The Transformers (cartoon)

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Red is the color of GOOD...

...while purple is the color of EVIL!!

In space, no one can hear your trumpets go Dah-NUN NUN NUN NAHHHHHH!

More than any other of the many media which Transformers have invaded in the past 40 years, it is The Transformers, the original cartoon that ran from 1984 to 1987, which captured the imagination of children and the young-at-heart worldwide.

Overview

Depleted of energy... aside from the power source that lights up the entire core of the planet.

The cartoon (along with the Marvel comics) set up the basic story of Transformers that most other incarnations were to follow: two warring factions of robots on the planet Cybertron leave in search of resources. The factions crash-land on Earth and, millions of years later, begin their battle anew in Reagan-era America and across the globe.

Once established, the cartoon rarely took any steps to upset its status quo. Plots generally centered on a Decepticon plot or invention of the week, which would be used to gather energy or Defeat The Autobots FOREVER!!, and the Autobots' efforts to stop the plan. Most of the time the Decepticons were forced into retreat, and the Autobots drove off victorious. At most, a new character or team was added to one side or the other. Plots became a bit less formulaic during Season 3, though character death and true plot upheaval remained a rarity.

Through its 98-episode run, this series took viewers around the globe and to many strange places and times: across the alien Cybertron, the Earth's prehistoric past, the Earth's then-future of 2005, the Metropolis-like society of Nebulos, and more. It is not the best animated series ever to air, but it stimulated viewers with its concept at the time, and continued to do so in the years to come.

Being the first series of Transformers ever, some episodes tended to be very, very, weird and 80sish compared with later shows. The show also featured an enormous cast of characters in comparison to the more limited cast of future shows, likely due to the cost of developing CGI models as opposed to hand-drawn animation.

Production

The Decepticon undersea base. Note that it is neither pineapple, rock, nor tiki head.

Writing and distribution for The Transformers were handled as a joint effort by Marvel Productions and Sunbow Productions. The show's premise is based on the original story treatment developed by Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, though Marvel productions briefly proposed their own pitch for the show separate from Shooter's before being shot down by Hasbro. Animation was produced overseas by a number of major studios: Toei (68 episodes), AKOM (22 episodes), Sei Young Animation Co. Ltd. (at least 1 episode), and an unknown studio (7 episodes). Additional contract services (such as additional animation production, photography, effects and finalization) were sub-contracted to numerous other studios, including: Dai Won Animation Co., Sam Young Studio, Ashi Productions, Trans Arts Co., Anime R, Nakamura Production, Studio Look, Studio No. 1 and T. Nishimura.

Nobody on Earth noticed this for millions of years.

The original 30 or so characters were heavily modified from their toy designs for aesthetics and ease of animation. Among the artists involved in the original designs are Shōhei Kohara and Floro Dery. Other known production artists include Dell Barras, who worked on second season backgrounds.

Story editors for the series included Dick Robbins, Bryce Malek, Flint Dille, Marv Wolfman, and Steve Gerber. Episode scripts were written by a large array of freelance writers. Writers notable for writing numerous episodes include Donald F. Glut and David Wise.

The series was animated on an enormously rushed schedule, with many episodes going from script to screen in as little as four months, due to the need to get episodes on the air in sync with the toys appearing on shelves. That, combined with the vast number of characters and the difficulties involved with the overseas animation process, resulted in a cartoon that is notoriously riddled with animation errors and other mistakes. The producers were often aware of these mistakes, but tight deadlines left no time to correct them.

Another byproduct of the rushed production is that the show tends not to be very self-referential. Continuity between episodes is minimal, with most acting as self-contained, standalone stories, though a few Season Two and Season Three stories did build on previous episodes. Within each season, the addition of new characters is the only common change to the status quo.

My toy's so great, I bought one myself!

Mistakes or not, the show is fondly remembered by many fans for the high quality of its voice acting. Indeed, many characters, lacking any significant plot developments or screen time, were brought to life solely by their unique voices and inflection styles. Voice direction for the series was provided by Wally Burr, notorious for driving his performers to the limit. One of the performers in his stable, Susan Blu, would later go on to work as voice director for Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Transformers Animated and briefly Transformers: Prime.

