When Hasbro debuted its Transformers toy line in 1984, the company followed the same playbook that had brought its G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero such explosive success over the prior couple years. In addition to the toys themselves, the company promoted the brand across multiple media, most notably in comic books and a television cartoon series, both of which would prove incredibly popular. Revisiting it now, the latter is still a lot of fun.
As a testament to the durability of Transformers, new toys are still being made four decades later and a long-running live-action film series continues to crank out new installments, featuring the same lead voice actor who has played the role since 1984. The original cartoon is also available on multiple free streaming services, and I can tell you from experience as a parent, is still very capable of holding the attention of a kid today. One of my sons has turned into a Transformers fanatic, in large part due to falling in love with the show now popularly referred to as “Generation 1.”
| Title: | The Transformers |
| Season: | 1 |
| Episodes: | 1.01 – More Than Meets the Eye: Part 1 1.02 – More Than Meets the Eye: Part 2 1.03 – More Than Meets the Eye: Part 3 |
| Original Air Dates: | Sept. 17-19, 1984 |
| Watched On: | Roku Channel |
| Also Available On: | DVD PlutoTV Tubi |
Growing up in the 1980s, Hasbro ruled my childhood. As Transformers product hit retail, my first acquisition (the yellow race car called Sunstreaker) was just about the coolest toy I’d ever seen – and I was already fully devoted to G.I. Joe by that point. As fickle as I could be, dipping my toes into other toys from time to time (Masters of the Universe, M.A.S.K., Wheeled Warriors, and others), G.I. Joe and Transformers always remained my mainstays, occasionally swapping position for my affection, but neither ever leaving my playtime rotation. I bought the comics for both franchises every month and religiously watched the cartoons after school.
The Transformers premiered on television in September 1984 with a three-part miniseries called More Than Meets the Eye that introduced the concept: On the distant, mechanical world of Cybertron, robotic beings war for dominance. On the verge of defeat, the heroic Autobots led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) attempt to flee in a spacecraft, only to be chased by the evil Decepticons, led by Megatron (Frank Welker). An asteroid collision causes both ships to tumble off course until they crash on a primitive, unexplored planet that we know as Earth. After slumbering in hibernation for four million years, both factions are reawakened and must learn to navigate the complexities of a world now inhabited by billions of strange organic fleshbags.
This part of the story is told in very expedited fashion, efficiently (but surprisingly coherently) condensed into the opening nine minutes of the first episode. From that point, Megatron hatches a plan to plunder Earth of all its energy resources so that he may return home and re-conquer Cybertron, while the Autobots fight to stop him and protect the planet’s native inhabitants from the Decepticon menace.
The More Than Meets the Eye three-parter was produced as a pilot to test the viability of an ongoing cartoon. By the end of the third episode, the plot is resolved sufficiently in such a way that the story could have ended there had it not been successful. However, both Hasbro and animation studio Sunbow Productions were so confident with the results that they made an early decision to push forward with an additional thirteen episodes. The More Than Meets the Eye miniseries aired on back-to-back weekday afternoons from a Monday to a Wednesday in September. Starting two weeks later in October, subsequent episodes ran weekly on Saturday mornings for the rest of the first season. The show was such a big hit that its second season in 1985 was expanded to a much larger episode count (49 in all) and moved into daily weekday afternoon syndication.
Unlike G.I. Joe, most fans would probably agree that the Transformers cartoon was superior to its comic book and is generally considered the original narrative canon for the franchise. Mainly, that’s due to how colorful and endearing all the characters are portrayed. From the outset, each robot is established with a clearly-defined personality that allows viewers to not only tell them apart easily, but to bond with them emotionally. That’s an area where the Michael Bay live-action movies failed miserably, and it’s telling that pretty much the only immediately recognizable robot character in any of those is the one voiced by the same actor from the cartoon. Peter Cullen’s performance as Optimus Prime is so indelible that – even into his 80s now – the man feels irreplaceable as the character.
