Seibertron.com Editorial - The Truly Thrilling Thirtieth of The Transformers

This post made me shed a tear.

Here's to 30 years of awesome:


And to what is to come in the future:

That cover with Soundwave fighting Optimus makes you wonder what it'd be like if Soundwave was Deceptcon leader...

A nice short walk down memory lane.

For all the sh!tstorm that surrounded Dreamwave towards the end, I felt they were still putting out quality work. The first 6 issues of their final ongoing (the whole Sunstorm vs Jetfire vs Starscream) is still some of the finest TF interior artwork and covers Ive seen. Don Figueroa will be remembered as one of the best artists to tackle the franchise.

Va'al wrote:Fast forward to two years later, 1986, when the Transformers appeared on the big screen for the first time, still in their animated selves. Leaders were killed, moons were eaten, planets became robots, hearts were broken, fanboys and fangirls started complaining, and even more toys were produced. And comic adaptations, of course.

Spoilers!!

Wow. I didn't realize the image amount in my previous post totaled to 101. Yikes!

Happy 30th!

Oh c'mon Sabrblade no Mr. Potato Head love?? Just kidding and that's some hardcore work!

Noideaforaname wrote:That cover with Soundwave fighting Optimus makes you wonder what it'd be like if Soundwave was Deceptcon leader...

Well, he's co-leading with Galvatron in Robots in Disguise, that's something.

Happy Tran-iversary everone!

Nemesis Destron wrote:Oh c'mon Sabrblade no Mr. Potato Head love?? Just kidding and that's some hardcore work!

Well, as it was a movie product, consider it (and every other movie product) represented by the movie pics themselves.

Wow, that was a great article!

I freakin' love this pic:



So much so, I'm contemplating making it my new sig pic...I'd have to crop it...

Oh wow, that commercial took me back to the day.

I'm just glad Transformers are here for my kids like they were for me, and have evolved into what they have. I gotta thank Hasbro for that!

Thanks for the comments, people who liked it! It was fun to pick out things to write about.

The G2 Artwork from the gate fold Optimus face comic is the best of them all. Can't beat how badass all of that artwork looked.

Downbeat wrote:

Noideaforaname wrote:That cover with Soundwave fighting Optimus makes you wonder what it'd be like if Soundwave was Deceptcon leader...

Well, he's co-leading with Galvatron in Robots in Disguise, that's something.

Well yeah, but I'm thinking of the franchise as a whole. When you think about it, a monotone-voiced "faceless" villain who at any time has a small army in his chest is far more intimidating than Megatron could ever hope to be. Imagine if Soundwave was the one Starscream was always trying to stab in the back, that Lugnut was damn near worshiping as a god, that Sky-Byte was trying to eke out a single iota of praise out of, that Tarantuals was throwing darts at a picture of, that never bothered to know Optimus' name until the very end, that got rebuilt by Unicron...


*half expects Sabrblade or someone to whip out examples of exactly that happening*

Dude, Sabr, we have to all work together to scrub Animorphs from history, not post pictures of it

ScottyP wrote:Dude, Sabr, we have to all work together to scrub Animorphs from history, not post pictures of it

Aw, you no like? Took me a good long while to find that pic.

So Va'al and I discussed this briefly yesterday, and I thought I'd open it up to you fellas: would you all be interested in a similar article about the cartoons? The first Generation One episode aired 17 September, 1984. If you guys liked this, would you like us to do an editorial in September as well, something to commemorate the cartoons?

Mindmaster wrote:So Va'al and I discussed this briefly yesterday, and I thought I'd open it up to you fellas: would you all be interested in a similar article about the cartoons? The first Generation One episode aired 17 September, 1984. If you guys liked this, would you like us to do an editorial in September as well, something to commemorate the cartoons?

Yes.

Though, for me personally, I'd also enjoy a multimedia-based article that spans many fictional mediums. Comics, cartoons, movies, anime, manga, books, video games, etc., since there's been so much of all that that's had an impact over years.

