth, I wouldn't expect a casual fan who was brought in by the Bay-verse to make sense of half of what I've just wrote. And that's a problem for kids and families unfamiliar with the franchise.

Remember, kids are the target audience of Transformers first and foremost. Kids are the ones who are most likely to want and/or buy the toys, and Hasbro's very much aware of that. But unless those kids are raised by Transformers junkies who have encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise's lore, they won't understand certain euphemisms or why certain things are done.

Take the relatively recent Transformers Cyberverse as an example. Many of its plot points are borrowed from the original cartoon and more recent media like the IDW Publishing comics and the Bay-verse. The series does what it can to explain things (and it introduces a host of original concepts), but some of the plot points felt like retreads rather than fresh reimaginings.

For example, Megatron has been re-characterized as a political activist who wasn't content with how Cybertronian society was and chose to initiate a war in order to bring about social change. Eventually, he lost sight of this goal and decided "screw it, all hail me, Optimus's gotta die". This characterization was executed with middling results in the original 13-year run of the IDW comics and was carried over into the "Aligned continuity" (a failed effort on Hasbro's end to unify the disparate elements of the brand), Cyberverse and the second 2019-and-onward run of IDW comics.

This isn't a bad characterization for old Buckethead, but its repetition across four distinct iterations of the brand made it feel tiring. Sometimes we just need a monster to jeer at, y'know? I admire when writers give kids more human, sympathetic antagonists, yet how Megatron's been handled is making me wish that Hasbro would give us an utterly despicable version of him just so we could have a break from the "political activist gone mad" iteration we've had for a while. Besides, with unfortunate real-world events in the rear-view mirror, I don't think it'd be wise on Hasbro's end to make their brand's main villain motivated by political matters.

On the lore side of things, let's talk about the AllSpark. In the 2007 Michael Bay movie, the AllSpark was portrayed as an ancient cyber space cube that got thrown into space by Optimus Prime to prevent the Decepticons from misusing its power. Its shape and role have changed in years since, but at its core, the plot thread of the AllSpark being blasted into space (and sometimes ending up on Earth) exists to replace the old "Autobot/Decepticon war ravages Cybertron and strips it of its resources" thread that modern writers tend to ignore.

In my opinion, Transformers lore is too complicated for kids new to the franchise to understand. I could say similar things about She-Ra (the reboot, not the superior original) and ThunderCats Roar. Both of these series make references back to their source material without providing background for those references. Ergo, kids are confused about what "Grayskull" is in She-Ra 2018 and parents are baffled by how much has been changed from the original. It's unfamiliar to both parts of the audience, and for toy companies supporting these shows... that's bad.

If I were to head up a Transformers series, I would streamline the lore SIGNIFICANTLY. The Transformers' origins are left ambiguous, the war starts thanks to ONE attack by Megatron and the war itself leaves Cybertron desolate, and our main focus is on small crews stranded on Earth, cut off from the rest of the war. That's it. Simple as that. And speaking of those crews...

POINT TWO- Have Small Main Cast, Will Succeed

Looking back on the original "Generation 1" toyline, it's honestly insane how much Hasbro was willing to put in ONE series and one series alone. For frame of reference, Masters of the Universe began with only He-Man, Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Teela, Beast Man, Mer-Man, Stratos, Zodac (he's neutral), Battle Cat, the Battle Ram, the Wind Raider, and Castle Grayskull. Conversely, Transformers began with EIGHTEEN AUTOBOTS and TEN DECEPTICONS. That's not even counting the strange anomaly that was "Bumper" and the mail-away offerings from 1984!

Things only bloated from there, but Hasbro and their partners made efforts to control the main cast. Infamously, the 1986 movie was designed specifically to write out most of the 1984 Autobots (and every '84 Decepticon who wasn't Soundwave and his menagerie of little buddies), including Optimus Prime. This was before Hasbro realized how much these toys- nay, characters- meant to kids, and Optimus's death caused legions of angry parents to unite and order his return.

While his new "Powermaster" body wasn't ready until 1988, those producing the original cartoon hurriedly brought Optimus back for the Season 3 finale to the joy of many. It was, for kids of the 80s, the "Portals" scene from Avengers Endgame in terms of emotional weight. Ultimately, what killed the original line (aside from TMNT and inane gimmickry being prioritized over clever transformations) was having too many characters and not enough characters.

Beast Wars, the pseudo-sequel series to the original Generation 1 cartoon (and comics), faced a different predicament. Sure, there were dozens of toys, but the cartoon accompanying the Beast Warriors was being produced using the then-young medium of CGI. And CGI models are expensive. To remedy this, Larry DiTillio and Bob Forward (who also worked on the original She-Ra together) chose a handful of characters and made do with what Hasbro offered them.

