What Were the Machine Wars?

After posting on the Prowl figure, I thought I would take a moment to discuss what the Machine Wars line was in a little more detail. As previously mentioned, Machine Wars was a short lived attempt to bring back the vehicle based Transformers.

The Transformers franchise had been in a steep decline since the beginning of the 1990's. The franchise was a massive success in North America throughout the 1980's, but it fizzled out by 1990 with the Micromasters and Action Masters. There were no new toys, cartoons, or comics, so the franchise basically disappeared for two years in North America. Although the Japanese line had shifted in a different direction with incredible new toys and three additional cartoons, it was also on life support by 1991. In Europe, Japanese figures were being imported and repackaged, but the line was also loosing steam by 1992, even with exclusive European figures.

In 1992, Hasbro attempted to revive the franchise with Transformers: Generation 2. The line began with repackaged and recolored figures from the first two years of Generation One, new airings of the original cartoon on Saturday mornings, and a new comic book. The line was a huge success, so Hasbro continued with European imports, more remolds, new molds, another season of the cartoon (now on weekdays), and more comics. By 1995, the franchise was out of gas. The cartoon ended, the comic concluded after twelve issues, and the last year's toys were mostly garbage. Hasbro ended Generation 2, and passed the responsibility of Transformers to its boys division, Kenner.

In a last, desperate attempt to revive Transformers, the Beast Wars series was created where the Transformers transformed into techno-organic beasts and animals. With new, more articulated figures, and a promising new animated series which tied it all back to Generation One, Beast Wars was a massive success and brought the Transformers back from death. With Beast Wars' success, Hasbro made an attempt to revive the old Autobot and Decepticon factions with Machine Wars. The line was released in 1997 as a Kay-Bee-Toys exclusive series. There were three class sizes. There were the eight basic figures with automatic transformations. They consisted of four unused molds from Generation 2, and each mold was repainted once for an additional figure. Then the remaining four figures consisted of former European exclusives. There were two voyager class figures and two ultra class figures.

The line proved to be a great idea, but ultimately a failure and only lasted for one wave. There were several reasons for this. The first reason was the slapped together feel of the toys. The characters didn't feel like the belonged together. Sure Optimus Prime was a truck with a trailer, but Megatron was a tiny jet half the size of Optimus and a quarter the size of Starscream. Something is wrong with that. Second, the line had no story or supporting material. There was no reason for this series, no back story, no comics, no cartoons, nothing. It simply existed. I think the last and greatest reason is that Hasbro/ Kenner gave the line no chance of survival with limited distribution. The toys were only available through Kay-Bee-Toys. These stores were limited to shopping malls and their toys were always priced higher than their competition of Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, or even Toys R Us. Safe to say, with no advertising or anything to let you know the toys were out there, you probably wouldn't venture into Kay-Bee-Toys randomly.

It was sad to see this line end so quickly, but it was probably for the best. The line really didn't have any care put in to it, and without care, a toy line won't succeed. Some of the figures would return in the later Transformers: Universe and Robots in Disguise lines, and free lance artists would try to craft a story to make it part of Generation One. If Hasbro ever revisits this idea, hopefully they will do a far better job in the future. For now, it rests as a failed attempt and it served as a precursor to the true return of the Autobots and Decepticons in 2001.