Transformers

For me, TRANSFORMERS is a cultural thing. It's larger than the '84 TV show and taps right into childhood. It's like the '89 Batman where I can't separate that period sentimentalism from the actual thing. I sit down and watch this, and I'm plugged back into the formative years. It's kinda funny to think of the show as an adult because it was the direct result of the early '80s FCC deregulation, paving the way for half-hour toy commercials as kids' programming. But that's the Lisa Simpson in my head talking. Hasbro's campaign worked, and I've been a fan for 30 years . . . even with the show's dodgy production values and toy line that was both overly complicated (I was constantly referring to the instruction manual) and inconsistent with the animated characters.

But the show worked its magic on me with a vengeance. And there are certainly bigger fans out there than myself. People who've spent years collecting the various iterations, series and live-action movies. But if we're talking the G1 stuff, I'm all over it. And there are other shows from that time that were better produced, but none that hit as precisely as this one. That link between TRANSFORMERS and being a kid is ironclad.

8/10

Transformers is the greatest cartoon show ever made. The toys were outstanding. It makes the cartoons of today look like trash. The first seasons of Tranformers were the pinnacle of childrens entertainment, with supercool characters and awesome well built toys. Even the toys make the toys of today look like garbage. The toys hand a lot of die-casted parts. The cartoon had a good straight-forward plot. Everything went well until the movie where they killed all the best autobots and subsequently killed the transformers, afterwards the show was never the same and the toys started becoming all cheap plastic with simple designs. But the glorydays overshadow the dark. Transformers will forever be immortalized in the hearts of millions.

10/10

One of the best cartoons to come out in the 80's along with G.I. Joe and Visionaries.

This story is about two waring Robot factions, The Autobots (the good guys) lead by Optimus Prime, and The Decepticons (the evil nasty pieces of work) lead by the maniacal Megatron.

The show starts off with the Autobots leaving their home planet of Cybertron to find a new source of energy to win the war, having depleted their own planet of energy they set off in their space craft (known in the comics and the Beast Wars TV Series as The Ark) to find new sources of energy to help win the war and replenish there own planets energy supplies, but unknown to them The Decepticons already new about their plan and set off to follow them in their own space craft, The Decepticons ambush The Autobots in space and board there ship but the ship is caught in the magnetic pull of earths atmosphere and the ark crashes into a volcano and lies dormant for 4 million years, before an eruption re-activates the ships computer (teletraan I) which rebuilds and reactivates The Transformers giving them Human vehicles designs and the war starts all over again.

This is one of the most popular cartoons of the 80s. It was original and not follow the trend of Hanna-Barbera's copycat mysteries/adventure cartoons a decade earlier. Automobiles that become robot fighting machines,producers couldn't be more creative then that. It was all action which us kids grow into after watching Superfriends or Spiderman and the amazing friends. I remember collecting some of the action figures then giving them away after they became out-dated. Though still a classic and one of the best cartoons of that generation.

Cartoons like Voltron and Thundercats are good by their standards, but Transformers blows them all away. Like it's follow ups, Beast Wars & Beast Machines, this show was designed to sell toys. But Transformers and the future series are much better them some people say. The reason the show ended in the first place is because sales for the toys dropped a lot, so the show was cancelled along with the comics. It's the classic good versus evil show. All the characters are great, especially Optimus Prime. Transformers is a number 1 show.