The sinister voice of Victor Caroli provided narration for the entire series, most commonly heard on the commercial bumpers: "The Transformers will return after these messages!" Caroli's voice also provided occasional introductory narration, recap segments for multi-part episodes, and the Secret Files of Teletraan II segments which ran before the credits of Season 3.

Looks safer than flying United.

In addition to the show's iconic theme song, Transformers featured a great variety of background music, composed by Robert J. Walsh. Walsh had previously worked on the G.I. Joe cartoon, and many of those pieces were reused for Transformers. New pieces were composed as well, many incorporating the melody of the show's theme song. Walsh composed new music for 2nd and 3rd seasons, each in a different style, further distinguishing the three main seasons from one another.

The show also originated the concept of the iconic "symbol flip" serving as a transition between scenes, a tradition carried on by some of the later series.

Credits

For further information, see: The Transformers (cartoon)/credits

Episodes

For further information, see: List of The Transformers episodes

These episodes are listed in "production order", the order in which the episodes were actually approved and written, rather than the order in which they aired on television. In a few instances, this means that episodes are not in the correct chronological story order, the specifics of which are noted in their own articles. Arranging the episodes in airdate order would not solve this problem, and so, as fans have done for as long as there have been Transformers episode guides on the internet, TFWiki.net adheres to production order, in preference to simply making up a chronological order of our own (any attempt at which would be arguable at best).

The different DVD companies which have released the series down the years have at times presented the episodes of each season in a different order that adheres to neither production nor airdate, sometimes to improve any chronology errors evident in the production order, and other times for no apparent reason. No two English-language DVD releases of the series by different companies have placed all 98 episodes in the same order. Metrodome stuck closest to production order, only making changes for chronology reasons (and sometimes not even then), while other licensees have strayed from this order to varying degrees. Season 1 has consistently avoided reorganization (as production order is actually the correct story order), but Season 3 is a victim of continuous restructuring that sees its episodes presented in a wildly different order with each release.

Please note that Wikipedia claims that the production order is the correct chronological order for all seasons. However, they have listed the episodes in broadcast order, with a number next to each entry to indicate its story order.

Season 1

"Uh Jazz, I think we're missing a few members."

Remember those dinosaur guys? Man, they were awesome.

The first season is primarily set on Earth, with a few excursions to Cybertron. It started with the 1984 toys as its characters (with some exceptions), and introduced the early wave of 1985 toys as it progressed—the Constructicons, Dinobots, Insecticons, and Skyfire.

The first 3 episodes were promoted as a miniseries, airing across three consecutive weekdays. A proper 13-episode season then began broadcasting on a weekly basis, usually on Saturday mornings, the following month. While the 3-episode miniseries and the 13-episode season one are typically combined as a single 16-episode season, production companies such as Toei catalog the two separately.^[1]

Season 2

I liked the one with the guy.

Didn't they make Optimus Prime play soccer or something once? Man, that was dumb.

At 49 episodes, the second season of The Transformers was rather substantial in length. The seemingly random number of 49 was not quite so random, though, as 65 episodes are the minimum requirement for a cartoon series to qualify for syndication status. (And 16 + 49 = 65)^[2] In addition to these 49 episodes, a series of 5 public service announcements were animated, presumably to accompany the episodes. For whatever reason, these PSAs were never broadcast and the episodes aired without the burden of trying to teach you anything.

The second season greatly expanded the cartoon's scope and cast. This season tends to feature more character-driven episodes than the first, with many characters getting their own "spotlight" episode. It also features a recurring theme of the Autobots assimilating Earth culture, such as playing basketball and football and even watching a soap opera. Excursions to alien civilizations popped up occasionally as well (not to mention time travel, miniaturization, and battles against undersea creatures). The second season also saw the introduction of concepts and characters that would spread out to other segments of the franchise, including the mystic Alpha Trion, the ancient Vector Sigma supercomputer and its circuit key, not to mention the first appearance of Female Transformers within official fiction.