Sabrblade wrote:

Mindmaster wrote:So Va'al and I discussed this briefly yesterday, and I thought I'd open it up to you fellas: would you all be interested in a similar article about the cartoons? The first Generation One episode aired 17 September, 1984. If you guys liked this, would you like us to do an editorial in September as well, something to commemorate the cartoons?

Yes.

Though, for me personally, I'd also enjoy a multimedia-based article that spans many fictional mediums. Comics, cartoons, movies, anime, manga, books, video games, etc., since there's been so much of all that that's had an impact over years.

We're trying out different things, we'll see what sticks!

I wasn't going to just focus on comics, but halfway through I realised I was, as it's more my area. We're also considering some toy/character retrospectives, both in their plastic and fictional selves.

The day is Monday, September 17th, 1984. The 18th Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney was sworn in, and Reggie Jackson of the California Angels hit his 500th major league home run, becoming only the 13th person at that time to have done so. Not a very exciting day for most, but for some, this would be a day forever remembered.

You're going to see and be able to read a lot of articles today on the internet, specifically in the Transformers Fans' corner of it, and these will be about a certain birthday happening today. This is one of those articles. You're going to read about perspectives from people that were, with a fairly good chance of likelihood, about 5 to 7 years old on that date, who were captured by the premiere of a new cartoon series for the fall season called "The Transformers" on a Monday morning or afternoon. They'll talk very factually and sequentially about the history of the show and where it came from. They'll write well and give good reference for history down the road. This is not entirely one of those articles.

First, some of that base history but not too much, just to give some background. Marvel Comics' run of Transformers books had started in May, 1984, and had seen two published issues with a third to be shortly on the way in October. This was, of course, one channel through which to support the newly imported, rebranded toyline of the same name. The other was a joint production between Marvel Productions and Griffin Bacal's Sunbow Productions, a cartoon series designed to capture the attention of the children in Reagan's America with lots of action, little plot or continuity, and over the top, fun characterizations of the toys they could go have their parents buy on the local store shelves.



It was a simpler, peaceful time, when children ran through quiet streets with gumdrop smiles and wealth trickled down to the middle class and, and, um, wait a minute. I wasn't born yet. What the hell am I writing about?

This is not your typical retrospective, because it can't be. I wasn't born until almost a year after this cartoon premiered. I can't pretend to know what it was like when it came out. Suffice it to say, by the time I was aware of what a Transformer was and could follow along with any sort of cartoon or comic, the show was meandering the random scheduling of syndication and the toyline's only fictional support was in the form of the latter quarter of the Marvel comic run. So how on earth would someone that only hit the rough target age for "The Transformers" in 1990 fall in love with the franchise on a level so deep that close to his own 30th birthday, he still spends countless hours collecting toys, absorbing fiction, and writing long form articles about the brand? How could this happen when things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were new, hip, and vying for attention? The answer's quite simple: home video.



Through the magic of FHE's home video releases, over and over again even children like me born well in the middle of the heyday of The Transformers' success could relive the spectacle of 24 minute long toy advertisements. Given the rushed production schedule, the efforts of now legendary (within our hobby, at least) names such as Flint Dille, David Wise, Wally Burr, George Bloom, Floro Dery, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and countless other voice actors and production crew will never be forgotten by, well, probably anyone reading this site and almost definitely anyone bothering to read this article!



The first season enjoyed by so many through either broadcast or VHS gave us some of the most memorable and joyful characterizations of fan favorites such as Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Soundwave, Grimlock, the Constructicons, and so many others. For a very young child like what I was at the time, with undeveloped reading skills, these characterizations from the original animated cartoon will always stand out as the original and archetypical examples of those characters within my memory and subconscious.



Of course, the show went on for a good while and eventually would come the event that changed everything, at least at the time. This event is also a fond VHS memory, and yes, it's the first Transformers Movie released in 1986.



Having a copy of this amazing work only brought my interest in Transformers to a fever pitch, as between it, VHS copies of nearly all of season one, the continuing toy line, and the comic I had just begun to be able to understand, a fan for life was born. Regardless of your path, or what kind of fan you may be today, some significance can be found by tracing back to 30 years ago today.

