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In the early ‘80s, the Federal Communications Commission removed restrictions that had prevented television producers from creating programming meant to market products to children. Toy maker Hasbro immediately hit the jackpot with G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero, a cartoon miniseries and comic book that showcased their newly revamped action figure line. Realizing the power of this type of marketing, they decided to try a similar approach with a new line of transforming robot toys that they had acquired from Japanese manufacturers. Thus was Transformers born.
Within the cartoon, of course, the robots’ origins are a bit more heroic. On the distant planet Cybertron, a generations-long war between the benevolent Autobots and the sinister Decepticons has drained their home world of nearly all available energy. As the Autobots venture out into space to find another source, they are attacked by a force of Decepticons, leading them all to crash on Earth, where they lie dormant for thousands of years until the ship that brought them finishes repairing them and reconfiguring them to transform into various cars, trucks, planes, and so on.
The Decepticons wake first and begin harvesting energy wherever they find it, mostly from oil refineries, power plants, and other industrial sites. The Autobots recover and fight to stop them and prevent human injuries, endearing them to refinery worker “Sparkplug” Witwicky (and you thought the movie was pushing it) and his teenage son, Spike. The rest of the season involves the Decepticon leader Megatron’s various plans to steal energy for conquest, while the Autobots, under Optimus Prime, remain focused on protecting humanity while working to return to and restore Cybertron.
As with most any animated series that’s a couple of decades old, Transformers is best viewed through the soft haze of fond nostalgia. The plots are thin and the holes in logic and storytelling abundant. The animation is crisp, but it’s certainly a product of the days before computers gained enough processing power to provide animators with the tools they enjoy today.
But that’s enough nit-picking for me, as I was about 8 years old when this series first premiered and have long, long since worn out my VHS tapes of it. Much of what I loved about the series is still intact, from the ever-expanding list of new transformers (to go with the new toy lines, of course) to veteran voice actor Chris Latta’s eternally petulant Starscream. It’s a testament to the quality of the voice work on this program that the live-action films brought back Peter Cullen as the voice of Optimus Prime. His performance throughout lends considerable weight to what is essentially an expressionless character.
The 25th Anniversary Edition of Transformers: The Complete First Season provides a quality transfer of the first 16 episodes in the series, along with a couple of the original TV ad spots and a featurette detailing the show’s development from foreign toy lines to a full-blown American cartoon phenomenon. While it probably won’t gain new converts the way the live-action films have, it will certainly have many children of the ‘80s gleefully announcing Optimus Prime’s ubiquitous battle cry, “Autobots, transform and roll out!”
