Cartoons - Transformers Wiki (2024)

Throughout the history of the Transformers brand, cartoons have been its primary advertising vehicle. After all, in most cases, it's free for the viewer to watch, and is more attention-catching while requiring less "work" on their part than reading a comic (In theory, at least). Almost every major Transformers toyline has had an accompanying cartoon attached to it.

This article focuses on the "major" pieces of animation. For a complete listing of every bit of Transformers cartoon media, see Category: Media.

A Brief-ish History of Transformers Cartoons

Pre-Transformers....

In the early 1980s, one of the many facets of President Ronald Reagan's "deregulation" push was a change in the rules of how television programs could be used to advertise products in the United States, especially to children. Previously, an entertainment program could not be about a product... yet a show could be "sponsored" (read: owned) by a company with a product to sell, have the company name and product plastered everywhere, and bring the show to a screeching halt to directly address the audience and ham-handedly try and sell them the company's product. Deregulation pretty much inverted things: an entertainment program could exist solely to be about a product, but it could not overtly, directly tell its audience to buy this product available from fine retailers near you and be the envy of the neighborhood. This prohibition even extended to the commercial breaks, meaning a commercial for the product in question could not air during the timeslot for the show made to advertise said toy.

It's kind of a toss-up as to which is the worse option, really. Overt browbeating, or sneaky suggestion? But toy companies were very keen on the latter....

(Japan, meanwhile, had no qualms about overt toy-shilling in kids' shows seemingly at any point.)

"Generation 1" (1984–1990)

Jumping on the brand-new "advertainment" bandwagon of the early 80s, Hasbro teamed up with Marvel Comics and Sunbow Productions to produce cartoons for multiple toylines. The Transformers aired in syndication, proving a tremendous success that pushed a lot of plastic. It even did so well as to get its own theatrical-release movie following the show's second season, though that didn't do so well either box-office-wise or audience-reception-wise. Turns out gruesomely killing off the characters kids were hoping to see kick butt on the big screen is kind of a bad move. A third season of the cartoon following the movie's events aired, but a reduced budget led to many (but not all) episodes having much cheaper, uglier animation (a distressingly common occurrence for any cartoon lasting a few seasons back then), finally petering out with a super-short three-episode "season 4" mini-series wrapping things up. Still, it outlasted most of its contemporaries. The cartoon would be repackaged and re-run in syndication for years afterwards, such as via the Generation 2 cartoon that added obnoxious CGI scene transitions to existing episodes, but there wouldn't be new Transformers animation in the US for nearly a decade.

In Japan, "Generation 1" Transformers lasted a little longer. Takara brought over the first two seasons in 1985, turning them into a single season under the title Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, and it was a runaway success. This was followed by season three, branded Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010... which completely bypassed The Movie. A short direct-to-video animation, Scramble City: Mobilization was produced as a sort-of bridger, but did not offer any insights as to the disappearance of faction leaders Optimus Prime and Megatron, who had been killed in The Movie. Following the end of the imported US run of cartoons (minus the final three-parter), Takara commissioned three more years of Transformers cartoons based on their take on the toyline, which diverged pretty heavily from what Hasbro was doing with the brand. These series were much less episodic-status-quo in nature, telling an ongoing story with ramping-up continuity, and timed character reveals with the releases of new toys (toy releases in Japan are much more tightly controlled by the manufacturer than is remotely possible in the US). But come the Nineties, Transformers was on the downslide there as well, managing only a single episode "Original Video Animation" before being replaced with the Brave series for Takara-toyline-shilling giant transforming/combining robot television.

By the way, the three Japanese TV series all received hilariously awful English-language dubs for Asian-market television, via Omni Productions.