Equally fun is the petty rivalry between Megatron and his duplicitous second-in-command, Starscream (Chris Latta). Their relationship and endless bickering are some of the biggest delights in the series.
The show’s plotting is silly and frequently nonsensical, but in fun ways. The premise of “Robots in Disguise” is almost immediately undercut when the robots’ identities are revealed to everyone on Earth. A major storyline in these episodes involves the “ruby crystals of Burma,” which can inexplicably provide a powerful energy source and are somehow mined from the same generic desert location where the most of the action is already set, as if Burma (the Southeast Asian country now called Myanmar) were part of California.
Stuff like that may not make any logical sense, but doesn’t really need to. The stories are entertaining regardless, supported by lots of laser-blasting action and the ingenious gimmick of robots that can transform into vehicles.
The Transformers cartoon was a significant component of my childhood and I’m happy to revisit it from time to time. Thankfully, unlike some kids’ programming from the era, this one holds up and remains a joy to watch today. I’ve had a great time sharing it with my son.
The theme song is also still pretty awesome.
Video Streaming
The Transformers animated series was released on DVD by Rhino Entertainment a couple times, first in compilations of random episodes and later (in 2002) in the form of complete season box sets. I know that I used to own a copy of at least the first season, which I had assumed was still in my possession. However, when I look through my disc collection now, it seems to be missing. I apparently even removed the entry for it from my DVDProfiler catalog database at some point, so that must have been a conscious decision. This vexes me quite a bit, as I don’t remember selling it, and it’s the sort of thing I’d normally hold onto. Nevertheless, it’s gone now. Without a physical copy, I had to resort to watching the show on streaming.
The series streams free with ads on Tubi, The Roku Channel, and PlutoTV. I made the mistake of going to Tubi first, and the show looks awful there. I knew that the episodes would be upconverted from standard-definition, but whatever process Tubi used in this case results in a basically unwatchable mess. Every single line in the animation is plagued by aliasing artifacts. Solid surfaces are also overrun with ugly video noise.
Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to check the same episodes on The Roku Channel, and found them significantly more stable there. Magnify the following comparison as large as you can on your screen and look at the horrible jaggies all over Bumblebee’s face and body. Literally every scene in every episode has that problem on Tubi, and it looks even worse in motion than it does in a still frame. (Click the links in the caption to enlarge these screencap images to full size.)
Meanwhile, the Roku Channel stream has cleaner lines and far less noise in the 4:3 image. A quick check of PlutoTV looks pretty comparable to Roku. If your streaming devices support those services, I would recommend prioritizing either of them over Tubi in this case.
From my recollection, the Rhino “remastered” DVDs had a significant number of issues with dirt and scratches in the image, and occasional errors such as footage appearing photographically flipped or being edited out of proper order. Without being able to compare directly, my assumption is that all the streaming copies come from the same source used for DVD. Most episodes have quite a bit of physical damage on the film elements. While that can be distracting at times, they’re watchable overall (aside from the problems specific to Tubi).
As far as being upconverted from standard-definition, the animation in this series never had a tremendous amount of detail in the artwork to start. A true HD (much less 4K) remaster might benefit a little from the higher resolution, but would probably just wind up looking a lot grainier, which can be a mixed blessing. I certainly wouldn’t claim this is the best the episodes can look, but, again, they’re watchable enough.
The Transformers was originally broadcast with mono audio in the 1980s. The Rhino DVDs featured remixed 5.1 soundtracks that replaced many of the original sound effects with (sometimes inappropriate) new substitutes. On streaming, all episodes are encoded in Dolby 2.0 format, presumably downmixed from the 5.1 versions. The audio remains largely center-focused, with a little bleed to the sides and surrounds. Levels are all over the place; many sound effects and music cues are annoyingly loud while others are barely audible. Personally, I’m willing to cut an old TV cartoon like this a lot of slack, and the imperfect soundtrack didn’t overly bother me.
The series was always built with natural commercial break points, so streaming with ads shouldn’t be too much of a nuisance, either.