As a result, the writers had to work hard in order to get kids (and older fans who weren't caught up in anti-beast rhetoric) hooked. The closest thing the original cartoon had to actual character growth was in the character of Rodimus Prime, Optimus's successor. Regardless of how you feel about him, you can't deny that Rodimus grew where his predecessor remained mostly static.

For Beast Wars, the writers had no choice but to develop the characters since they couldn't rely on sheer numbers and cool action scenes to make kids want the newest toys. Quality over quantity, if you will. Granted, it relied on the "kill-em-if-they're-off-the-shelves" mentality that plagued the 1986 movie, but even that was executed with more grace than its 80s predecessor. Anyone who's seen BW will know what I mean when I say Dinobot was a cut above the rest.

Beast Machines and Animated followed similar models, with smaller casts with tight character development being prioritized over having a boatload of toys to show off. I think this has the potential to get kids invested. Not only does developing characters allow kids to see the impact of lessons learned (if your show is moralistic), but it also benefits toy companies since they don't have to worry about forcing one prominent character off shelves for another, less prominent one. It's worked for both series of the Beast Era and Animated, and it's bound to work again.

If I were put in a position that would allow me to pick certain characters for the next Transformers series, I would choose characters Hasbro would probably mandate (ie Optimus and Megatron because OBVIOUSLY) while filling the remaining slots with B-listers and C-listers who could easily fulfill roles held by A-listers. Here's my list of characters that I wouldn't mind seeing pop up in future Transformers media:

• Bulkhead (a clumsy but well-meaning green giant, originated in Animated)
• Skids (theoretician mystery mech, made legitimately interesting in James Roberts's More Than Meets The Eye comic)
• Arcee (not that she's a B-lister, but I want a return to the more motherly Arcee of the original cartoon and not the psychotic murderer the IDW comics started her off as)
• Knock Out (flamboyant Decepticon medic, originated in Transformers Prime)
• The Stunticons (a band of aggressive Decepticon roadsters)
• Dreadwind and Blackwing (twin Decepticon pessimist jets)

POINT THREE- Toy Story (not Pixar)

The thing that frustrates me (especially as a collector) is how much Hasbro has jacked up the prices of the toys that form the core of the Transformers brand. If I were to show a fan who remembers how cheap the original toys were (seriously, you could get an entire five-man team for 28 bucks back in the 80s) the price of current figures, I can only imagine they'd be gobsmacked. Hasbro may claim that inflation's to blame for why a classic-styled Optimus Prime has gone from $20 to $50 in the span of 15 years, but I see differently.

If Hasbro were to be more conservative with their plastic and package these figures more compactly (like, say, in vehicle/beast mode?), that would shave some of the cost off of the preexisting figures. In addition, the complexity brought on by the Bay-verse and ridiculous adherence to the simplified character models of the original cartoon have fused to create some twisted amalgam that's really only accessible to adult collectors determined to have the "best" version of their childhood favorites. And much like with my critique of the lore, this isn't good for kids.

When Beast Wars first hit toy shelves in 1996, the price of a Deluxe Class figure was half of what it was now. However, what distinguishes older figures from modern ones (other than different aesthetics) is the amount of parts used. Older figures (especially those of the Beast Era) were designed to be durable and posable. Newer figures from the Siege, Earthrise and the upcoming Kingdom lines look good and can pose well, but suffer from quality control issues and being LOADED with tiny parts that don't make them kid-friendly.

Sure, there were figures that were just as foldy and bendy in the Beast Era, but they were durable and the only QC issues that really came about amounted to time making ball joints looser and certain varieties of plastic brittle. Now, Hasbro and Takara are so dedicated to making 99% accurate renditions of characters from the original cartoon that they forget the kids whose parents grew up watching the aforementioned cartoon.

If I were to pinpoint the design philosophy that hurt the Transformers brand more than it helped, it was the Bay-verse's aesthetic. Say what you will about the original toy designs (Megatron's unfortunate trigger placement and Ironhide and Ratchet's lack of heads aside), but they at least LOOKED like they could change from a humanoid robot into a realistic (or futuristic) vehicle. In an effort to appear more "realistic", the Bay-verse sacrificed the simple aesthetics (with occasional flourishes thanks to beastie flesh or metallic detail) for cluttered, more "alien" looks.

This resulted in the complexity of the accompanying toys SPIKING, to the point where a notable Transformers toy reviewer admitted in one of his reviews that he had to take origami lessons in order to figure out one of them. Let me repeat that. A children's toy caused a grown man to take professional origami lessons because of how frustrating it was to transform.

