The Lost Fifth Season

I was just thinking about the Transformers: Matrix of Leadership Edition box set of the original animated series. It claims to be the complete series as it features all 98 episodes which ran from 1984 to 1987. There are complete series box sets in other countries which also claim to have every episode. However, did you know there was in fact a fifth season of the Transformers? I am not talking about the Japanese exclusive Transformers: The Headmasters, which it technically was as it continued and concluded the original story. There really was one more season of the Transformers in the United States which ran during 1988. In the U.S., there was a fifth season which ran on the weekends for twenty episodes. There were no newly animated episodes, but this was a sort of "best of" collection of the series. The episodes included:

1. More Than Meets the Eye (Part 1)

2. More Than Meets the Eye (Part 2)

3. More Than Meets the Eye (Part 3)

4. Transformers: The Movie: Day One

5. Transformers: The Movie: Day Two

6. Transformers: The Movie: Day Three

7. Transformers: The Movie: Day Four

8. Transformers: The Movie: Day Five

9. Five Faces of Darkness (Part 1)

10. Five Faces of Darkness (Part 2)

11. Five Faces of Darkness (Part 3)

12. Five Faces of Darkness (Part 4)

13. Five Faces of Darkness (Part 5)

14. Surprise Party

15. Dark Awakening

16. The Return of Optimus Prime (Part 1)

17. The Return of Optimus Prime (Part 2)

18. The Rebirth (Part 1)

19. The Rebirth (Part 2)

20. The Rebirth (Part 3)

This season saw Transformers: The Movie broadcast on television for the first time ever, and part five included the music video for Stan Bush's "The Touch". The episodes also featured new narration during the episodes from Optimus Prime, basically showing that these episodes had already happened and he was simply remembering. There was some new animation for these episodes. The beginnings and endings featured live action segments with a young boy named Tommy Kennedy and his friend, Powermaster Optimus Prime. Prime was an animatronic puppet and the toy also featured some stop motion animation. These segments were cheesy, but it did add something special to these older stories. Also, the intro for the show was new. It retained the season 3 theme song, but featured new animation from the commercials of 1988 with the Pretenders and such.

To date, these twenty episodes have never been released on DVD or VHS. In fact, these episodes are extremely difficult to come by. I actually have never seen them, but I have read about them and seen pictures. Seibertron.com also uploaded one of the "Puppet"master Prime segments to the Internet about four years ago, so I have seen a little bit of the cheesy Tommy Kennedy and Powermaster Optimus Prime. Even though the original episodes have all been released, it would be a neat piece of Transformers history to see these episodes collected into some kind of box set. Given the fact that they haven't already been collected probably means that Hasbro doesn't have the master tapes, they are in super poor condition, or they just really want to forget they ever tried this. Either way, it was a fun attempt to squeeze one more season out of the original Transformers cartoon.