Making Sense of Generation One: Part 5

The original Transformers animated series is considered to be one of the best cartoons from 1980's. One of the saddest moments from that decade of great cartoons was when the series ceased its broadcast run in 1989. Season three of the series was definitely a difficult transition for many fans due to the change in setting, style, and characters. Due to the decline in success for the animated series after the failure of the 1986 film in theaters and the lackluster reception to the third season, Hasbro decided that season four would be the final season of new episodes. However, this season would consist of only three episodes. This mini-series was called The Rebirth.

Season four writer David Wise reported in 2004 that season four was supposed to consist of a five part mini-series to introduce the new Headmasters and Targetmasters and tie up the series. Hasbro then made a last minute decision to cram the story into three parts. David Wise did a great job with compensating considering the huge amount characters he had to work in. In three 22 minute episodes, David Wise introduced the Headmasters, Targetmasters, their origin, Sixshot, Nebulos, the Nebulon race, the evil Hive, Skorponok, Fortress Maximus, Punch/Counterpunch, the Autobot and Decepticon Clones, and the Horrorcons. Wise also crafted the story to see the restoration of Cybertron. That is a lot of story to cram into 90 minutes, but again, Wise did a great job introducing all of these concepts and giving the show a proper series finale in the U.S. The show again featured a new opening intro, however it retained the season three song but featured new animation from the commercials.

In 1988, Hasbro commissioned one final season of the Transformers. Hasbro created a stop motion animated Powermaster Optimus Prime to host a sort of "best of" collection of episodes which ran from 1988 to early 1989 on the weekends. This Optimus Prime would tell classic adventures of the Transformers to a young boy named Tommy Kennedy, and the two would interact verbally during the episodes. The episodes came mainly from the third and fourth seasons with the three part series premiere episode More Than Meets the Eye brought in at the beginning of the season's run. The show also featured the first ever televised broadcast of Transformers: The Movie, but it was broken down into five parts with the music video for Stan Bush's The Touch shown at the end of part five.

When the show finished its run, no new Transformers episodes aired in the United States until Transformers: Beast Wars in 1995. In 1993, Hasbro did re-air classic Generation One episodes under the Generation 2 banner for two seasons. However, no original episodes were produced. Many fans in the United States at the time the "fifth" season of the original cartoon ended believed the adventures of Generation One had ended. However, while the U.S. series was wrapping up in 1987, the animated series continued in Japan. In fact, three additional seasons aired as well as one additional series pilot from 1987 to 1990.

Blaster

This spotlight is on Blaster, the Autobot counterpart to the popular Decepticon Soundwave! Similar to Soundwave, Blaster transformed into a stereo cassette player. Blaster definitely felt like an Autobot with his bright red, yellow, and gray color scheme. His transformation was pretty simple. You simply unfold the speakers to form the legs, flip out the arms, slide out the fists and elbows, and flip up the head. In the beginning, Blaster wasn't marketed with cassette forces of his own like Soundwave. Blaster eventually had some cassette warriors released during year three of the original Transformers toy line. The first four cassettes included two robots (Rewind and Eject) and two animals (Steeljaw, the lion, and Ramhorn, the rhino). Blaster was a great figure and a great addition to the Autobot forces.

The only problem with Blaster was his scale. The figure transformed into a decent size radio, but his robot mode ended up being massive. In Blaster's original toy commercial, two children had Optimus Prime and Blaster figures battling Soundwave, and Blaster was double the size of Prime. However, in the animated series, they are the same height. Go figure. If you want to get your hands on Blaster, Hasbro recently reissued the figure with some of his cassettes as part of this year's Comic-Con.

Making Sense of Generation One: Part 4

The aftermath of Transformers: The Movie left a lot of fans wondering what was coming next for the robots in disguise. In the span of 90 minutes of animation, a huge percentage of everyone's favorite characters had been killed off or reformatted into new characters. Also, the setting shifted to twenty years in the future. If there was ever a time that people didn't know what was next, this was the time. In September of 1986, season three of the animated series began. What fans discovered is this season was more than meets the eye.