This season also marked a move from weekly airings (usually on Saturday mornings) to syndicated weekday broadcasts, airing Monday through Friday, either in the morning or afternoon. Some markets also scheduled it in conjunction with daily episodes of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (like WPIX in New York).

Season Two breaks down very roughly into three segments:

• The first thirteen episodes feature (primarily) the Season One cast.
• A large second batch of episodes brings in the remainder of the 1985 toys.
• The final ten episodes introduce the four combiner teams that formed the early entries in the 1986 line.

Intermediate

Then they like, killed him in the movie. Man, that was awesome.

The Transformers: The Movie is in continuity with the cartoon series, occurring 20 years after the end of Season 2 (in the then-futuristic year of 2005). It was the single biggest turning point for the series, and remains controversial. The movie saw the introductions of Unicron, the Quintessons, and the Matrix of Leadership, all of which would play important roles in Season 3. It made radical changes to the show's cast, killing off many characters and introducing new ones—a shock to young viewers who were used to their heroes driving off into the sunset at the end of every adventure.

Despite its unconventional place in the cartoon canon, it remains the best-known representation of the cartoon series among fans.

Season 3

They didn't make any more cartoons after the movie. Yeah, the movie totally killed Transformers.

Season 3 transformed the whole premise of the show. Gone were the two teams stranded on Earth, along with many of the characters that composed those teams. In their place was a galaxy-spanning tale of battles on alien worlds. With the Autobots in firm control of Cybertron, the Decepticons, though still a threat, were somewhat reduced as villains; new enemies in the form of the Quintessons were introduced. Plots often centered on the ultra-powerful city-bots, Metroplex and Trypticon.

Season 3 has a mixed reputation. It contains some of the most mistake-laden episodes of the entire franchise ("Five Faces of Darkness", "Carnage in C Minor", the title sequence at right) most of which can be laid at the feet of AKOM. But some of its episodes are among the best as well, both in animation and scripting; "Dark Awakening", "Chaos", "Webworld", and "Dweller in the Depths" are all heavy fan favorites.

Late in Season 3, as in Season 2, the forerunners of the 1987 toy line were introduced: the Terrorcons, Technobots, and Throttlebots, and (very briefly) the cassettes Slugfest and Overkill. The season concluded with the resurrection of Optimus Prime, spurred on by a massive campaign on the part of fans, who were displeased by his death and subsequent "evil" resurrection.

Season 4

They kept making the toys? But weren't those like, the ones that couldn't transform or something?

According to David Wise, he was contacted by Sunbow Productions to write a five-part series finale which would introduce a deluge of new characters while simultaneously tying up the series. Shortly after Wise completed the five-episode outline, however, a budget cutback reduced it to a three-parter. This created a massive headache for the writer, who did the math and claimed that they'd be introducing a new character just about every 28 or 90 seconds.^[3] Dan Gilvezan also expressed his confusion at the truncated season, as 98 episodes didn't fit into a syndicated weekday broadcast schedule (which needed to be divisible by 5).^[4]

In the end, 25 brand new Transformers and 21 Nebulans, that's 46 new characters in all, were introduced across these final three episodes. Well, that's assuming you count Fortress Maximus and Scorponok as separate characters from Cerebros and Zarak... and Punch and Counterpunch as one guy.

While the previous three seasons each featured fully original title sequences, season 4's title sequence was more economically cobbled together. By combining animation taken from toy commercials (produced by Toei) and animation from the season 3 title sequence (produced by AKOM), they crafted a "new" title sequence (which used the season 3 rendition of the theme song). A clever ploy, though the difference in animation quality and art style between segments produced by Toei and AKOM leads to the footage blending rather poorly.

1. "The Rebirth, Part 1"
2. "The Rebirth, Part 2"
3. "The Rebirth, Part 3"

Season 5

Man, I wish they'd made a fifth season. It would've been awesome.

Season 5 did not feature any new episodes, but rather consisted of 15 episodes from the previous seasons and The Transformers: The Movie broken up into five episodes, for a total of 20 episodes. A music video for "The Touch" was also used to fill time.