Transformers, of course, has continued on persistently in some new animated form ever since, barring the time from 1988 through the start of Beast Wars in 1996 where only repackaged episodes of the original show were still used for various purposes. Even these new evolutions of the brand borrow heavily in spirit from the original show, with characters reusing lines, traits, and sometimes even actual voice actors.



Even now if we look ahead, 2015 will bring us yet another cartoon series and the second one to be titled "Robots in Disguise", and this will surely be the crux of the franchise's focus next year. Transformers has taken many branching paths and become a multimedia force in Hasbro's brand stable, with never ending toy releases, ongoing comics, frequent video game releases, and of course live action movies. Despite all that, the brand persists on as big and as well as it does because of the cartoons and their influence. Television is a powerful medium, and it's unlikely that The Transformers will ever divorce itself from that medium for very long every again.



I'd be remiss to not also remember some of the fantastic voice contributors to the original cartoon that we've lost over the years, here on a day where we learned the sad news that Buster Jones, the iconic voice of Blaster, is no longer with us. Here's to also remembering the good times brought to us all by such amazing artists as Chris Latta, Scatman Crothers, Casey Kasem, Orson Welles, and others that I may have forgotten.

The legacy of the first Transformers cartoon is undeniable. Hopefully in another 30 years, I'll be back to write another one of these as a crotchety old man, still surrounded by rotting 60 year old plastic toys.

Tell your story in the comment thread below. Why did you, and why do you still, enjoy the original cartoon? Maybe you hate it, that's ok too. Either way, there's no denying the impact it has had, which must have been so unimaginable 30 years ago to the day.

My first exposure to Transformers was Either Beast Wars or The 1986 Movie, I can't remember which came first. Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Iguanus was my first toy, and I still have (what's left of) him. That had to have been 1997-ish.

Then, and this may have happened beforehand, my father once came home from work, and after visiting whatever amounted to F.Y.E. back in the late 90s, gave me and my brother Transformers: The Movie. Sadly, that VHS didn't work. So the next day, he exchanged it for one that did.

To this day I still have that VHS, with the nice hard plastic shell for a cover as opposed to a cardboard sleeve. I have played it so much that it no longer works, not that I have a VCR anyways! (For those of you that don't know what that is (looking at you, Madeus Prime), that is what we used instead of DVDs. Giant cassettes. Burn knows what's up. )

But now that I have the 20th Anniversary DVD, I still watch that movie all the time. For a movie about giant robots that beat each other up and eat planets, it still has some really cool animation and amazing voice work, even if the plot and the tropes and the idioms don't always stand the test of time so well.

Happy 30th Birthday, Transformers. May your wires never cross and your luster never dull.

Another awesome article!

I was 2 1/2 weeks past my 2nd birthday, September 17th, 1984. I already loved cartoons back then! Still love them (and especially Transformers!) even today. I'll admit it wasn't the "best" as far as quality and story is concerned, but it was definitely very effective in selling toys!

Excellent article. With this day being the anniversary of the cartoon that started the cartoons, it's unfortunate we have to hear about other unpleasant news stories that happen to be TF cartoon-related, such as the passing of Buster Jones and The Hub getting overhauled by Discovery.

that was an amazing article ScottyP


and a happy anniversary to one of the best franchises out there IMHO

but i was 9 at the time and i remember like it was yesterday, like getting so excited for the show and even more so when i got a new transformer for my birthday or Christmas ....good times!

I actually never got into Transformers when I was around the right age. I got into the toys as a teenager right when ROTF came out. However it really struck a nerve (in a good way) with me and I ended up watching all of G1, all of Beast Wars, all of RID, all of Animated, all of Armada, all of Beast Machines, and when it came out, all of Prime. Here's to another 30!

I was 10 years old, 5th grade just started and every boy in my class was in competition to see who could get the most Transformers! The cartoon was a half hour long commercial with great voice acting. Once you saw the show, you would look for the character at the store. Toy aisles were well stocked with every character before the mania hit right before the Christmas holidays. I did odd jobs everyday that I wasn't playing Transformers with friends to get more Transformers. My Grandmother searched 3 states looking for Optimus Prime and my Dad fought off other parents in a Black Friday style skirmish over some Autobot cars. By the end of the year I had almost every 1984 release except Megatron, who I was able to get in a trade in January 1985. Spring '85 I got figures like the Dinobots, Insecticons and my first Constructicon, Scrapper. I also got Ramjet that spring and I could not wait for season 2 to start so I could see how he acted on the cartoon. Good times.

