Trivia / Transformers: Generation 1

• Christmas Rushed: The Japanese release of the show was imported and dubbed in a rush, with preliminary or erroneously translated scripts being used (it was not as bad as what would resurface much later), which caused issues like characters being referred by the wrong name or having the wrong voice (the seekers to a even bigger degree than the US dub (due to Skywarp being miscolored like Starscream or Thundercracker in two separate episodes when requesting permission to teleport), and even Blitzwing got Ramjet's voice at one point). Several minor/semi-regular characters had completely different voices depending on episode (Bluestreak got hit the worst, with seven different voice actors used in the Japanese dub for him in total), in addition to a few episodes (Autobot Spike and Changing Gears) reaching Japan several weeks before their US broadcast.The third season got hit even worse, with even more gaffes in terms of referencing characters (the narrator at one point mistook Wildrider and Dead End as Runamuck and Runabout), but the most notable (and amusing) example is (again, as a result of preliminary scripts being used) the promo art◊ for the Episode "Starscream's ghost", featuring Blitzwing (who is nowhere to be seen in the actual episode, as Octane replaced him in the final version).
• Creator Backlash:
  • "Carbombya" (a heavily stereotyped Expy of Gaddafi-era Libya) offended Casey Kasem (the voice of Teletraan 1, Cliffjumper, who had survived the movie, and Bluestreak, whose fate was never divulged) so much that he left the show during the third season.
  • Donald F. Glut said he does not like the "half-hour commercials" he wrote in the 80s, this show included.
• Creator's Apathy: Writer Donald F. Glut had a pretty cynical view of working on the show, saying "We were not trying to create art, just get them done fast, and get paid" while adding that he doesn't think even his own work on the show was any good, nor did he like any of the characters.
• Creator's Favorite: While also partially due to wanting to sell the toys; The three episodes Mihan did for season 2 put the Constructicons as major characters, with the team factoring heavily on the plots of those episodes ("The Core" being a rather egregious example).
• Creator's Pest: Despite ironically writing over half of the episodes featuring him, David Wise disliked Omega Supreme, dismissing him as a "stupid character" based on a "completely illogical" toy^note Omega Supreme's toy is notorious for being entirely "partsforming"; you have to remove the toy's parts and reassemble them into the new mode. There really isn't any actual "transforming" going on.
• Dueling Shows: With Challenge of the GoBots, another cartoon about shape-shifting robots based on a toyline that even shared some voice actors with The Transformers (e.g.: Arthur Burghardt, Frank Welker, and Peter Cullen). Ironically, the GoBots franchise eventually became the intellectual property of Hasbro after they bought Tonka in 1991 and the two are now considered to exist in the same multiverse. Albeit with the Go-Bots universe being very, very distant from any known Transformersverse. The only GoBot who has any sort of impact at all is Bugbite, who has since become a Decepticon.
  • Granted, there is a big reason that Hasbro hasn't done much with the GoBots franchise- Bandai. When Hasbro purchased Tonka, they gained only partial ownership of the franchise. Bandai still owns the actual toys, meaning they also own the character models. While we've gotten a few nods as well as some recolored toys, Hasbro can't actually make any on-model GoBots toys for legal reasons. Interestingly, Bandai is releasing their own modern take on many of these characters with a new Machine Robo line in Japan, although being based on Revenge Of Chronos, they will not have the Hanna-Barbera faces.
• Executive Veto: Female Transformers were intended to be present from the franchise's start (with Bob Budiansky even presenting Ratchet as such), but Hasbro shot it down under the pretense that Transformers was a "boy toy", and "girl robots" weren't desired. This is the most likely reason why a toy version of G1 Arcee wasn't released until 2014, 28 years after she debuted.
  Bob: Well, I remember bringing up that question early on with Hasbro, "are any of these female?" And then I think Hasbro's attitude was, 'this is a boy toy. We don't wanna have, you know, girl robots.' So, I said, "OK, just want to clarify that."
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • Sort of - while Buzzsaw did make a few appearances, use of him was discouraged by the series bible (since Buzzsaw's toy was packed alongside Soundwave's, and so long as he was around Buzzsaw didn't need to be shilled as much as the other Mini-Cassettes). He got a bit more equal time alongside Laserbeak in the comics, at least until he was out of commission for a couple dozen issues.