In addition to a new title sequence and new commercial bumpers, new bookending segments were added to each episode. These segments featured an animatronic/stop-motion puppet of Powermaster Optimus Prime meeting regularly with a live-action human named Tommy Kennedy to tell him old Transformers stories. While the stories were old, the bookending segments took place in a contemporary time with Optimus regularly name dropping characters who never appeared in the older episodes, but were currently available on store shelves.

Production of the segments fell under Tim Speidel, a producer for Griffin Bacal (the New York-based advertising company which co-developed The Transformers).^[5] The Optimus Prime puppet was operated by Marty Robinson, a famous puppeteer best known for his work on Sesame Street providing the mouthplate movement and on-set voice, with an assistant performing the head turns. Filming of these segments was completed in one week during June, 1988, at Silver Cup Studios in Queens, New York. Powermaster Optimus Prime was made of wood and very fragile in certain areas, requiring actor Jason Jansen to watch his step while filming. Apparently, at one point a camera rig fell over onto the wooden Optimus Prime hand right where Jansen would have been sitting if he hadn't been eating a bagel at the craft services table. A crane operator who was strapped to the camera wasn't so fortunate and "rode" the falling equipment down for 40 feet.^[6]

The Sci-Fi Channel

They totally never showed the old episodes on TV again after G1.

From 1992 to 1997, the Sci-Fi Channel rotated reruns of The Transformers in and out of their early morning cartoon programming blocks, Cartoon Quest and Animation Station. These broadcasts used a unique version of the title sequence, which featured the season 2 animation set to the season 3 rendition of the theme song.

Unfortunately, due to longer commercial slots, the decision was made to edit the cartoon down. Sometimes this was done in a comparatively harmless fashion, but other times the flow of scenes and even the plot suffered. In one of the most notorious edits, two lines from Grapple and Inferno in "Masquerade" ended up smooshed into a single nonsensical jumble: "Time to add fire torobably hate myself in the morning, but—"

Unusually, the Sci-Fi Channel network run overlapped with the Generation 2 syndication run; at one point the Sci-Fi Channel even ran a contest where kids could submit postcards to win G2 toys.

Generation 2

The reason G2 sucked is they didn't even have a show. There was like, nothing on.

Between 1993 and 1995, a total of 52 select episodes of The Transformers were repackaged as a new program: The Transformers: Generation 2. The episodes featured new transitioning segments via the Cybernet Space Cube as well as a new title sequence.

For further information, see: Transformers: Generation 2 (cartoon)

The Hub Network/Discovery Family

Nope. Definitely never showed the old episodes again.

Beginning in October 2010, The Transformers made its return to American television via The Hub Network, a cable network jointly owned by Hasbro. The Transformers episodes were aired uncut and unaltered for the first time since their original broadcast (though the on-demand version of "Heavy Metal War" inexplicably used the infamous Kid Rhino version with unfinished animation). However, for scheduling and advertising purposes, the series was rebranded The Transformers: Generation 1. This kept it from potentially getting confused with the many other Transformers cartoons which were airing simultaneously on the network. Despite this, nothing was done to alter the opening credits, which still say The Transformers.

Incidentally, it also means that exactly the same episodes of The Transformers have been rebranded as "Generation 1" and "Generation 2"... and in reverse order, at that.

The Transformers aired on the Huboom! programming block in all its various forms (changing hosts, time slots and theme every couple of years). New commercial segments frequently reworked animation from old episodes of The Transformers, combining them with new voice overs (often from the original cast) to create humorous situations. Lo and behold, we now have Megatron bickering with Cobra Commander.

In October 2014, The Hub Network was replaced with Discovery Family and reruns were moved to the early-morning slot, as Discovery Communications began programming evenings on the channel.

At the beginning of 2017, however, the series was removed from the lineup entirely, only to return without warning around mid 2020, airing on weekdays at 3 AM, where the Transformers and G.I. Joe series have mainly been banished to due to Discovery Family's main demographic skewing female (hence why Robots in Disguise and Cyberverse were aired on Cartoon Network).