Season three began with a five part mini-series called Five Faces of Darkness. This series took place one year after the events of the film (2006) with Rodimus Prime in command of the Autobots and Galvatron still missing from the Unicron War. The Decepticons have been forced off of Cybertron and Earth and have taken refuge on the burned out planet of Charr. The mini-series also explained the origin of both Cybertron and the Transformers themselves revealing the mysterious five faced Quintessons were their creators. With the conclusion of the mini-series, the Autobots now had to face not only the insane Galvatron and the Decepticons, but also the evil Quintessons intent on reclaiming Cybertron and destroying both the Autobots and Decepticons.

The third season was a season of highs and lows. The first half of the season was animated by a new animation company called AKOM. Their work was pretty poor with AKOM only producing a few quality episodes (Dark Awakening for example). Other episodes like Carnage in C-Minor were some of the worst episodes ever animated in the series with errors and inconsistencies every few seconds. Toei Animation took back the duties of animating the show close to halfway through the season which meant there was a huge step up in animation quality. The season's writing however was among the best right from the beginning with only a few episodes that were just bad (Surprise Party anyone?). The previously mentioned Dark Awakening along with Ghost in the Machine, The Ultimate Weapon, The Burden Hardest to Bear, and The Return of Optimus Prime (Parts 1 & 2) were incredible episodes to watch. There was also a greater continuity between episodes which was a welcome revision, and head writer Flint Dille made an effort to make the show more mature in its story lines.

Overall, season three was a great season. The largest problem for fans with the season was the complete overhaul of the show. All of the familiar faces were missing (barring cameos from Bumblebee, Starscream, the Airealbots, and memories of Megatron), and fans were still bothered by the death of Optimus Prime (even though Hasbro restored Optimus Prime to life in the season finale). The human characters were also different with Spike being all grown up with his son Daniel as the new teenaged character for the fans to connect with. Also, the futuristic style and the new focus on adventures on different planets was a shift as well. It was a season of a many changes, and some fans found it hard to embrace these changes. Although the 1986 toys were amazing and selling very well, this year began the decline in the popularity of the Generation One franchise in the United States.

European Classics Octane

Here is another one of the "Classics" figures released in 1991 overseas in Europe. This is a rerelease of the classic Generation One Triple-Changer Octane. The toy was originally released in 1986. I have never owned Octane, so I won't be able to go into detail about his transformation. However, as a figure he is pretty solid. He transforms from tanker truck to jumbo jet to robot. As one of the first original molds from Hasbro (especially a triple-changer), the designers did the best job they could with available design technology. The truck mode looks great with a nice chromed trailer, and the jet mode looks awesome with the chromed wings. The robot mode is pretty good, but I think it could have been better. There are large indents in the front of both of his legs due to the transformation, and his arms don't have much (not that any G1 figure did) articulation. Overall, Octane is worth picking up if you have the chance, especially if it is the rare European Classics version. However, I would definitely recommend Blitzwing or Astrotrain before Octane.

Octane played a small role in the third season of the animated series. He was seen in multiple episodes as a background character, but Octane got starring roles in the episodes Thief in the Night and Starscream's Ghost. Thief in the Night saw Octane try to take control of the Decepticons by stealing Trypticon and learning how to create Super-Energon. In Starscream's Ghost, it was hard to tell if the writers mixed up Octane with Blitzwing (Blitzwing was expelled from the Decepticons in Five Faces of Darkness: Part Five), but it would be safe to assume that Octane was also on the run after stealing Trypticon. In this episode, Octane enters into a partnership with ghost of the traitorous Starscream.

