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.
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 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:
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?
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
its bad.
information found on the greatest wiki of all time: tfwiki.com