If you think that sounds bad, kids barely knew how to handle most of the intricate steps used on something like Revenge of the Fallen Optimus. I don't know if I could find it, but there was an old Toys "R" Us catalog showing a mistransformed, unfinished ROTF Optimus. At its core, Transformers is a toyline aimed at children. We older fans and collectors are welcome to join the party whenever we care to, but come on. The level of intricacy ROTF and lines that existed around the same time had was best for collector-aimed lines, not for ranges aimed at children.

At the same time ROTF was making things overly complex, Transformers Animated's toyline was wrapping up. You'd think that with Animated's toony, stylized aesthetic, the toys wouldn't look very good. You'd be wrong- in fact, Animated often outshined the dull, scrap metal-looking Bay-verse toys. This was thanks to head character designer Derrick J. Wyatt working directly with Takara in order to make sure Animated's toys reflected the character designs he'd worked so hard to establish.

And let me tell you, these things were AWESOME. Unnecessary gimmickry aside (Megatron and Ultra Magnus's jaw flaps), we ended up with a line that was so show-accurate right out the gate it negates the need for a show-accurate collector line like the Masterpiece range to redo them. In regards to the transformation, the figures were designed specifically to work with kids and collectors. As a result, we ended up with simple, satisfying and show-accurate figures not unlike the late Beast Wars figures and the entirety of the Cybertron range.

Similar approaches were taken for Transformers Prime and its toyline, with the first batch of toys looking extremely show accurate. However, the Prime toys carried over the unnecessary complexity from the Bay-verse, and ergo Hasbro had to release simplified toys halfway through the series's run. On the Bay side of things, there were heavy design changes made thanks to how frustrating the ROTF toys were. Hasbro and Takara unfortunately overcorrected, resulting in oversimplified figures that were less puzzle-like.

As of right now (okay, it started in 2017), Hasbro has gone back to a Generation 1-lite aesthetic that serves as a template for all future lines. I like this new look plenty (since I was introduced through reruns of the original cartoon), and I've collected several figures from the recent "trilogy" of Siege/Earthrise/Kingdom. They're a good deal of fun and have a nice variety of characters from the original range given proper updates. That being said, I wouldn't recommend these for kids unless they're really gentle with their stuff.

Kids don't always know their own strength, and yanking too hard on a figure that has thin plastic holding it together is going to break it. Fun fact: the ball joint was introduced to Transformers by a gentleman at Takara specifically so they wouldn't have to sacrifice articulation for durability. Sadly, the SEK figures lack ball joints, rendering them less prone to time-induced floppiness and more prone to breakage.

If Hasbro wants to improve their toys, I'd advise three things.

1. Make the packaging more compact (like the Generation 1 packaging).
2. Pick an aesthetic that won't hurt the toy design process.
3. Make the toys simple enough for kids, but satisfying enough for collectors (like Cybertron, Animated, and Siege/Earthrise/Kingdom).

FINAL POINT- Until All Are In One Lane

Prior to 2017, Hasbro and Takara released 87% identical toys. In regards to nostalgia-focused lines like Generations, the two companies took different approaches. Hasbro opted for designs accurate to the original toys; Takara chose palettes closer to the original cartoon. Even when Hasbro's designers went for deviations from the source material (like accurately scaling some small Autobots who had weirdly scaled alternate modes), Takara would always push for accuracy to the original cartoon.

This divide confused me when I first entered the fandom. Why not just release one figure worldwide and be done with it? Things only intensified when the differences between figures grew more and more visible when Hasbro began cheaping out on paint during the Titans Return line. Eventually, with the failure of The Last Knight in theaters and on toy shelves, Hasbro and Takara initiated an effort to "unify the brand".

Gone were the regional exclusives (save for a few, but those were made available to us Yanks through Hasbro's online shop), and in their place came figures that looked consistent no matter where they released. At the same time, Hasbro began to enforce consistent, "evergreen" designs that could be utilized in any piece of media. Even the triad of Siege, Earthrise, and Kingdom are drawing from this "evergreen" pool, with many of the characters utilizing elements of their new looks.

However, the Bay-verse wasn't kept at bay, with Hasbro and Takara choosing to revitalize it under the Studio Series banner. Just because they couldn't make movies as frequently as they used to doesn't mean they couldn't profit off the Bay-verse designs. I've picked up a few SS figures (mainly just some C-list Decepticons), and compared to all the criticism I've had for pre-ROTF toys, these are legitimately good. They're still a bit fiddly compared to the S/E/K figures, but they're an improvement over the messes that made Hasbro simplify in the first place.

