Transformers: a very brief overview
as told by a very new fan of the franchise
like, stupid new.
The Plot
Transformers, Generally, is a story about a millions-year long
war between two alien factions: the Autobots, the heroic defenders
of all sentient beings and led by Optimus Prime, and the Decepticons, evil and power hungry, led by Megatron.
Details about the how and why of the war change in almost every iteration and vary greatly
in maturity/seriousness.
Transformers are robot aliens from a mechanical planet called Cybertron with
abilities to transform and disguise as vehicles, planes, machines, electronics,
furnature, tools, pens,
toasters, cats, humans....usually cars or planes, called Alt-modes.
Their food, blood, energy, and basically everything they need is called Energon and is
most often the reason why the war begins, since they never seem to have enough of it.
The story varies often but at its core Transformers is about the struggle between
good and evil, the fight for freedom, and protecting those who cant fight
for themselves.
Generation one
Transformers started as a toyline in the 80s from japanese rebranded
Takara company toys rebranded for western audiences.
Generation one refers to multiple Transformers timelines as they reboot the
story every couple of years, but usually when people talk about it, they mean the
original 1984 cartoon and toyline.
generation 2 and other continuity families
Generation 2 began with the Beast Wars comic and cartoon from 1996-1999.
taking place millions of years after the autobot/decepticon war,
Optimus Primal and Megatron (which, confusingly, are different characters from the original optimus prime
and megatron)
crash-land on an energon rich organic planet and take on organic alt-modes
and have a much smaller conflict between the
Maximals (Autobots) and the Predacons (Decepticons) it looks horrible but you learn to love it.
Transformers has a fair share of continuities, or universes, that it uses interchangably.
some include:
- comic continuities, including marvel, dreamwave, and idw. mostly self contained to their comic runs.
- cartoon continuities like cyberverse, animated, the armada trilogy.
- the japanese continuities, which would be a waste of time to even attempt to explain.
- about a million other micro timelines
- most famously, the Michael Bay movies, commonly called Bayverse.
Toys and Merchandise
As with most Hasbro properties, Transformers is a way to sell toys. Basically
anything and everything that can have a Transformer on it, will.
Toys generally range from cheap plastic, barely-transformable toys for young kids
to extremely expensive and high quality die cast display figures.
Third party toys, or toys made and sold by companies other than Hasbro/Takara,
despite usually being higher quality, are controversial among collectors.
Due to third party companies usually being unliscensed which brings up concerns of
copyright infringement. gotta help pretect the rights of a multi billion dollar toy
company, right?
Comics and movies
Probably the most recognizable part of Transformers media nowadays is the live action
2007-2017 Michael Bay movies (often called "Bayverse"),
and the 2018 Bumblebee movie. General audiences enjoy them but theyre extremely devisive among
Transformers fans for being pretty innacurate (and just bad, if you ask me)
in 1986, Hasbro wanted a new era of Transformers toys to sell based on the cartoon
running at the time, so the 86 movie was
created as a way to introduce a new cast and
story by killing off multiple main characters on screen. which is honestly hilarious
The latest movie came out in late
2024 as another Generation 1 reboot and origin story
for Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Transformers has had comics since the
begining, but currently one of the most famous is the
2005-2019 IDW publishing. it had over 400 issues and is currently my personal favorite. the comics
more or less mirror the toyline or cartoon running around the same time, but often diverge as they continue.
the current popular run of Transformers comics is being published by Skybound publishing, and takes a much darker
and grittier style and story, at least compaired to recent stories. its still on-going with issue 17 having just been released,
with 24 issues currently planned.
current outlook
its bad. games are cancelled, the current cartoon sucks, the next movie is going to be a g.i joe crossover.
it makes sense, transformers has been around for literally as twice as long as ive been alive, but its
still dissapointing to get on something so cool so late that hasbro is basically being it with a stick
just to keep it alive. but i am hopeful and excited for a possible, maybe, Transformers one sequel.
information found on the greatest wiki of all time: tfwiki.com , and
unfortunately, r/Transformers