Main articles:

• The Transformers
• Scramble City: Mobilization (Japan)
• The Transformers: The Movie
• Transformers: The Headmasters (Japan)
• Transformers: Super-God Masterforce (Japan)
• Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Victory (Japan)
• Transformers: Zone – "Enter the New Supreme Commander, Dai Atlas!" (Japan)

The Beast Era (1996–2001)

In the mid-Nineties, Transformers returned to television in the US as the radically different Beast Wars cartoon, a CG-animated series produced by the makers of the smash-hit ReBoot. Part of a ground-up re-envisioning of Transformers to save it from complete cancellation, the series was initially viewed with trepidation at best by the fandom (rabid hatred was not uncommon). But with a (generally) more mature story told with a mind towards its own internal continuity, as well as increased nods and links to the past, all told with state-of-the-art imagery that looked like nothing else on TV, Beast Wars nowadays is seen by many fans as one of the best Transformers cartoons ever made, if not the best, providing new concepts that are now held as fundamental to what Transformers is as a concept. But more importantly, it attracted an entirely new audience of kids for whom the Autobots and Decepticons meant nothing. This success translated to a huge spike in toy sales, more than saving Transformers from extinction and propelling it back to a top-contending toyline. The series would even win several awards, including an Emmy(!), and ran for three seasons, starting in syndication and eventually ending up on the popular Fox Kids weekday-afternoon/Saturday-morning block.

Takara brought the first season of Beast Wars to Japan in 1997, where it was a roaring success (ha ha), but the show's much slower production schedule meant Takara needed filler before the rest of the series would be ready to air. Two cel-animated series were ordered to advertise their own Beast Wars sequel series. These shows were much lighter and "kiddy" in tone than Beast Wars (which had also gotten a supremely jokey Japanese dub), and the animation quality was... not good. The fact that many toys were considered far too difficult for the intended age group to properly transform hurt the series further, and Transformers was back in a slump. In 1999, Takara ported over seasons two and three of the Mainframe series as Beast Wars Metals, which are considered Beast Wars at its prime by much of the fandom... but the well had already been truly poisoned, and Metals couldn't salvage the ratings and sales.

Back in the US, Beast Wars was followed up with a direct sequel, Beast Machines, which boasted a much improved level of CG animation, but its darker, grimmer tone proved to be a bit of a sour note with audiences. The cartoon was plotted out with a definite, conclusive end to the story in season two, and its intended sequel series, Transtech, was shelved in its earliest stages of development. Later comics would follow up on these events, but as far as television is concerned, this was the end of the original Transformers cartoon timeline in the US. Takara would delay its airing of Beast Machines for four years, and then gave it only a limited release. In the meantime, in 2000, Takara chose to reboot Transformers with an all-new series.

Main articles:

• Beast Wars: Transformers
• Beast Wars II: Super Lifeform Transformers (Japan)
• Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Neo (Japan)
• Beast Machines: Transformers

Car Robots / Robots in Disguise (2000–2002)

With the "Beast" shows in a downward spiral of ratings and toy sales, Takara tried to salvage the brand for the new millennium with Car Robots, a new series starring modern-vehicle Autobots with beast-bot Predacons, set in the modern age. The series was originally rather vague on its ties to previous continuity, starring an entirely new cast of characters, likely to try and keep as much distance from the prior failed series as possible. Unfortunately, the ploy didn't work, and for many of the same reasons, including a disconnect between the very young age group the cartoon was aimed at and the complexity of the toys it was advertising. Car Robots didn't do well in the ratings, and the toy sales similarly were disappointing.

Both Hasbro and Takara saw this as a time to re-work just what they were doing with Transformers, and began to coordinate on a new, unified version of the brand. In the interim, Hasbro ported the series over as Robots in Disguise in 2001, airing on Fox Kids six days a week... where it would do considerably better than it did in Japan, both in ratings and in toy sales. The dub was headed up by Saban Entertainment, and retained the original series' generally jokey nature, though now littered with references to prior Transformers series not present in the original script.

Takara, on the other hand, let Transformers lapse for a few years, shifting to the Dennō Bōkenki Webdiver giant robot series for kids, and focusing more on collector-oriented nostalgia lines for Transformers.

Main articles:

• Transformers: Robots in Disguise

The Unicron Trilogy (2002–2006)

Still riding the anime boom in the US, Hasbro and Takara coordinated on the next several years of mainline Transformers toys and cartoons, with Takara handling the cartoon duties. Now airing on Cartoon Network, Transformers: Armada was another continuity reboot, where the Autobots and Decepticons are summoned to Earth following the reawakening of a lost race of power-enhancing Transformers, the Mini-Cons. This was followed by two direct sequels, both out of Japan, and both mixing CG robots with hand-drawn humans. All three series ultimately focused on the monster planet Unicron, which would in time give the series the "Unicron Trilogy" monicker.