  • Played straight with Reflector. The character was prominent in the first season, with a few speaking parts, but in the second season, he disappeared almost entirely, never mind the fact he only appeared in two issues of the Marvel Comic, where he was blatantly killed off very early in the going. He last appeared in the movie, and vanished without a trace shortly thereafter, leaving fans to believe he perished during Unicron's attack on Cybertron. This was mainly due to the fact his toy was not part of the initial 1984 offering, despite being in the cartoon. Hasbro had put the kibosh on releasing him because they believed a transforming camera was too boring. Nevertheless, he was a general retail item in Japan when the line was released there in 1985, and became a mail-away item in America in 1986.
  • This also happened (to some extent) with Jetfire, the Deluxe Insecticons and the Deluxe Vehicles. Due to their status as toys originating from companies other than Takara, they weren't to be used in fiction because Takara didn't want to give their competitor, Bandai, free advertising. The end result was that Jetfire was redesigned for the comic and cartoon (the latter renaming him "Skyfire"), while the Deluxe Insecticons/Vehicles were more or less gone entirely^note Venom did, however, appear in the semi-obscure Slaves of the Insecticons, and the UK version of the comic prominently featured the Deluxe Vehicles as members of the Wreckers. Chop Shop and Venom also appeared in said version's "Time Wars" epic. Omega Supreme and Sky Lynx were also from another company, in this case Tomy, though they did appear in the cartoon despite not getting Japanese releases; when Takara and Tomy merged in 2005, both were finally released in Japan as part of the Encore line of G1 reissues. Shockwave was also a non-Takara mold, though they did license the mold from ToyCo for release as Laserwave (Shockwave's Japanese name). That said, neither would show up in any of the followup anime that Takara would produce after their dub of Season 3.
• He Also Did:
  • Peter Chung served as a storyboard artist for the first two seasons and the movie.
  • Former Looney Tunes director and animator Norm McCabe was one of the series' most reoccurring animation and sequence directors, working on every season except the fourth, and the movie.
  • Masami Obari got his start on this series, designing and animating Optimus Prime's Transformation sequences (and other shots) for "More Than Meets The Eye, Part 3". He also claimed to have had a hand in the design of the Decepticon Space Cruiser (aka, The Nemesis). But to what degree has never been clarified.
  • Shinji Aramaki also did several character designs^note  Soundwave, his Cassettes and Reflector, to be specific. and created the concept for Perceptor.
  • Animator Shinya Ohira would get his start doing several illustrations for the series through Studio Ox.
  • Many of the other (confirmed) animators would also make names for themselves down the line, including Martian Successor Nadesico creator Kia Asamiya (under his real name, Michitaka Kikuchi), Divine Gate and Akudama Drive Character designer Cindy H. Yamauchi (under her real name, Hideko Yamauchi), Fafner and AMAIM Warrior at the Borderline director Nobuyoshi Habara, and Plastic Little co-creators Satoshi Urushihara and Kinji Yoshimoto. Nelson Shin, who formed AKOM during the production of Season 2 and was a staple of Marvel's animation department at the time, would also go on to direct Empress Chung and serve as one of the current animation directors on The Simpsons.
  • Two that pertain to the movie: Several of the film's key animators were, at the time of production, employees of Bebow^note in particular, Masanori Shino, character designer for the Black Lagoon and Terra Formars adaptations, Madhouse and Sunrise. Whereas Unicron was originally designed and conceived by Takehiko Ito, who would go on to create Lordof Lords Ryu Knight and Outlaw Star, as well as be the character designer of two other mecha series, NG Knight Lamune & 40 and K.O. Beast.
  • The writing staff for the series included the likes of Pinky and the Brain's Earl Kress and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)'s David Wise as reoccurring writers for Season 2 (with Wise also penning the series finale); George Arthur Bloom (the creator for PBS' Cyberchase) writing the opening three episodes; Gerry Conway (Responsible for The Night Gwen Stacy Died storyline and co-creator of characters like The Punisher, Jason Todd and Man-Thing) wrote for two Season 3 episodes; Swamp Thing creator Len Wein, who co-wrote "Webword", and Paul Dini, who wrote the episode "Dweller in the Depths".