Slapdash

Here is another one of my favorite figures from the Generation One era of the Transformers. Slapdash was one of the Autobot Powermasters. The gimmick behind the Powermasters was they each had an engine which could transform into a robot (or a binary bonded Nebulan depending on which continuity you follow). Slapdash had a really unique transformation that would be a little too complicated to discuss here. His upper body was simple, but the front of the car actually flipped and rotated around the body to form the legs. Overall, next to Powermaster Optimus Prime and Overlord, Slapdash is my favorite Powermaster. His color scheme was awesome, and the figure's design was excellent. My only complaint is he is another one of the characters who felt the sting in the United States from the animated series going off the air in 1987. Slapdash (a 1988 figure) did appear in animated form briefly in the commercials, and he did play a small role in the Marvel comics. If you really wanted to see Slapdash in action, check out the Japanese exclusive series Transformers: Super-God Masterforce where he was known as Road King. If you have been keeping up with my Making Sense of Generation One series, don't worry. We'll be talking about Super-God Masterforce soon.

Making Sense of Generation One: Part 3

By 1986, the Transformers franchise had gone beyond being a simple success to becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The toys were selling with like crazy, the Marvel comic book series was a smash, and kids were tuning in every weekday to check out the animated adventures of the robots in disguise. It was inevitable that the Transformers would eventually hit the big screen. In the summer of 1986, Transformers: The Movie hit movie theaters every where (except Japan).

Production on the movie began around the beginning of season two's production. For this reason, many of the season two characters featured in the film didn't have speaking roles as they hadn't had their characters established yet. Toei Animation returned to animate the film, and their work proved to be some of the best on screen animation ever produced at that time. The animation was far superior to the animated series with highly detailed visuals and very few animation errors. Also, Vince DiCola (who had arranged the soundtrack for Rocky IV) was brought on board to create the film's iconic 80's rock soundtrack. Flint Dille took the helm as the head writer of the film, and Nelson Shin directed. Jay Bacal of Hasbro said in a 2006 interview that "what we were going for was to bring in the older audience". Hasbro's thinking was that the original fans were growing older, and so it was time to make the story more appealing to the older audiences and the college aged crowd. Hasbro also used the film to introduce a new era of heroes and villains and subsequently wipe out the characters that had forged the franchise.

The film was set in the then future world of 2005 (twenty years after the events of season two which took place in 1985). It told the story of a powerful planetoid called Unicron which could devour other worlds. After destroying a planet called Lithone, Unicron made his way towards Cybertron. Meanwhile the Decepticons (who have taken control of Cybertron) are planning to make a final strike against the Autobots by destroying Autobot City on Earth. Megatron and his forces capture an Autobot shuttle and kill its crew (Brawn, Prowl, Ironhide, and Ratchet) and they infiltrate the city on Earth. At this point, Autobot City is guarded by a new group of Autobots (Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod, Kup, Arcee, Blurr, and Springer) who along with Autobots of the past attempt to repel the Decepticons. Optimus Prime eventually arrives and in an absolutely epic battle defeats both the Decepticons and Megatron, but he is mortally wounded. The Decepticons retreat back to Cybertron. On Earth, Optimus Prime dies and passes the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus. In route to Cybertron, Starscream betrays Megatron and jettisons Megatron into deep space. Megatron is discovered by Unicron and is reformed into Galvatron. Several of his soldiers who were cast into space with him are also reformatted into Cyclonus, Scourge, and the Sweeps. Galvatron returns to Cybertron, kills Starscream, and retakes control of the Decepticons. All of this took place in the first 35 minutes of the movie. Talk about epic change!

Even though most fans have seen the film by now, I'll be nice with this post and not spoil the rest of the film. In the final hour of movie, a lot of amazing things occur including the introduction of the Junkions and Quintessons; the Unicron War (Unicron transforms from planet mode to a gigantic robot to attack Cybertron); and the rise of the new Autobot leader, Rodimus Prime. The film was definitely a much darker film than anyone in the summer of 1986 expected. The film was rated PG at the time, but in today's world, it easily would have been rated PG-13 (in 1986, there was no PG-13 rating). The film was brutally violent with many of the franchise's key characters being killed off on screen to make way for the next round of characters (toys). There was also two swear words dropped in for good measure which Jay Bacal said was done intentionally to make sure the film got a PG rating. It has been reported that one child locked himself in his room for two weeks after seeing Optimus Prime die on screen. The public and critical outcry to the film was pretty negative due to the film's violent nature and its borrowing of several Star Wars elements. However, the film has earned its status today of being a "cult" classic, and in 2006 it earned the honor of being released once again but in a sort of "ultimate" edition by Sony BMG with the two-disc Transformers: The Movie: 20th Anniversary Special Edition.