Related
- TV
- Movies
- Reading
The Video File Blog 
‘One of my sons has turned into a Transformers fanatic, in large part due to falling in love with the show now popularly referred to as “Generation 1.”’
This must make you so happy. Parenting done right.
Hope my son will one day appreciate ‘BTTF’ or ‘The Goonies’.
LikeLike
I was definitely more of a Masters of the Universe and Voltron kid but I did love me some Transformers. We could never afford the really cool robots (on occasion we’d get a pricier one). My first ever Transformer toy was Huffer, a little orange truck. I still own Grimlock, which my grandpa bought for me. In the summer of 85 we took a trip to New York and visited a Toys R Us and my dad bought me Optimus Prime. That was pretty awesome. I used to love the illustrations of the robots on the packaging. As far as the series goes, I’ve seen a lot of episodes but I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen all of them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m surprised you weren’t much of a fan of the original comics, Josh. I remember those stories better than I do the cartoons, especially the first books with Ratchet as the only Autobot survivor. It gave me some new respect for Shockwave by making him much more ruthless in the comics than he appeared on the show.
I tried finding certain episodes online, but I struck out when the show was on another streaming platform (can’t remember which one). There were two episodes featuring a traditional “duel” between Megatron and Optimus where the loser has to leave Earth with his faction. Obviously, the Decepticons pull some shenanigans to win the duel. I remember loving those episodes as a kid and the image of Megatron emanating heat while addressing the ‘Cons after his plan works has stuck with me through the decades.
If anyone knows the name of them, I’d be much obliged if you reached out with the titles.
LikeLike
I read the comic when it was new and liked the early issues, but (as I recall) it started getting dumb with a whole bunch of issues about a human supervillain called Circuit Breaker who was incredibly lame. Roping Spider-Man into the Transformers universe for one issue was also a silly idea. When they killed off Optimus Prime and brought him back to life inside a video game, I gave up.
I’d kind of like to re-read those issues to see if my opinion would change with time, but I sold off all the comics ages ago. I looked into getting Trade Paperbacks, but they’re all out of print and super-expensive now.
With the news that Robert Kirkman has taken over the licenses and is launching new Transformers and G.I. Joe comics later this year, I’ll be curious to check them out and see what he does with them.
The cartoon season 1 episode “Heavy Metal War” sounds like the one you’re remembering. From the synopsis: “Megatron challenges Optimus to a battle in which the loser and his team are exiled from Earth forever.”
LikeLike
Was Circuit Breaker the broad who was paralyzed from a Transformer battle with like duct taped electrical circuits all over her body? She could fly and had enough juice in her batteries to fry a full sized Transformer while floating in midair? If memory serves, it was Wheeljack because he the audacity to thank her for helping him fight off a Decepticon. If that’s the same person, you are right; she was lame.
That being said, I did like the interwoven plotlines of Autobot groups on Earth and Cybertron. They introduced me to Blaster.
I picked up the first couple of issues of {I want to say) IDW’s run in the 2010s. They were pretty promising, but I couldn’t find copies of the following issues after the ones I got. I’m pretty sure my wedding shifted my focus away from my search.
I didn’t know Kirkman was taking over those franchises…sign me up as curious to see where he takes them. I’m just hoping he keeps Snake-Eyes’ origin story the same; it might have been one of the coolest parts of his character.
LikeLike
Yeah, that was Circuit Breaker. I never read the IDW comics.
The Kirkman news just broke the other day. He’s making a shared universe thing between Transformers, G.I. Joe, and a new original property called Void Rivals that actually launches today. Reportedly, the crossovers won’t happen until later this year, when a couple of standalone G.I. Joe titles (and presumably something for Transformers) will also premiere.
https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/transformers-will-return-to-comic-books-next-week-in-images-void-rivals-1/47756/
https://tformers.com/void-rivals-new-series-with-transformers-gi-joe-from-image-comics-skybound-revealed/50016/news.html
LikeLike
Ohh…and thanks for giving me the title of the episodes. Much appreciated.
LikeLiked by 1 person