Ok so I was 9 it was so hard to watch as it aired on a breakfast tv program transformers had a daily 5 min slot at 8:55 , now school was at 9:00 so it was impossible to watch (us Brits get shafted a lot with transformers) luckily my friend forced his mum to record it (vhs) so after school a few of us would go to his house and get our 5 min fix, often I could not wait so would watch it live when it aired and be 30 mins late for school, the summer holidays were good as we would get full episodes instead of 5 mins but when school started after the holidays it reverted back to 5 min slots !!!!!!

It's been a long time since then. I had my first 4 Transformers at least a month or two before the cartoon aired. I was on a cubs scouts trip in Wisconsin for a week and toward the end of the trip we visited a small store. Before the trip we were told about getting souvenirs so I was given some money. I was 9 years old almost 10 during the trip. I had some go-bots for almost a year now. When I got to the store kids ran around buying kites and things. I was looking at the Transformers on the wall when you first walk in. I didn't look at any other toys. I first noticed Windcharger a Trans am. I took him of the pegs. Then Huffer. A tough looking robot. Gears. Then a yellow Cliffjumper. When I turned to look at the rest of the selection someone grabbed a yellow Bumblebee. The only one. I was pissed. They had multiples of the ones in my hands and that was it. At least I had these. Some of my favorites were fast cars and jets. Take a look at my user name. All the Trans formers were cool. Some I liked more than others, but I wanted to get them all. I never saw a commercial and didn't know of the comic books. I didn't collect comic books until I was old enough to buy them myself. I watched the cartoon when it first came out. I saw the commercial when it would be on. I got Optimus Prime for my birthday. A lot of voice actors died over the years. Voice actors for Gears, Hound, Sky Lynx, & Cyclonus are some to add to the list that are no longer with us. I've watched a lot of cartoons over the years, but Transformers has been my favorite since 1984.

I was five when I saw the premiere. I have distinct memories of watching Transformers. For me, THIS is the thirtieth birthday of the franchise. It may not be the best version, but it's my favorite and still pretty damned good in its own right.

Happy birthday, Transformers. And thirty more!

My history of discovering G1 is a bit more complicated, full of misconceptions and false assumptions.

It was Beast Wars that got me introduced to the TF franchise before any other, in 1996. At the time, I had a friend who had told me that there used to be another show called just "Transformers" (as opposed to "Beast Wars: Transformers", which was what I only knew of at the time), and that that show had the characters called "Autobots" and "Decepticons", who turned into vehicles (cars and trucks for the good guys, and jets and tanks for the bad guys) instead of animals, and were the giant ancestors of the Maximals and Predacons (who were more human-sized). And that the Autobots' leader was called "Optimus Prime" instead of " Optimus Primal", and that he turned into a truck, large enough for a person sit inside. This info intrigued me, but I didn't look into it any further since Beast Wars was what really appealed to me at the time.

Some short time after this, the Machine Wars toyline started showing up at KB Toys and, because these toys matched everything that had been told to me before (with the exception of the toys being called "Machine Wars: Transformers" instead of just "Transformers"), I assumed that these were rereleases of the older characters that were the ancestors of Beast Wars cast, and that my friend got his info wrong on the series being called just "Transformers" instead of "Machine Wars: Transformers". At that time, I assumed that Machine Wars was G1. I now look back and chuckle at that mistake.