• Hostility on the Set: "Thief in the Night", in addition to infamously driving the late Casey Kasem, who was of Lebanese descent, to quit the show in disgust of its depictions of Arabs (including naming a nation "Carbombya"), was the only time Maurice LaMarche voiced a character on the show, Six-Gun — and LaMarche was annoyed with voice director Wally Burr's method of directing. That said, before Burr's passing, while LaMarche stood by some of his criticisms, he did state most of them were out of line and reconciled with Burr. ^note The Transformers wiki explains that Burr was a perfectionist, who often held sessions up to the maximum allowed at the time (a whopping 8 hours). Townsend Coleman is quoted as saying Burr would insist on prolonging recording sessions, whether "it was necessary or not." LaMarche was of the opinion Burr was a Prima Donna Director who wanted the actor to parrot the lines back to him as he himself would have performed them. The wiki does point out that "Thief in the Night", as mentioned above, is also the episode where Casey Kasem walked out and offers that that might also have been a factor in LaMarche's bad experience.
• International Coproduction: The original 1984/1985 Transformers toys were all recycled molds from Japanese company Takara's Diaclone and Microman/Micro Change lines repainted and released under one brand in the West by Hasbro. Later years used molds from other Japanese companies, such as Bandai, Takatoku, and Tomy.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Well, toys. A number of toys are unlikely to ever receive reissues in most parts of the world. This can be due to ever-changing toy laws (something that ensures a Western rerelease of the original Megatron will never happen), the original mold being lost or broken (as is the case with a number of 1984 Autobots and the Dinobots) or legal issues (Jetfire, due to the original toy being a Super Dimension Fortress Macross toy made by competior Bandai). And then you have toys that are rarely intact due to design flaws (many a Prowl on eBay will have their die-cast roofs missing, and let's not get started on toys with Gold Plastic Syndrome...).
• No Export for You:
  • Season 4 (consisting solely of the three-parter "The Rebirth") was never initially dubbed in Japan, with Transformers: ★Headmasters being created to continue the series in a new direction. It wouldn't be until 1996 that a dubbed version of "The Rebirth" was released on the Japanese home media release of the show, but with different seiyus other than Tesshō Genda (Optimus/Convoy), Seizo Kaito (Megatron/Galvatron), Kunihiko Yasui (Rollbar), Masashi Hirose (Searchlight), and Issei Masamune (Narrator)^note It was eventually given a broadcast at Cartoon Network japan on 2007.. Similarly, when "Day of the Machines" and "Attack of the Autobots" got released in 1990 on video (due to their heavy use of Skyfire as a character), several of the minor roles were recast, with Katsumi Suzuki taking over as Frenzy, Bluestreak and Wheeljack, and Hiroaki Hirata making his voice acting debut as Ironhide.
  • A number of toys weren't released in the UK due to a fear of oversaturation, among them Shockwave, Swoop, the Predacons, and more. Likewise, America didn't get toys released in Europe between 1991 and 1993, such as the previously Japan-exclusive Overlord. Due to legal issues with toy molds, Japan didn't get certain toys under the Transformers brand either, like Jetfire, Omega Supreme and Sky Lynx (though the situation changed for those last two when Takara merged with Tomy).
• The Original Darrin: In the Japanese version of "The Five Faces of Darkness", Powerglide is voiced by Masashi Ebara. Hirotaka Suzuoki came back for "Starscream's Ghost".
• The Other Darrin:
  • Voice director Wally Burr substituted as Thundercracker for John Stephenson in "War Dawn", Ratchet for Don Messick in "Masquerade", Jazz for Scatman Crothers in "Kremzeek!", Seaspray for his unaired PSA and Shrapnel's line in Traitor when the Insecticons notice the Decepticons are firing at them.
  • Other notable voice changes include Skids^note from Michael Chain in "Quest For Survival" to Dan Gilvesan in "Triple Takeover", Outback^note from Gilvesan to Gregg Berger and Onslaught^note normally voiced by S. Marc Jordan, but was replaced by Terry McGovern in the first "Five Faces of Darkness" episode, then again by Steve Bulen for the character's brief role in "The Rebirth".. Also, due to an error in the episode's script, Michael Bell fills in for Neil Ross as Bonecrusher in "The Autobot Run".