International Releases

Japanese release

In Japan, The Transformers was broken apart into 2 separately branded shows:

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers

Japanese Generation 1 continuity Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers » Toyline Cartoons Commercials Comics Story pages Video games

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers (戦え! 超ロボット生命体 トランスフォーマー, Tatakae! Chō Robotto Seimeitai Transformers) began airing in 1985, consisting of the North American season 1 and 2 episodes. Although 2 episodes out of the original 65 were cut ("Attack of the Autobots" and "Day of the Machines"), an additional 9 clip shows were created, composed entirely of re-used footage taken from various episodes, bringing the total number of Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers episodes to 72. The 2 missing episodes were later dubbed in 1990 and released straight-to-video, then retroactively added to the series episode list, boosting its official count to 74 episodes.

† Added clip show
† Direct-to-video

The broadcast order of the series was significantly reworked, with most of the episodes featuring Skyfire being pushed to the end of the run (presumably owing the character's shaky status as a Bandai toy in Japan). Contrary to what would be sensible, this did not involve correcting any of the chronological errors present in the original order; in fact, it even created some new ones. The pack-in booklet included with the LaserDisc and DVD sets from Pioneer features a "narrative viewing order" list.

Perhaps most notoriously, the episodes were edited before their broadcast in Japan. These edits were made not for content, but for length so that the show could accommodate longer opening and ending sequences. The combined length of the U.S. opening and ending sequences was about 1 minute and 10 seconds. The combined length of the Japanese opening and ending sequences, however, was about 2 minutes and 20 seconds. This resulted in roughly 1 minute and 10 seconds of content being cut from every single episode.

The translation in terms of script and story was faithful in regards to the original English version (the same cannot be said of the translations of Beast Wars and onward). However, the dub was at times rushed and had its own unique errors, primarily in terms of matching the right voices and names to the characters on screen. Some examples of character identification mistakes include "More than Meets the Eye, Part 3", in which it is Thundercracker who requests permission to teleport and attack Ironhide, and "Divide and Conquer", where Starscream voices the teleporting Seeker rather than Skywarp (as a result, to Japanese viewers, it appears as though teleportation is a trait inherent in all Seekers and not just Skywarp). One of the worst examples would come in "The Master Builders", as Megatron orders Blitzwing into battle, though the jet is clearly Ramjet (Ramjet is even dubbed with Blitzwing's voice).

It is entirely possible that the translation for the series was done using preliminary scripts rather than the finished versions, resulting in the additional errors. The Japanese dub began airing 8 months after the American broadcast of the series and very quickly caught up with the United States. As a matter of fact, the episodes "Autobot Spike" and "Changing Gears" premiered in Japan several weeks before they aired in the US! Other evidence indicating translation was made from draft scripts can be seen in "Trans-Europe Express", where the Pearl of Bahoudin is referred to as the "Pearl of Jehuddin", the name it carried in preliminary scripts but changed for the final version.

Although primary characters such as Megatron, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, etc., had consistent actors, the dub was extremely loose in terms of casting its secondary characters. Bluestreak, for example, had no less than seven different actors portray him over the course of the series (though Kōki Kataoka is typically credited as his "standard" voice actor). By the looks of things, if a secondary character only received one or two lines in a given episode, then whatever actor was on hand in the studio would be called in to play them, consistency be damned.

Additionally, the Japanese dub of Transformers was geared toward a younger audience than the original English version. While the dialogue and stories remained faithful in localization, the episodes received extensive narration from Issei Masamune. The additional narration was relentless to the point of becoming play-by-play commentary. The narrator would constantly describe what was happening on screen, summarize scenes and dialogue immediately after they were seen or spoken, and generally just provide needless asides such as "And then!" "Suddenly!" and "Meanwhile!" This was done to help the younger Japanese viewers follow along with the story, though later domestically produced Japanese Transformers animation would not include such excessive narration.