Unfortunately, the Unicron Trilogy cartoons stumbled out of the gate and never really recovered until the very end. Due to Cartoon Network's stringent scheduling demands, Armada and its direct-sequel follow-up Energon were rushed to air in the US with unfinished animation (not that the "finished" animation later aired in Japan was really any improvement, reportedly being animated by a company that put in the lowest bid for the work) and atrociously quick-and-dirty dubbing, with there sometimes being a mere 24 hours between "get the untranslated script from Japan" and "the voice actors are in the booth to record now". None of this was helped with storylines that meandered aimlessly for several episodes. Energon, in particular, featured terrible CGI animation that could be almost indecipherable at points, actually ran out of story halfway through its run, and its English dub was extremely poorly translated into English with mediocre "just get it out the door" acting despite having a cast of tried-and-true voice actor veterans.

The final series, Cybertron, fared better than its predecessors, with higher production values and overall better artistic direction, a better-plotted-out story more broken up into distinct arcs (though not without some slog within said arcs). The English version benefitted from a more relaxed timeframe for both writing and recording the dub, thanks to the show airing in Japan first; this extra writing time also proved beneficial as the original Japanese version (called Galaxy Force) was not originally written to be a direct follow-up to Energon! (Takara would later retcon this.) Which meant some sometimes-clunky work to weave it back into its intended place as the third show in a trilogy, with ancillary media adding more ties and explanations. But despite the quality upswing, the damage had already been done. Despite the cartoons' issues, toy sales were still steady, and Armada sold especially well on the strength of its gimmicks and the popularity of the tiny Mini-Cons. But anime no longer packed the punch it used to, becoming more and more mainstream in the west, and Hasbro was ready to change gears.

This also marked the end of Takara (now TakaraTomy following a merger) being the company to lead the direction of Transformers television animation.

Main articles:

• Transformers: Armada
• Transformers: Energon
• Transformers: Cybertron

Transformers Animated (2007–2010)

Hasbro and Takara worked together with Cartoon Network to co-develop the next series, Transformers Animated, seeing the Autobots and Decepticons heavily re-imagined in the style of action-adventure cartoons like Teen Titans, a deliberate shift away from the look of the big live-action movie also coming out in 2007. Many people who worked on Teen Titans in particular coordinated with Hasbro and Takara's crews on the character designs, resulting in toys that matched their animated counterparts to an astounding degree. Like with Beast Wars, the initial response was far from favorable, but once again, the turnaround was swift and Animated remains a favorite series for many fans to this day. The show did well ratings-wise and toy-sales-wise, running three seasons with some early plans for a fourth season in the works, but friction over scheduling, and a general desire to have more control over their entertainment, would lead Hasbro to break ties with Cartoon Network and start anew.

Animated was brought to Japan in 2010(!), though heavily edited to allow for longer intro/outro segments, plus a live-action shameless toy commercial segment, plus a few episodes never aired at all.

Main articles:

• Transformers Animated

The "Aligned" series (2010–2020)

As part of a big push to become an "IP house" instead of just a mere toymaker following the runaway success of the Transformers movies, Hasbro joined with the Discovery Channel to form the Hub Network, a new family channel full of Hasbro-funded shows, Hasbro's back catalog of shows, and some actual new not-Hasbro-toy-shilling programming (some of which was actually really good). Naturally, the big name in its lineup was Transformers: Prime, the flagship of the new "Aligned" continuity, using state-of-the-art CG animation, with a style and tone that was heavily influenced by the movies, but with ample Animated influence to boot. The series premiered well before its accompanying toyline was released, as part of that whole "we're not just a toy shiller" drive. The series ran for three seasons, with a final TV movie event putting a "cap" on the whole thing.