  • After the death of Roger C. Carmel, Jack Angel took over as Cyclonus, also taking over as Ultra Magnus around the same time. The other movie characters (save for Arcee, Wheelie, Blurr and Springer) were similarly replaced with actors from the show.
  • Alpha Trion was normally voiced by John Stephenson, but was voiced by Corey Burton in "War Dawn" and by Tony Pope in "Forever is a Long Time Coming". Averted in the Japanese version of "Forever is a Long Time Coming" where Osamu Saka came back.
  • In "Fire in the Sky" and "Changing Gears", one of Cliffjumper's lines (Some grunts in the former and "Let's stop gabbin' and start blastin'!" in the latter) are Don Messick instead of Casey Kasem.
  • Wheelie is voiced by Don Messick in a commercial focusing on him, Hot Rod and Kup and by John Moschitta Jr. in "The Five Faces of Darkness, Part 3".
  • The characters tended to have different voice actors in commercials such as Frank Welker doing Blaster in his commercial (granted it was for one line and he was already doing Soundwave and Rumble), Hot Rod for a commercial for him, Kup, Blurr, Cyclonus and Scourge and Wreck-Gar for a commercial about him and Springer and Wally Burr doing Sixshot's one line in his commercial ("Sixshot's my name!) and even Victor Caroli doing Megatron during a commercial for Micromasters.
  • The Japanese dub loved to do this owing to its rushed turnaround time, with many of the supporting cast, particularly Yū Shimaka, Show Hayami and Keiichi Nanba, alternating between roles on a regular basis. Skywarp was dubbed by Starscream and Thundercracker's voice actors in two episodes when requesting permission to teleport and is accidentally colored like those two and Takuro Kitawaga does Flint in the Japanese version of "The Killing Jar" instead of Hochu Otsuka, apparently due to Japan not getting the reference at the time.
• The Other Marty: Ted Schwartz was originally intended to be Judd Nelson's replacement as Rodimus Prime's voice after The Transformers: The Movie, and he still has a few lines (in the recap of part 2 and one line in part 3) that weren't dubbed over by Dick Gauthier in "Five Faces of Darkness".
• Out of Order: Not all 98 episodes aired were ever in the same production order, and no English-language DVD companies that have released the show has ever arranged them in the same order. To avoid the issue where story chronology would contradict with the airdates, the TFWiki.net stuck with production order.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Quite a few, with many involving the Japanese dub. In the 90s, people would often claim it was a hugely different dub, to the point of some arguing it represented the "real" version of the show, but though it did change a lot of names and skip the Rebirth three-parter, it was otherwise no less accurate than you'd expect a dub to be, and certainly a far cry from the Gag Dub later entries like Beast Wars would become. A particular detail was the belief that Galvatron was a separate character in Japanese continuity, which was often held up by Megatron fans who didn't like Galvatron—barring an Early Draft Tie-In or two, the franchise was actually fairly explicit about the fact that they were the same person.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Brazilian dub, Olney Cazarré voiced Skyfire, while his older brother Older Cazarré voiced Thundercracker.
• Recycled Script: David Wise has a habit of recycling scenes between cartoons he writes for, with Transformers being one of them. For instance, "Microbots" has a similar scene to the TMNT episode "Shreddered and Splintered". The episode 'Kremzeek', meanwhile, was later recycled by Wise TWICE: once for TMNT and again for Disney's 'The Mighty Ducks'.
• Short Run in Peru:
  • As elaborated above, a few episodes including "Autobot Spike" and "Changing Gears" were aired in Japan before their US release.
  • A few Canadian regions, particularly the Maritime provinces, would get episodes before they would air in the US. With one example, part three of the "More Than Meets The Eye" pilot, being released 5 days before its intended American airdate, and three before the series even properly made its debut in the US.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Frank Welker was accidentally left out of the credits to the opening episodes. This was rectified starting with "Transport to Oblivion".
  • Many incidental and guest roles, including female characters like Chromia and Allegra, are mostly unidentified or outright unknown.