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers aired on various local Nihon TV affiliates and as a result, some episodes were preempted in some areas ("The Golden Lagoon", for example, only aired in the Kansai region, while "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide" aired in every region but the Kansai region). The opening theme was "TRANSFORMER" by Satoko Shimonari and the ending theme was "Peace Again" also by Shimonari. The Japanese dubs sound direction was provided by Shōzō Tajima.

Scramble City

An additional OVA special was produced as a spin-off of Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers. The special was released to home video in April 1986, placing it somewhere between the Japanese broadcast of "Kremzeek!" and "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1." Primarily concerned with introducing the toys in its accompanying subline, the special included the Japanese screen debuts of the four 1986 combiner teams (the titular Scrambles), Metroplex and Trypticon (the titular cities), and Ultra Magnus and Galvatron, here dubbed "City Commanders."

For further information, see: Scramble City: Mobilization

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010

Japanese Generation 1 continuity « Transformers 2010 » Toyline Cartoon Commercials Story Pages Manga 1 Manga 2

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010 (戦え! 超ロボット生命体 トランスフォーマー 2010 Tatakae! Chō Robotto Seimeitai Transformers Ni-Zero-Ichi-Zero) began airing in 1986, consisting of the North American season 3 episodes. All 30 episodes were dubbed for Transformers 2010 and 2 additional clip episodes were produced, bringing the total to 32 episodes.

† Added clip show

As with Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, Transformers 2010 considerably reordered the sequence of episodes. However, rather than restore the narrative order (as the North American broadcast had jumbled up the story arcs), the Japanese broadcast actually made things worse. And as with Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, Pioneer's LaserDisc and DVD sets for Transformers 2010 include a "narrative viewing order" list in the pack-in booklet.

Transformers 2010 received the same editing treatment as its predecessor, losing scenes to make room for the longer title and credits sequences. Likewise, it received all the excessive narration and was prone to the same rotating cast members and character identification hiccups. In regards to the latter, it could become especially problematic when the narrator was the one misidentifying the characters (in "The Burden Hardest to Bear", the narrator mistakenly identifies Wildrider and Dead End as Runabout and Runamuck).

Again, as with Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, there is evidence the Transformers 2010 translation was done using draft scripts and not the finished versions. This often bled into promotional material, such as a rather infamous advertisement for "Starscream's Ghost" which featured Blitzwing as the main character rather than Octane (as it was written in early drafts of the episode, but changed by the final version).

In addition to the extensive narration to hold the viewer's hand, Transformers 2010 also received brand new text captions which had not been often utilized in Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers. These captions would appear on screen to designate locations (be they planets, countries or cities) and to identify new characters whenever they first appeared (including both names and functions). The Secret Files of Teletraan II segments were also reworked; some were dubbed, some were dropped and some brand new ones exclusive to Transformers 2010 were created.

The release of The Transformers: The Movie was delayed in Japan and was not available between Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers and Transformers 2010. To help viewers acclimate to the new status quo, explanatory material was published in the pages of TV Magazine, describing the events of The Movie as the "Unicron War" and summarizing vital events from the film (such as Optimus Prime's death, Rodimus Prime's ascension and Megatron's upgrade into Galvatron). The Movie would eventually be released straight-to-video in 1989.

Like Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, Transformers 2010 was broadcast on various local Nihon TV affiliates, resulting in preemptions in certain areas ("The Face of the Nijika" for example). The opening theme was "Transformer 2010" by Shō Hirose and the ending theme was "What's You" also by Hirose.

Transformers: The Rebirth

The season 4 episodes of The Transformers were not originally broadcast in Japan, with Takara instead electing to produce a brand new series to continue the story of their animated continuity: The Headmasters. However, all 3 episodes were eventually released straight-to-video in 1996 as Transformers: The Rebirth (トランスフォーマー ザ・リバース). The episodes received their much-belated Japanese television broadcast in 2007 on Cartoon Network Japan.

To differentiate "The Rebirth" from the Japanese continuity of Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, the episodes were released under the American The Transformers branding. This included using the American title sequence and commercial bumpers (undubbed). To further this distinction, the dub used English-language names and terminology for the most part ("Hot Rod" was not changed to "Hot Rodimus" and "Kup" was not changed to "Cher", for example) while maintaining the Japanese-exclusive names for the more high-profile characters ("Convoy" was not changed to "Optimus Prime", for example).