Prime was brought to Japan, once again with a more jokey dub (why? when has that ever worked out for them?) but only its first two seasons. The show was also further edited to allow space for two additional overt toy-selling segments. Some of the third-season Beast Hunters toys were ported to Japan, but under the banner of the Triple Combination: Transformers Go! toyline, which also had a cartoon... but not on television. Instead, the Go! cartoon, a mix of CG with traditional animation, was released on single-episode DVDs packed in with two different boys' magazines in later 2013 through early 2014, and conspicuously focused on the toys unique to Go!.

Hasbro also introduced the Rescue Bots cartoon on Hub as well, as part of the re-launch of the Playskool-branded Transformers line for preschool kids. Amazingly, this series is set in the same continuity/timeline as the older-aimed Prime, though the fine details take a bit of "squint test" to work out. The series was a huge success both with its intended audience and older fans, thanks to its light, breezy tone, sense of humor and consistent writing quality, and lasted four very full seasons... even out-lasting "The Hub" itself, which rebranded to "Discovery Family" in 2014. In fact, Rescue Bots holds the record of any Transformers show for number of half-hour episodes produced.

With the Hub not panning out as Hasbro hoped ratings-wise, and Discovery Family now severely downplaying Hasbro content, Transformers moved back to Cartoon Network for the sequel series to Prime, Robots in Disguise (not to be confused with the 2001 series). Though produced by the same animation house, the series looks near-nothing like Prime, using bright cel-shaded CG with slightly lower frame-rate to make it look more hand-animated. On top of that, its story is far lighter in tone, aimed more at the 5-to-11-years-old audience, a sharp contrast to the often-grim Prime. Despite getting Cartoon Network's usual less-than-great timeslots for anything not produced in-house, Robots in Disguise lasted three seasons with a "season 2.5" mini-series as well. TakaraTomy brought Robots in Disguise to Japan as Transformers Adventure, this time nigh-simultaneously with the US release, and once again only aired the first two seasons (including "season 2.5")... though at least the show was originally written so each season-ending episode could also serve as a series-ender. Following this, it appears that TakaraTomy has given up on Transformers on normal television, as there's been no announcements of any new series, imported or original, since 2016.

By 2018, Hasbro was changing its strategy with Transformers, moving towards a "unified brand" presentation with a much more consistent design for its main cast across all media (at least, in the media it had more control of, AKA "not the live-action movies"), including rebooting both the cartoons and comics... with one exception. The new kids' series Rescue Bots Academy was a direct sequel to Rescue Bots from many of that series' main writers/producers, with many of the main characters from the prior series returning... but not their voice actors, because Academy did follow the relaunch suit by moving to a less-expensive production and non-union voice casting, as well as shortening the length of episodes to 11 minutes. In concession to the brand overhaul, previous characters like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were redesigned to line up with their concurrent Cyberverse iterations (see below).

Main articles:

• Transformers: Prime
• Transformers: Rescue Bots
• Triple Combination: Transformers Go! (Japan)
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
• Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy

Cyberverse (2018–present)

2018 saw Hasbro push for a "unified brand look", changing much of its toyline and media output visually to a more singular vision of the brand, as well as... less-costly animation production studios and voice-over. Thus, Hasbro rebooted the main "kids" series once again with the Cyberverse cartoon, a different cel-shaded CG series focusing on Bumblebee and making use of Hasbro's Generation 1-inspired "evergreen" character designs. On top of that, the series moved to an 11-minute format, following the trend in kids' media for shorter chunks of cartoon... plus near-simultaneous (and occasionally early) release online via the Cartoon Network site and YouTube, since the actual daytime Cartoon Network schedule is primarily reserved for in-house productions, leaving most "outside" programming to air in the buttcrack of the morning. In contrast to most other 11-minute shows, Cyberverse is heavily serialized, with the events of episodes flowing into one another to an extent not really seen since the end of the Unicron Trilogy. The show ultimately ran for three full seasons before concluding with a shortened fourth season released straight-to-web. While fan reception was lukewarm at first, many were ultimately won over by the show's repeated introduction of new and fan-favorite characters, as well as the compelling story arc featured in the show's back half. Cyberverse has since been imported to Japan and released exclusively via online outlets, though still not in full.

