On this day in 1984, The Transformers animated television series first debuted in the US. Like many fans, I generally accept this as the birthday of the franchise even though the toys were licensed and imported from Takara in Japan because...that's just the way it is. The brilliance of the franchise is not just in the toys (which will always be wonderfully clever), but in the story the marketing team built around it and pushed on young minds through a cartoon series and a comic book. A cassette recorder that transforms into a robot is pretty cool. A cassette recorder that is actually the Decepticon Communicator Soundwave in disguise and commander of mini-cassette robots Laserbeak, Ravage, Rumble, Frenzy, and others is waaay cooler. And buying into this simple bit of marketing storytelling has kept all of us in the fandom quite happy across the 40 years of the franchise.
I continue to collect Transformers robots with a particular focus on the G1, G2, and Beast Wars lines. But the franchise has been going strong for long enough that my appreciation for newer franchises like Transformers Animated and Prime means that new versions of those toys are coming up in the collecter range because they've more or less run out of classic characters to adapt...and I'm still open to buying them. But we all remain suckers and keep buying these transforming bits of plastic because...we're fans. And that's just how it goes.
This is how I rationalize being open to watching the new Transformers One movie even though it was clearly crafted for a VERY different target market. At the end of the day, it's still new Transformers content. I hated most of the later Michael Bay movies, but you have to concede that these newer movies help to keep the franchise in the public eye, which justifies more toy ranges, and those mass-market movie-based toys help fun collector ranges that adapt that one miscolored robot who appeared for less than a minute in that one episode. You get the picture.
So Happy Transformers Day, fellow Cybertronians! 'Til all are won.
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