On another note, the Bumblebee solo film/prequel/reboot is being used to relaunch the film side of the brand as an MCU-level franchise... and this is where I put my foot down. I've seen it happen time and time again. Executives see how well the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done, assume they can do better with less planning and more crossover in their first film, and the attempted "cinematic universe" caves in on itself since we (the audience) are overwhelmed by the amount of setup for future film and don't have time to connect with the character who'd otherwise be our main focus.

Hasbro and Paramount wanted The Last Knight to be their "cinematic universe"-launching film... and with how I've written about it, you can guess how that turned out. The previous film's plot threads were retroactively changed to suit this film's goals, the established lore from the first three movies was tossed aside so that a secret society protecting the Transformers' existence from the general public could exist, Arthurian myth was bizarrely shoehorned in, and important parts of Transformers lore were wasted in hopes of getting a sequel/getting audiences to watch.

Seriously, a giant robot who eats planets should not feel wasted!

Conversely, Bumblebee felt comparatively smaller in scale. While there were elements that felt like the remnant of an earlier, still-tied-to-the-Bay-verse draft, the movie seems like it was designed not only to pacify fans, but also to rectify casual fans' critiques of the Bay era. The action was clearer, the cast was smaller and more developed, the jokes didn't rely on sexual innuendo or bodily functions, and it was overall a much cleaner film than its five predecessors.

And it paid off! Bumblebee was not only a financial success, but it was the first Transformers movie to be received well by film critics. However, Paramount seems to have forgotten The Last Knight's failure, as rumors suggest that they want a Beast Wars trilogy of films "on the scale of Endgame".

...

Fortunately, Paramount isn't in charge of the Transformers brand. Hasbro and Takara are, though, and the Bay-verse has left an ugly stain on the franchise that they're just now cleaning up. I don't mean to attack anyone who likes the Michael Bay films- they're decent action flicks, but they're not all that Transformers is. It can be a story of the horrors of war, a story of adventure laced with sardonic British humor, a story of political intrigue... it can be anything. Dare I say it's more than meets the eye.

But the Bay-verse has unfortunately left casual audiences' perception of the series as nothing more than loud, obnoxious spectacle with paper-thin characters, offensive stereotypes, ugly robot designs, and nonsensical plots. Thanks to how badly bungled Bay's interpretation of the movies were, the audience Hasbro could've attracted was instead left alienated. And simply put... the Bay-verse is the main reason why Transformers is in such bad shape.

Despite their efforts, Hasbro and Takara letting the Bay-verse impact the current franchise even as they're trying to move on from the mess it made is NOT the approach they should take. I'm not a diehard "geewunner" who insists that the original cartoon/comic/toy combo had the best stories and that everything else is mindless drivel- far from it. I love Beast Machines and Animated for their aesthetics and characters, I like what both runs of the IDW comics have done and are currently doing, and Cyberverse was a nice burst of goofy fun.

Heck, I don't even dislike Michael Bay as a filmmaker. His TMNT movie was alright and Pearl Harbor was appropriately filmed. It's just that his take on Transformers, by virtue of it being the one that was the most pervasive, has become the iteration that people recognize the most aside from the original cartoon. And by not leaving it behind, Hasbro and Takara are unwittingly encouraging Paramount to continue using their brand to make bloated action films that are bound to hurt the Transformers brand more than help it.

If anything, I'd argue that Hasbro and Takara should wholly commit to their new "unified" approach to the brand and leave the Bay-verse aesthetic and continuity behind. Some would argue that they're already doing this with Bumblebee, but considering the aforementioned rumors... yeah, there's still a lot of work to do. Not only would this help establish a new era for the movies, but it would also help clear up confusion for parents buying gifts for their kids.

With how many Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream figures from different shows and movies are on shelves concurrently, one would assume that parents would have a hard time telling which one they should get. You'd be correct. Just because a figure has a character's name slapped on it doesn't mean it'll be the one kids recognize as that character. In fact, by unifying the brand further and only having one collector-centric line focused on being a melting pot of different continuities running alongside a kid-focused line that introduces the franchise to young 'uns, Hasbro could make it easier for parents to tell which one their kids would actually want.

CONCLUSION

I don't know if any Hasbro employees or designers will ever read this, but here are my four main points that could help improve the Transformers brand. In summation:

1. Streamline the lore to be accessible for new fans.
2. The smaller the main cast, the more potential there is for character development and creating a feeling of stability for kids.
3. Make simple, satisfying and durable toys.
4. Leave the Bay-verse behind and commit to starting anew.

With that, I bid you all farewell. Until all are one, friends.