Meanwhile in China, the Cyberverse assets got used for an all-new television cartoon originally scheduled for 2020 (*ahem*) via China Central Television, My Nezha and Transformers, a sort of pseudo-crossover with the 2003 cartoon The Legend of Nezha. This series follows Xiaozha, a boy who is pulled through a portal to another world, as he teams up with the god Nezha and the Autobots in their fight against evil. After years spent in limbo, the series appears to finally be receiving a full release beginning in late 2024, though it currently remains ambiguous what ties it has to Cyberverse fiction outside of model re-use.

Main articles:

• Transformers: Cyberverse
• My Nezha and Transformers (China)

EarthSpark (2022–present)

During the later stages of Cyberverse's run, Hasbro acquired entertainment company Entertainment One, who took over production of all Transformers animation. Following the acquisition, eOne began collaborating with Nickelodeon on the next mainline Transformers series. (Given Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures share a parent company in Paramount Global, it's a bit surprising we didn't see this happen sooner.) The result of this collaboration was the EarthSpark cartoon, first announced in February 2021. EarthSpark is, in many ways, a sort of return to form for Transformers; it once again features 22-minute episodes, and returns humans to the forefront of the story after a prolonged absence from most Transformers media over the previous half-decade like Cyberverse, War for Cybertron Trilogy, and the 2019 IDW comic. Thanks to Nickelodeon directly co-producing, EarthSpark was also afforded a bigger budget than the last few cartoons, allowing for higher-quality CG animation and union voice acting for the first time in a Transformers cartoon since 2018, though a shakeup on the production side led to a largely different creative team and animation studio for its second season. Originally announced to air on Nickelodeon itself, the series was later confirmed to be premiering first on the Paramount+ streaming service in 2022, alongside airing on Nick. The show was brought over to Japan in late 2023, receiving the usual gag dub as well as returning to TV screens, though each episode was split into two 11-minute episodes for the Japanese broadcast.

Main articles:

• Transformers: EarthSpark

Miscellany

Of course, there are many "smaller" serialized cartoons in Transformers history, most of them either packed-in with toys or released through online outlets. For the most part, these are intended to advertise "side" lines rather than a "main" series, and almost never air on TV... but again, there are notable exceptions.

Possibly the most ambitious of these non-televised series is the Prime Wars Trilogy of short cartoons produced by Machinima, released between 2016 and 2018 based on the collector-aimed Generations toys. These sequential shorts were aimed at adult collectors, with darker storylines. While big on Facebook, the reception from the more dedicated fan-base, especially those who'd had years of "adult" Transformers content through IDW Publishing's widely-praised comics, was...considerably less than glowing, with complaints of stilted, lifeless animation, sub-par voice acting, and try-hard grimdark nonsensical plotting. A series based on the War for Cybertron Trilogy, helmed by the same showrunner and produced by Rooster Teeth, premiered on Netflix in July 2020, with two additional seasons following over the next year, and got pretty much the same reception as the prior trilogy. Netflix also premiered a comedy series based on the BotBots toyline in early 2022, which featured its own original story almost entirely separate from the traditional franchise mythos, and was generally well-received as a change of pace from the usual fare.

Main articles:

• Go-Bots
• Robotmasters (Japan)
• Transformers: Universe
• Transformers: Cyber Missions
• Construct-Bots
• How to Ride Your Dinobot
• Q-Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns (Japan)
• Transformers: Combiner Wars / Titans Return / Power of the Primes
• Transformers: Portal (Russia)
• Bumblebee's First Life on Earth (Japan)
• Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy
• Transformers: BotBots

• Numerous official stop motion videos:

• Transformers: Beast Wars Diorama Story (Japan)
• Kre-O Transformers
• BeCool (Japan)
• 3 Transformers (Japan)
• Transformers Holiday Food Fight!
• Transformers Stop Motion Netflix Anime
• The Transformers: The Movie 35th Anniversary Stop Motions
• Transformers Stop Motion Series

• Motion comics/storybooks:

• Kid Stuff VHS – Satellite of Doom / When Continents Collide / Jaws of Terror / Slaves of the Insecticons
• Transformers: Beginnings
• Sector 7 Adventures: The Battle at Half Dome