Transformers / YMMV

For the 2007 movie of the same name, see Transformers (2007).

Subpages:

Franchise-wide items

Alternative Character Interpretation: Very common amongst the various universes and incarnations, both in-universe and out. Quite a few people view the Decepticons as Well-Intentioned Extremists and the Autobots as a peaceful but oppressive group. The series has had a long history of varying morality to it, with each version differing on just how good or evil the Autobots and Decepticons are. The general official stance nowadays seems to be this: Autobots are flawed but are largely good and the Decepticons are extremists who kick the dog a lot and are more often than not unabashedly racist towards other races.
Alternate Self Shipping: There's numerous fanart and fanfic of transformers (usually Autobots) somehow running into their Shattered Glass counterparts and getting... screwed.
Americans Hate Tingle:
- Though it's not outright despised by any means, Japan's relationship with Transformers has been far more mixed than America's. This is mainly because Transformers is very much out-of-step with the traditional tropes of the mecha genre: most Super Robot shows have themes of empowerment and Humans Are Special, which Transformers don't have since they lack pilots and come from an alien world with no human involvement, and most Merchandise-Driven boy-aimed toylines place far more focus on the good guys than the bad guys (to the point that the bad guys often don't get toys at all), when Transformers has always kept the two on relatively equal footing. Consequently, Japanese-aimed media tends to just shrug and treat the whole thing as an outright farce aimed at small children, with Gag Dub reworks and goofy spinoffs, and more than a few shows and toylines that did reasonably good business in America outright bombed in Japan (Transformers: Prime being the most noteworthy).
- On the other end of the spectrum, one idea common in the Japanese side of the brand is Transformers that turn into bullet trains: see the Trainbots, Team Bullet Train, Sixliner, and Optimus Exprime. In Japan, being a Rail Enthusiast is borderline mainstream, and the country's heavy and widely-used public transit is something of a point of pride. In America, it's niche at best, and public transit is much less central, with the shinkansen-style bullet train being almost unheard of. The Trainbots were the only combiner team Hasbro never bothered to import in G1, Team Bullet Train (despite being well-liked by fans) sold poorly enough that its Universe redeco was cancelled, and in general, the only train-based character to feature in American-made media is Astrotrain, who is a Triple Changer and typically doesn't turn into a modern train. Conversely, when Takara started working on a series with no intention for it to be broadcast in America, they made Shinkalion, a series about nothing but robots that turn into bullet trains. This meant that when Takara announced that the first Masterpiece-style combiner team would be the G1 Trainbots, Japanese fans were enthusiastic, while American fans were baffled.
Archive Panic: The Generation 1 continuity family alone has a ridiculously long list of media.
Cant Unhear It:
- Let's face it, Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime, unless the character is portrayed as younger like in Animated or is separate from Prime himself, like in Beast Wars.
- Leonard Nimoy turned in a well-received performance as Sentinel Prime in Dark of the Moon, so much that from then onwards, if the character is portrayed as a former mentor figure who pulled a Face–Heel Turn, odds are that Nimoy is the voice fans will hear as him.
Complete Monster: So many of them, it has its own page.
Creator's Pet:
- Bumblebee has become this, due to his live-action film and Prime incarnations being overpacked in case assortments and, especially in Movie BB's case, having too many just-slightly-different versions of the same toy.
  - Transformers: Rescue Bots is filled with Bumblebee toys, including a large playset. Bumblebee only appears in three episodes as a guest. A lot of fans are bemoaning the oversaturation of Bumblebee, and wishing Hot Shot would make a comeback. In fact, the creators of Animated vied for Hot Shot (in a main role, at least), but since execs wanted 'Bee instead, they had to comp romise. And for all his charm, he has a lot of screentime and is intentionally annoying.
  - In general, Bumblebee's popularity has really risen since the first Michael Bay movie, and leading to complaints about TF fiction echoing those about the toyline - you'll hear more than one fan, while not hating the little guy, saying that it's been an endless rehash of the same thing for ages and it's time someone else got to shine.
- As the franchise marches on many start to view Grimlock as one, feeling he's overused, overpowered, and overhyped. They feel his stories just involve "Grimlock shows up and beats up everyone to be a badass" and prefer his less powerful incarnations.
- And then we have Skids and Mudflap. They got almost as much toys as Bumblebee in ROTF, and had more screentime than any other Autobot. Thing is, it's possible that them flopping and flopping hard led to Bumblebee becoming a Creator's Pet.
- Drift started out as this. The guy read like a laundry list of every bad TF fanfic trope — badass Angsty Ninja Samurai with a BFS who pulled a Heel–Face Turn in a woefully overwrought backstory. The only one he didn't have was (thankfully) any feelings for a human girl. However, thanks to James Roberts' More Than Meets the Eye ongoing, Drift has been (mostly) Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. It also didn't hurt that his toy was really great.