Though, I gradually began to notice that some things did not add up. Like, when the episode where Starscream possessed Waspinator reaired, I noticed how Starscream in that episode's flashbacks looked different from the Machine Wars Starscream toy. And then much later, when "The Agenda" three-parter aired, I noticed how Ravage was described as being a former Decepticon and yet had no Machine Wars toy. And in the third part of that three-part episode, I saw how G1 Optimus Prime barely resembled his Machine Wars toy counterpart as well (at that time, I also thought the idea of mouthplates was silly, since none of the BW cast had them--I assumed Optimus Primal's was just a "mouth cover" that he wore only when necessary; and the Machine Wars Prime toy didn't have a mouthplate either). And finally, during the season 3 episode "Master Blaster", I caught how the original Megatron in that episode didn't look that much like his Machine Wars toy either. So, what did I tell myself to make sense of all these discrepencies? I simply brushed them off as cartoon mistakes and took the Machine Wars version as the "correct" versions (and assumed that Ravage had been a non-toy character, or that his toy was not included in the Machine Wars "rereleases"). Silly naive me.

Finally, circa 2001, Beast Machines was coming to a close and I had by then forgotten about the short-lived Machine Wars toyline and then came to see the first commercials for a new cartoon called "Transformers: Robots in Disguise". Such a name and look resurfaced memories of old. Memories of what I had been told before of a series just called "Transformers". I saw that, to me, the Optimus Prime in this show looked close enough to the one seen in the Ark during Beast Wars, but I still figured that that Megatron lying in the Ark was animation error. After seeing these commercials for and episode 1 of RiD, I assumed once again that this was G1, and that the whole "Decepticon" thing had been some kind of mistake (since the main bad guys here were still Predacons). Yes, I had then momentarily forgotten about Ravage and the stasis locked Decepticons on the Ark in BW. But then when they introduced the Decepticons for real in RiD, I retreated my previous assumption and just figured that the Decepticons would later become the dominant faction later on, with the Preds disappearing and new Preds showing up again later as the Decepticons' descendants.

By 2002, however, my belief of RiD having been G1 was ultimately killed by two factors.
1. Hasbro.com began promoting a new series called "Transformers: Armada", and I was like "Huh? What is this? I thought they already had a show like this. Why are they making another series with Autobots and Decepticons? Is this a sequel or something?"
2. I stumbled upon VHS tapes of a show called "The Original Transformers" at a local video store. I later picked up a few, watched'em, read the back cover descriptions of how these were episode from a 1980s cartoon, and gradually came to understand that this was the original series after all, and that both Machine Wars and RiD were just their own things.

Once I came to understand how the concept of reboots worked, I was able to warm up better to Armada than my initial reactions had been. Though, this was still long before the Armada cartoon came out. After having watched a fair number of G1 video tapes, I began to notice some fanwank references added in to the RiD cartoon, like how RiD Optimus and RiD Ultra Magnus were built by "Alpha Trion", and how RiD Optimus had been given "the Matrix" by "Vector Sigma".

Since then, I went on to collect the Kid Rhino DVD sets of G1 around 2003-2004 and watched them all from start to finish. And having watched the G1 movie during this DVD watch, I finally understood who Unicron was and what his appearances in Beast Wars were about. That fake flashback with him killing Starscream and his giant golden head being projected by the Vok finally made sense to me.

So, yeah, if it hadn't been for Armada and Kid Rhino, I probably wouldn't have discovered G1 as early as I did.

Sabrblade wrote:Wow. I didn't realize the image amount in my previous post totaled to 101. Yikes!

Happy 30th!

WOW what an amazing compilation of images, so many transformations of the brand in 30 years!

Fantastic article. Before the Transformers and GI Joe all I had to watch were Looney Tunes, Mighty Mouse, and Hannah Barbera.

Unless I'm wrong I have vivid memories that Transformers originally came on a Sunday morning when I saw it the first time. Possibly Saturday but I am pretty positive before it went to a weekday show it was on a weekend day. I remember having a lot of Gobots, real and KOs but I specifically remember having the oversized yellow beetle that had the whole canopy of the car for a head and the jeep with the spare tire on his head. My instant Hound and Bumblebee and from right there I was hooked. I started getting one or two of the smaller figures every week when my Mother hit the supermarket and I got Optimus and Megatron that Christmas. Funny thing is I didn't give a rats ass about Cons back then and I remember wishing my parents could have found Sideswipe, or Mirage instead of getting Megatron (I know, I sound like a Brat right? ) My cousin who was a year older ended up getting cars like Sunstreaker and it always seemed like whatever I had he didn't and vice versa. On family gatherings he would pack up the Transformers carrying case which he also got and bring the figures over and for just that holiday moment we would almost have a full set. Total Transformers Nirvana.