Inconsistencies in translation choices aside, there were some bizarre errors in the dub; names attributed to characters or groups that existed in neither the English or Japanese versions. Scorponok is referred to as "Scorpion", the Throttlebots are referred to as the "Slot Robots", and in the Japanese subtitles of the English version, the Technobots are referred to as the "Tech Robots". The fact booklet (written by Hirofumi Ichikawa) included with the Transformers 2010 DVD set specifically cites these instances as translation errors and not deliberate changes.

Only three actors from Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers and Transformers 2010 returned to voice their respective characters: Tesshō Genda (Optimus Prime), Seizō Katō (Galvatron) and Issei Masamune (narrator). Every other cast member was replaced with a soundalike, to varying degrees of success. The voice direction for these episodes was conducted by Shōzō Tajima.

Brazilian release

In Brazil, most of the show was dubbed at the Herbert Richers studio in Rio de Janeiro, the most prominent Brazilian dubbing studio of the 20th century, and began airing in 1986 on Rede Globo in a weekly Sunday schedule, being later moved to weekdays with broadcasts from Monday through Friday. Due to how centralized the dubbing scene was at the time, most of the voice actors in The Transformers were the same people who dubbed basically every single movie and television series of the 1980s. Just like in the Japanese dub, however, only some of the main characters featured consistent voice actors for most of their episodes, with even Optimus himself getting his voice replaced halfway through the series, while everyone else got dubbed by whatever actors were available at the studio at any given time.

Regardless of that, the 80s dub is beloved by most fans who grew up with it and is considered one of the best cartoon dubs of its era. Most of the time, the characters were given very suiting voices that were even modulated to sound "robotic" just like in the American version, though they didn't had the means to recreate Soundwave's highly stylized voice pattern. As for localization, different from the comics which changed the name of almost every character to a Portuguese word, the cartoon kept most names intact with just a few exceptions; most famously, the Stunticons are referred to as the "Acrobaticons", and Optimus Prime is always called "Leader Optimus" or simply "Leader" whenever someone calls him "Prime" in the original. So yes, even Megatron calls him "Leader" all the time!

For unclear reasons, this dub (and subsequently the broadcast) of the show skipped the "More than Meets the Eye" miniseries and began with "Transport to Oblivion"; years later, the miniseries would be dubbed by ETC Filmes, a small studio located in São Paulo, and released on DVD by NBO Entertainment. They also released their own dub of "The Autobot Run", an episode inexplicably skipped by Herbert Richers. Unfortunately, this dub did a very poor job at casting its voice actors, giving most characters very unfitting voices that were left completely unmodulated; in a particularly egregious case, Optimus and Megatron are made to sound just like two regular thirty-something guys trying their best to overact each and every line of dialogue given to them.

Despite having been handled by two different studios over the years, the show was still left incomplete as far as anyone in the fandom could tell; specifically, the episodes "Kremzeek!", "Aerial Assault", "Starscream's Ghost" and everything between "Call of the Primitives" and "The Rebirth, Part 3" are not known to have ever been released in the country. Whether they were in fact never dubbed, were dubbed but never got to air, or did actually get aired but ended up being lost to time is still a mystery, though the first alternative seems to be the most plausible. Due to how haphazard dubs were made back then, it's possible that Herbert Richers skipped those episodes by pure accident and then never got to finish the rest of the show simply due to a lack of incentive. Similarly, it's possible ETC Filmes was planning on dubbing the remaining episodes just like they did with "The Autobot Run", but had their DVD releases cancelled before they could get to them. Because of this, the Brazilian release of the show is believed to have ended with the episode "Money is Everything".

As is also the case with the 1986 movie, official home releases of the Brazilian dubs are extremely hard to find, with most episodes from season 2 onwards having never been released in home media to begin with. In fact, it's very likely that those episodes have only survived to this day thanks to TV recordings done by fans back when the show was still on air. As a result of this carelessness on the part of the distributors, the unknown state of preservation of the original recordings and the potential rights issues that may very well entangle them, it's effectively impossible for them to be reused in any way, meaning that an entirely new dub would necessarily have to be created from the ground up before the show could ever see another release for Brazilian audiences again.