  • Neither Toei, AKOM or Sei Young ever received proper credit for their work on the show (as was standard with most cartoons from the era that outsourced its animation), which makes it difficult to pinpoint which episodes were done by which studio. It gets worse, as both Toei and AKOM outsourced further to other studios, many of whom are unknown. While most of the episodes have been identified as one of the three studios (or to a subcontractor like Ashi Production or Studio Look), at least 9 episodes — 7 from Season 2, and 2 from Season 3 attributed to AKOM — are still unaccounted for, the same applies for any proper animator credits for any of the other episodes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The character that became Skyfire was originally named Jetfire like the toy he was based on, and closer resembled its design (albeit with a blue visor opposed to the toy's red). However, possibly because of Takara's plans to release The Transformers in Japan and the Jetfire toy being owned by rival Bandai, the character was completely redesigned and renamed to no longer resemble the toy^note though the original model was used for the Jetfire toy commercial. This change (at least, the name change) came late enough in production of Season One that scripts and recorded dialogue still used the name "Jetfire".
  • By a similar count, the production bible suggests that there were plans to redesign Skyfire again and reintroduce him into the show, at which point he could see use again. This never happened.
  • In "War Dawn," Ariel was supposed to die along with Dion. However, members of production realized that since she was Orion Pax's Love Interest and already had a similar color scheme, she could simply be rebuilt as Elita One, so the script writers added Alpha Trion's remark about his intention to do so. (This, by the way, is why fans propose Dion was also rebuilt into someone Optimus would know.)
  • Octane's role in "Starscream's Ghost" was originally intended for Blitzwing, who was banished from the Decepticons in the "Five Faces of Darkness" five-parter. Blitzwing was replaced by Octane to promote Octane's newer toy, resulting in several narrative discrepencies.
  • Astrotrain's bizarre behavior in "The God Gambit" made him completely out-of-character, as the whole "ordering Starscream around, choking him, and Starscream fearing him" thing may have been intended for Megatron, but Astrotrain was shoehorned in to shill his then-new toy (admittedly, as Astrotrain is Starscream's only way back to Earth, he can get away with this, and "Triple Takeover" would also show him wanting to take over).
  • In "Five Faces of Darkness", Shockwave was supposed to survive his encounter with Unicron (he was originally supposed to die by Unicron's hand in the movie). He would've met up with Galvatron who considers him a traitor when the latter attacks the former, and Rodimus Prime offers him refuge and he accepts. He would've been the first Decepticon to change sides, but acts as a Token Evil Teammate rather than a full Heel–Face Turn. His role was instead switched to Blitzwing who refuses to actually switch sides (and then the storyline swapped in new-toy character Octane anyway).
  • "The Rebirth" was originally supposed to have five parts instead of the three it ended up with.
  • The production bible for the series said that Shockwave could clone himself at will, which never happens in the series. Transformers: Devastation, however, brings this back for his boss fight.
  • The production bible also specifies Rumble as being a "red robot" (similar to his toy and comic design), but in the series itself he and Frenzy switched colors. A Freeze-Frame Bonus in "Heavy Metal War" shows the "red robot" description alongside Rumble◊. The debates have been raging ever since.
  • Dan Gilvezan was originally supposed to play both Bumblebee and Spike Witwicky before it was decided to have Corey Burton play Spike to avoid Acting for Two.
  • Sparkplug Witwicky was going to appear in "Five Faces of Darkness", but he was ultimately cut. His only line was given to Blaster.
  • "Heavy Metal War" was originally written as the series finale had the toyline not been a success. This is evident in how the Decepticons are tossed into a river of lava at the end of the episode. The shot of Megatron vowing revenge was likely added later on.
  • In an earlier draft of "War of the Dinobots", it was an original character named Doctor Lynn Hyashi who discovered the meteorite instead of Chip. In a deleted subplot, Sparkplug's jealousy of her technical expertise would have paralleled Grimlock's jealousy of Prime's leadership.
    • Also, the reason Reflector looks alarmed when Megatron orders the footage of the Decepticons' defeat by the Dinobots turned off is because the footage was originally supposed to be showing a rather detailed, gruesome battering Reflector received from the Dinobots.
  • "Fire on the Mountain" was going to include a subplot of Skyfire trying to convince Thundercracker to join the Autobots, and while the Seeker wouldn't accept, he would help Skyfire foil the Decepticons' plan-of-the-week. This ended up being severely downplayed in the final version, though it does put Thundercracker's final line in the episode ^note  mocking Megatron & Starscream while saying the Autobots "aren't such wimps after all" in a new light.