Didn't really get into any thing else on that level until Captain Power came out. If they ever bring those things out again god help my wallet.

Despite not even being born within the G1 franchise I find myself on days off watching these episodes on DVD. They rocked in the Eighties and they still rock now, much better the childerns T.V today. They exist in the exact middle, they light heated and yet still dark at the same time. Writing my own scripts for youtube stop motions I now this is a hard balance to strike. So transformers whatever the future holds, we'll still have the classics if everything goes pear shaped!

If anything, G1 animated has some of the best human/Autobot interaction and human characters. And I'll take the EDC over NEST or... whatever the hell they've got in Prime, if anything.

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:If anything, G1 animated has some of the best human/Autobot interaction and human characters. And I'll take the EDC over NEST or... whatever the hell they've got in Prime, if anything.

Agent Fowler of Unit:E, who was a fantastic character in his own right.

Sabrblade wrote:

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:If anything, G1 animated has some of the best human/Autobot interaction and human characters. And I'll take the EDC over NEST or... whatever the hell they've got in Prime, if anything.

Agent Fowler of Unit:E, who was a fantastic character in his own right.

Yeah, he was good. I'll still take Marissa and the EDC over him.

Well, I was about the perfect age when Transformers and GI Joe came on TV. 9 years old. I had just started getting into comic books, my dad would usually by me a $.75 comic after a soccer game, and I went for issue #3 and got hooked, and still have imprinted on my brain the awesome cover of issue #4! I don't have any of my old toys, but still have all my comics, including three of the awesome Transformers Universe yearbook issues with the detailed capsules of each character.

I was zombified in afternoons at home alone after school in front of the TV: He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe.

My little sister oddly was the one who loved robots, and *she* got Soundwave for christmas, and I got... Ratchet. With the head behind the windshield who looked nothing like TV/comics. And neither me or my dad could transform him easily.

But I also got Wheeljack, Windcharger, and Bumblebee. And those three with Soundwave got a lot of use!! Wheeljack to this day is my favorite character - and he remains one of the few "inventor/scientist" characters in all of fiction who wasn't a Big Nerd (him and Tony Stark, right?).

I remember playing with friends, and everyone being in awe of the Jetfire toy, and when we saw Kup and Blurr in these cool "Cybertron" modes, that was a big deal too.

I can remember when the cartoon came out and the toys came out, every kid in school talking about them and some bringing them in to show them off. I remember showing them to bewildered and amazed uncles and cousins.

I also remember not being allowed to see the movie!!! I just saw it this year! My mom later told me it was because she heard Optimus Prime died and her friends complaining how it upset their kids! After two years I had added Megatron, Shockwave, Perceptor, Warpath, Seaspray, Tracks, and that was about it Then I was 12 and collected GI Joe in secret because it wasn't cool to play with toys when in middle school

So then for like 20 years I didn't think about Transformers, and the movie comes out, and my 5 yr old son is all into robots, someone gives him one of those giant bumblebee's that talks and doesn't transform, buy the movie toys seem to absolutely suck to me, but then we discover Animated - toys with solid parts, not shards - and I'm sucked right back in!!! My boys are like the only kids at their school who know anything about transformers. Everyone else is all ninjago and star wars!

(and eventually I come around to appreciate many of the movie toys as a grownup with advanced dexterity

This thread is amazing. So many cool stories!

Awesome article!! I think I was around 3 when I started watching Transformers that was in 1987. My Mum was dating a guy and his Parents managed a hotel complex just outside of New Plymouth, New Zealand. It had a little VHS shop where kids on holiday could rent them out naturally I grabbed the first season went to the kitchen asked for some food and headed back the to the room we were in and just watched Transformers.

I remember my first Transformer I got was Rampage I wanted a Skywarp too but got told I was getting greedy I remember doing the transformation sound when changed him into robot and back. Kids brought their Transformers to School and we would check out which ones the rich kids had, surprisingly no one had a Megatron.

So much nostalgia reading evryone else's experiences when the cartoons first came out.