Crosses the Line Twice:
- Takara Tomy thought it would be a good idea to release a recolor of Masterpiece Optimus Prime◊ to represent his death in the movie. You know, that one scene that traumatized thousands of children and made them lock themselves in their rooms? It still manages to become funny just for the sheer ridiculousness of it. And then Amazon went and recolored the Earthrise Prime in those same colors, even adding the damage to his head and waist as additional retooling, and having the outer box be a view through his windscreen of his death scene.
  TF Wiki: "Remember that scene from the movie that made you cry and traumatised you as a kid? Well now you can display me doing just that!"
- One of the alternate faces and pairs of hands for Masterpiece Ultra Magnus allows you to recreate the iconic pose of him... failing to open the Matrix of Leadership and cursing at it as he's blasted to pieces by Galvatron's forces.
- The 'Studio Series'' toyline has a history of incorporating jokes based on serious moments from the movies:
  - The Leader Class figure of The Fallen was deliberately designed to have his face taken off like Optimus did to him in the film, and it's an actual advertised feature.
  - A 2023 set bestowed us with "Dying Prowl and Ironhide", retools of previous figures of the characters with blown chests and agonized expressions to recreate their deaths in The Transformers: The Movie, including various blast effects to place on them.
  - Doubling down on bullying Ultra Magnus, his Commander figure has specialized parts that allow you to pull his arms and legs off.
  - The Core Class figure of Mohawk has a removable head to replicate his death scene after being blasted by Bumblebee in The Last Knight.
Draco in Leather Pants: Oh Primus. Some fans take the Well-Intentioned Extremist interpretation to the next level and act as if the Decepticons are the actual good guys rebelling against the "fascistic" Autobots. This often involves conveniently glossing over the numerous horrible war crimes, abusive behavior, and horrific racism that the Decepticons commit. This is especially bad in series that give the Decepticons a sympathetic/tragic backstory or avert Always Chaotic Evil.
- Fans writing from a perspective of "the Decepticons were right". Transformers Animated starts to lean this way itself, as the high command seems a bit morally suspect and the Decepticons are basically rebellious freedom fighters whose leader happens to be Megatron. Then again, we see the kind of people who follow Megatron.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Quite a few from all series.
Epileptic Trees: While it was revealed that Hasbro confirmed that future gold-molded toys (G2 Quickslinger, for example) will not have Gold Plastic Syndrome due to the improved plastic formula, this doesn't prevent a certain clique of fans on worrying whether they will break for a year later.
Estrogen Brigade: It’d be easier to list the Transformers shows who didn’t have armies of fangirls who find these dang robots hot.
Evil Is Cool: The Decepticons naturally. Their side contains the more military orientated vehicle forms and they were the first to debut big new gimmicks like Triple Changers and Combiners.
Fan-Disliked Explanation:
- The Transformers Aligned Universe, Hasbro's attempt to give the setting a definite backstory that stayed consistent in every incarnation of the franchise. While a good idea in theory, Hasbro kept pushing it to the writers, who in turn disliked having their visions meddled with, usually resulting in either Creator's Apathy toward's Hasbro's rules or a massive amount of Continuity Snarls. Probably the best known example of this is the supposed connection between the modernized G1-inspired videogames War of Cybertron and its sequel, and the movie-inspired Prime cartoon. While the developers of both franchises did try to add some links to the other, it doesn't quite work and it's generally easier to consider them to be separate universes.
- Likewise, the concept of multiversal singularities (certain characters who share their name with an alternate universe counterpart are actually the same being traveling between them) is also generally seen as awkward for similar reasons. Thankfully, Hasbro realized the concept was difficult to write around, and it was eventually done away with.
Fan Nickname: Several Transformers toys in the 21st century (especially after the 2007 film) feature what fans in the 2020s have christened "Gorilla Arms", where the arms are typically sculpted in a way that the elbows only bend inwards. Fortunately, the vast majority of transformers toys with elbows do not have this problem.
Fandom Rivalry:
- With the GoBots fandom. Both franchises are very similar, and many fans of Transformers call GoBots a rip-off, although the former's toyline is actually older. Aspects of GoBots being merged into the Transformers franchise has slightly softened things up a bit.
- In a case of rivalries within the fandom, many fans of other franchise works (the Generation 1 fans in particular) have this with the live-action movie fans. Fans of the live-action movies are usually disconnected from the fans of other Transformers works, so they have a different reaction to the former's cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, usually of the Critical Backlash kind. Notably when Bumblebee came out, many of the franchise's fans praised it for being Truer to the Text, but many fans of the previous live-action films did not like the change in tone, resulting in a lot of fiery debate among all but the few who can enjoy both takes on live-action Transformers.
- In another in-fandom rivalry, there are fans of Third Party toys and fans of the official toys. Third Party figures run by the logic of "if Hasbro won't make it, these guys will", but there are legal issues involved that scare off others who decide to stick to official toys.