  • In the "Return of Optimus Prime" two-parter, Optimus was to engage in a fight with an infected Rodimus Prime, and after he knocks him out, he was going to weld his joints together to prevent Rodimus from escaping when he wakes up to retrieve the Matrix.
  • As noted above, female Transformers would've been a part of the franchise from the very beginning (with Ratchet specifically being one), but this was nixed by Hasbro since they believed boys would liken playing with female Transformers to playing with Barbie dolls.
  • Many unproduced toys exist. Among them include:
    • Two◊ versions◊ of a Unicron toy that never went past the prototype stage due to cost concerns, flimsy arms and a faulty voice chip. Takara had their own version in the works, which also never got released.
    • Two Arcee prototypes (one with her original design◊ and one that was a retool of Chromedome's toy◊). Neither went through due to the fact Hasbro saw the toyline as a boy's toy.
    • Two Megatron Triple Changers (one that turned into a plane and Skywarp(!)◊, and another that turned into Galvatron and a handgun◊).
    • Double Pretenders (that is, two robots in a Pretender shell who combine when outside it).
  • Megatron almost had a different name. When the writer of the initial Transformers fiction came up with the name, it was shot down by Hasbro, as they felt it conjured up images of nuclear weapons. He then reminded Hasbro that Megatron was supposed to be the Big Bad and the name was approved.
  • Similarly, Starscream was originally named Ulchtar in Denny O'Neill's original treatment for the comic book, but Bob Budiansky changed it.
  • Hasbro attempted to re-release the original Megatron toy several times after his release in the US, but these efforts failed since the toy looked like a real gun, despite the later releases of the original toy containing an orange cap as per US toy gun laws. It's one of the reasons Toys R Us refused to sell the figure, and any Walther P-38 Megs must have an orange cap if released in the US at all. Buyers eventually have to import the Japanese version to circumvent this.
    • Despite US Federal toy gun laws only requiring an orange barrel cap, recent California state law requires toy guns sold there to have much more bizarre safety colors. This played a part in Hasbro's decision, which not only prevented the G1 toy being reissued but also hindered the Classics gun mode toy from being reissued for many years (Amazon eventually sold it in bright red and black as an online exclusive).
  • In the early 80's, Takara planned to release the car and jet robots known as Diaclone in Japan as Diakron in the United States. The first initial toyline failed (mainly because the only toys in the line were the ones that became Sunstreaker, Ironhide, Traibreaker, and the Powerdashers, as well as the Multi-Force 14 Robot later nicknamed the "Guts Blocker Autobot" after appearing in the Dreamwave G1 comic), so they tried again at a toy fair. However, the toys caught the eye of Hasbro, who proceed to rebrand the toyline, along with the Microman toys, as Transformers. Takara later dropped the Diaclone car and jet robots and Microman lines and rebranded them as Transformers as well. (They also released several Diaclone and Microman toys themselves as part of the Kronoform line, which was also short-lived.)
• Word of God:
  • Fanon assumed that the character Dion from the episode "War Dawn" survived the attack on storage yard 67 and was rebuilt into someone important (Ultra Magnus and Ironhide being the most popular choices), seeing as his best friend, Orion Pax was rebuilt as Optimus Prime. In 2010, Hasbro flat out stated that Dion was never rebuilt into anybody else and had not even survived. Also, The Transformers: Wings of Honor continuity had Dion survive the attack, but he was still called Dion.
  • For the longest time it was a mystery as to which studio or animator worked on the episode "Call of the Primitives" (Both TMS and Obari's names were thrown around. The latter eventually revealing that even he had no clue; Ashi Productions was also an often mentioned suspect due to their involvement on the show's first two seasons and the episode's similar appearance to the concurrently airing Machine Robo series in Japan). This was eventually cleared up when Karneval director Eiji Suganuma came out and confirmed his own involvement on the episode as its animation director; while also revealing that Predaking's transformation in the episode was animated by Shin Matsuo, an animator on Machine Robo and illustrator for the series' promotional material in Japan. He would further confirm in 2020 that the episode was not produced by either TMS^note who would be involved with the show and the commercials, but not this particular episode or Ashi, but rather by Toei themselves, with assistance from subcontract firm Studio Look.

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