On Monday, September 17th, 1984 a new cartoon hit the airwaves. It was the pilot episode advertising for a new toy line of imported robots who shapeshifted into vehicles and common household objects, like cameras and German pistols used by super-spies: The Transformers. It was a collaboration between Hasbro, Griffin-Bacal Advertising’s Sunbow Animation, Marvel Entertainment (connected to Marvel Comics, who developed the preceding comic book as well as did the major world building and character creation for the series) designed to market toys licensed from Takara’s Micro Change and Diaclone toy lines.

Sunbow utilized a Japanese animation studio called Toei, who worked previously with Marvel Entertainment and TSR on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, and worked on mecha and sci-fi anime series and movies in Japan such as Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Grendizer, Captain Harlock, and Galaxy Express 999. Toei also animated the 1983 cartoon for G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero for Sunbow. Their anime-styled animation and attention to detail stood out against the standard of North American animation that leaned more toward the styles of Disney and Hanna-Barbara. With the deregulation of animated advertising of toy lines, the flood gates were opened in the mid-1980s for media tie-ins for toys ,which had been forbidden in previous decades and kept many of the aforementioned series from being imported to go along with the Shogun Warriors toys.

The writing team for The Transformers also embraced a more mature level of science fiction for their series than had been prevalent in earlier American cartoons. The stories and characters were not quite as detailed or nuanced as the Marvel comics, and simplified the story somewhat, but the bones of the story were the same. Two warring races of sentient alien robots from the planet Cybertron crashed on Earth four million years ago, and were awakened by a volcanic eruption in the Pacific Northwest. Where the comics focused heavily upon the Transformers’ struggle to find a fuel source they could use, the cartoon simplified that with the early introduction of Energon Cubes, which could be created from any energy source. This allowed them to integrate an educational aspect to the show that was required for the new “commercial-toons”. Previous shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and G. I. Joe used time set aside at the end of each episode to teach a moral or give a public service announcement. Transformers, however worked lessons in natural resources and geography into the cartoon, avoiding the more heavy-handed morals at the end of the episode. Later Transformers P.S.A.s were made for season 2, but they were featured separately and not as part of the show.

The pilot episode showed us a new world with living, sentient mechanical beings, not just piloted mechs, who could be injured when they fought. It was almost unheard of in previous cartoons to show injuries to the characters, but as the main characters were robots there was a lot more that they could slip past the censors. It opened the door for a franchise that is still going strong 39 years later, and shows no sign of slowing down. It is easily the flagship of Hasbro’s product lines, which is a far cry from where it was when the G1 series ended in North America. The toy line struggled after the cartoon stopped producing new material, and eventually ceased in the American markets for a few years, until Generation 2 and the Sci-Fi channel aired modified re-runs. The advent of Beast Wars (which had its 27th anniversary yesterday) finally brought new animation to the Western market, and Hasbro learned that toy sales are inextricably tied to animated marketing. There have been many new Transformers series and continuities since then, but all of the cartoons owe their roots to this first groundbreaking day, where millions of young eyes first gazed upon Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Bumblebee, and Hound among all of the others. The Sunbow cartoon also led to character models that varied quite a bit from the toys and original comic designs. Characters like Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn, and Bumblebee, among others, skewed far from their toys’ appearance with looks that eventually became the standard for those characters. It also began a controversy that we still deal with to this day when the color models for Rumble and Frenzy were switched in the cartoon to reflect the opposite color schemes to the comic and action figures.

Many of us have stuck with the franchise since that day, many more who outgrew it have returned, and still more who were born after its advent have discovered it and found a love for its characters, its stories, and even, at times, its camp. It’s a special day to all of us who call ourselves Transformers Fans, because this was the day that many of us started our obsession with these characters and toys. Happy birthday to the Transformers cartoon. I hope we can enjoy another 39 years, and much more, in the future.

Below I have linked the pilot episode, More Than Meets The Eye, Part 1, which Hasbro has graciously uploaded to Youtube. You can watch it in the window below. You can also follow this link to visit the Sunbow-Marvel Archive and read the original scripts and source material the developed the original cartoon.

You can also click the links below to discuss this and more with other friendly fans on the Axalon Underground Facebook Group and Discord

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