Latin America

The shows aired in at least Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Colombia. The dub was recorded at Magnum Estudios in Los Angeles California, using Spanish speaking expatriates (including a number of up-and-coming Mexican voice actors).

Home video releases

Main article: The Transformers (cartoon)/home video

Notes

The Transformers will return once they have found their definite article.

No universe is safe from being Hectored.

• Both the toyline and the Marvel comic used a definite article for their title, thus making the franchise's official name "The Transformers" during its early years. At first sight, the cartoon appears to be the odd one out: The opening credits for all four seasons simply render the show's name as "Transformers", without "The"... except for the end of the season 2 opening credits. In addition, the commercial bumpers do use the definite article consistently. We have therefore chosen to use the version that matches both the toy line and the comic for the sake of consistency.
• While answering a letter from a fan in the letters page to Issue #146, the Grimlock from the UK Marvel Comics revealed that he totally knows all about The Transformers cartoon series. He claims the Marvel Comics depict the events as they actually happened and the cartoon is fictional.
• Looking at the production codes of the series reveals some choice tidbits:
  • The series pilot, "More than Meets the Eye", was produced under a set of different production codes, as it was created before Transformers was expanded to become an ongoing series. After the pilot, the episode production numbers begin afresh with "700-01" ("Transport to Oblivion"), and proceeded in order until the end of the first season, with "700-13" ("Heavy Metal War"). At the beginning of the second season, it seems the production codes were adjusted to account for the three parts of "More than Meets the Eye", but someone's math was off by a digit: the first episode of the season, "Autobot Spike," was "700-16," instead of "700-17." This out-by-one numbering continued through the entire second season, ending with the 65th episode, "B.O.T.", as "700-64."
  • The original intention of season 3 was to correct this numbering error and begin with "700-66," but after several episodes had moved into production, the decision was made to amend the numbering of the season and start with "700-86"—internal Sunbow documentation available on the Metrodome DVD release of the series shows each episode of "Five Faces of Darkness" numbered 700-66 through -70, crossed out and renamed 700-86 through -90 by hand, and a model sheet for Beta identified "Forever Is a Long Time Coming" as episode "700-74," when its finalized production number was "700-94". Presumably, this was done in reference to the year, 1986, to mark a new "era" for the series now that new writers and story editors were in charge of production.
  • There is no episode with production code 700–109. "Only Human" was 700–108, while "Grimlock's New Brain" was 700–110; many online sources list "Money Is Everything" as episode 700-109 and instead omit 700–111, but Sunbow documentation consistently proves this incorrect. A piece of internal correspondence from Marvel Productions^[7] reveals that this is because "The Face of the Nijika" was originally episode 109, but it was "put on hold" by Hasbro for unknown reasons, and when revised, was given the new number of 700–113.
• Twelve episodes were released as audio adventures by the German company Karussell Musik und Video (featuring dialogue from the German dub of the cartoon by Polyband with new background music from Karussell's own library), a common practice at the time.
• Cartoon writers are a sneaky lot, and quietly put references to G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, another show they were working on at the same time, into The Transformers. Daina of the Soviet Oktober Guard ("Prime Target"), Flint as Marissa Faireborn's dad ("The Killing Jar"), and an elderly Cobra Commander ("Only Human") all appear. We also see journalist Hector Ramirez ("Prime Target"), who appeared in almost everything Hasbro and Sunbow were doing at the time.

External links

• Complete The Transformers playlist on YouTube
• 1985 net.comics review
• Aaron Marsh's Transformers Episode Guide — Including variants and repackagings
• Transformers on Facebook - Includes information on Matrix of Leadership Box Set
• Scripts and storyboards for Season 1 and 2 at the Sunbow and Marvel archive
• Scripts and other material from Season 3 at the Sunbow and Marvel archive

References