The film is hailed by fans and most people as the most recognizable and important story in the history of the franchise. The negative outcry mainly arose from the drastically different nature of the film compared to the animated series. In the animated series, the wounded Transformers would always be repaired or ride off into the sunset to fight another day. This film brought the conflict into a sort of reality never touched on by the show in such a strong fashion. The Cybertronian wars were filled with "real" violence and not every character was going to make it out alive. Also, the events of the film are what has enabled it to become the classic film that it has. Flint Dille said in another 2006 interview "I never would have thought I would be sitting here twenty years later talking about the Transformers movie." Optimus Prime's on screen death, as well as the first appearance of the Matrix and Unicron are now staples in the Transformers mythology. Hasbro at the time had no idea how iconic the characters had become, and it was this lack of knowledge that hurt the series going into the third season. If you have never seen the 1986 movie, it really is the highlight of the original Transformers franchise. The movie would end up being a part of the animated series canon and would bridge the gap between seasons two and three.

Making Sense of Generation One: Part 2

Today is a really lazy Saturday, so why not post another part of this series. With the success of the first season of Transformers, Hasbro commissioned a second season to be produced. The series moved to weekdays and began its broadcast run in September of 1985. The second season contained a titanic 49 episodes in order to bring Transformers up to the required 65 episodes to make it into syndication.

The second season featured improved animation, a larger cast, a new intro, and a new theme song. Thirteen of the episodes focused on the original cast from season one. After which, there were many new Autobots and Decepticons who joined the show. In a really weird move, these characters just seemed to appear out of no where with no explanation of how they arrived. All of the season one characters acted as if these new Transformers had always been at their side. The broadcast order of the episodes helped with the transition, but if you were to watch the episodes in chronological order, it was a bit of a shock. The second season also dropped the sequencing of the first season episodes. Up until the final thirteen episodes, you could pick up and watch the episodes in any order. The style was redone in order to make sure every character/ toy had a spotlight episode. The final thirteen episodes had more continuity but it wasn't always concrete. These episodes featured the origins of the Airealbots, Stunticons, and Combaticons. The Protectobots pulled a "season 2" and just magically appeared in the final two episodes of the season.

Season two was the high note of the Transformers animated series. The episodes from this season are among the most remembered by long time fans. The highlights of this season included the introduction of the combiner teams and triple-changers, the first appearance of Alpha Trion, the introduction of Carly (Spike's future wife), and a first look into the crafting of Transformers mythology. The season also saw a maturing of the themes and stories as the stories became darker and certain characters (Megatron and Starscream in particular) became more intense. Some of the best episodes of season two included The God Gambit, Starscream's Brigade, The Key To Vector Sigma (Parts 1 & 2), Day of the Machines, and Traitor.

The two low points about this season were definitely the lack of a proper season finale and Hasbro's focus on Transformers as a "toy" show. B.O.T. is one of the worst episodes in terms of story telling in the series, and it was no way to properly end the season. In Japan, an OVA called Scramble City did appropriately tie off the season with the introduction of Ultra Magnus, Metroplex, and Trypticon. However, the OVA was meant to be a filler for the Japanese audience to bridge the gap between seasons two and three since they wouldn't get Transformers: The Movie until 1990. Hasbro's focus of Transformers being a "toy" show became far more evident in this season due to all of the spotlight episodes. The series is still one of the best cartoons ever produced, but it really did start to feel like an advertisement rather a series of great stories at times.