First Installment Wins:
- For better or worse, G1 is the best known of the series, and only the live-action movies can stand up to it in terms of general recognizability. It gets the most callbacks, most parodies in popular culture draw from it, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker are considered the best Optimus and Megatron, the comic series that are produced in the present day draw from the G1 reference pool far more than others, and future series base their characters more on the old designs than any others. Even the toylines feature the most homages to G1, and the old toyline has the most figures given updates with modern toolings. The Masterpiece series, aimed to the collectors, features a predominant Gen 1 cast.
- When it comes to the Michael Bay films, the first film is the only one many people would argue is actually good, or at the very least, the best of the films.
Friendly Fandoms:
- Somewhat surprisingly with Doctor Who of all things. It helps that many of the better-regarded writers for the franchise are also Whovians; also of note is that Ensemble Dark Horse Death's Head (originally from the Marvel UK Transformers comics) made the jump from this franchise to the mainstream Marvel Universe via an encounter with The Doctor.
- As a whole, Transformer fans have historically good relations with other Hasbro series, namely the company's other flagship titles.
  - It's very close with the G.I. Joe fandom and most people who like one like the other. Not surprising given the two series are not only made by the same people but are also frequently set in the same universe and crossover often, but also have a very similar tone and give shout outs to one another on a daily basis.
  - And the Bronies also qualify — the 2014 BotCon had several exclusive comic variant covers from IDW and other stuff that crossed between both series, like Soundwave and DJ PON-3 working together. On an old front, because both series had their first generation at about the same time, many fans of either work grew up practically considering the other series their fandom's Distaff Counterpart. Also helping is the MLP G1/FIM fic The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds, which has the humans from the 80s' MLP not just helping to found modern Equestria, but also living on the same Earth as the G1 cartoon, the 80s' G.I. Joe toon, Jem and the Holograms and Inhumanoids (which were previously linked, mainly by a Geraldo Rivera parody named Hector Ramirez). The first chapter of "Side Stories of First Contact" has Prime meeting with Celestia, Luna and Twilight; a prequel fic, "Day of the Broken Fang", details what happened to Cobra (Serpentor attacked the Decepticons and got annihilated); most of the fic focuses on Cobra Commander escaping and the Autobots, Joes and Oktober Guard forming the Earth Defense Command.
Growing the Beard:
- The series as a whole settled into its own around 1985, when the second wave of toys started up and introduced massively improved mechanics and fan favorite characters like the Dinobots and Constructicons. It was also around this time that Simon Furman started writing for the Marvel comic, which led to the creation of much of the franchise's mythos and characterization.
- Frank Welker's Megatron voice is generally considered to have improved in The New '10s - while his original Megatron voice from The '80s has its fans, the age-induced Vocal Evolution present from Transformers: Prime onward is seen as a much more menacing take that sounds genuinely creepy.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- There's an unmade transformer called Buffalo Dump. Does James Rolfe know about this guy?
- Transformers were initially devoid of female Autobots or Decepticons because Hasbro reasoned that boys wouldn't be interested in girl toys. Not only have there been female Transformers in nearly every continuity, but the enormous male fanbase of a certain cartoon based on another Hasbro franchise that was generally considered girly has most certainly disproved Hasbro's belief that focus on female characters would alienate the interest of boys.
- The Action Masters subline from Generation 1 was lambasted for being "Transformers that don't Transform". Nowadays, there are many prestige and collector-grade Transformers toys and figures that don't transform...and they're snatched up by collectors and fans!^note
Just Here for Godzilla: Fans generally only care about the robots themselves and are ambivalent at best towards the human characters.
Macekre: A rare case for toys, of all things. Transformers was created from two completely unrelated toy lines.
- Tropes Are Tools: ...which ended up creating a well-loved and more memorable franchise, so much so that the American toyline would be brought back to Japan, then later go on to produce its own toys.
LGBT Fanbase: The franchise is very well loved by LGBTQ+ fans thanks to the balance of attractive characters (both male and female), the emphasis on friendship and found family in the shows, and the many Ho Yay (as well as Les Yay) moments within and between the Autobots and Decepticons.
Magnificent Bastard: See here.
Memetic Badass: Optimus Prime is the Robo-Jesus.
My Real Daddy: Although writer/artist Bob Budiansky created the personalities for most of the original G1 characters and wrote many of the early comics, the fandom largely considers Simon Furman to be the man who brought Transformers to its full potential. He breathed new life into the comics, established much of the lore and characterizations for the franchise, and has wrote a good majority of Transformers comics. Nearly every Transformers series takes at least one or two cues from his work.
More Popular Spin Off: The toys that would become the Transformers were spinoffs of Microman, or as it was called in the West, Micronauts. Creating the Diaclone and Micro Change lines which in turn was retold by Hasbro into Transformers we know today. Transformers has eclipsed all the previous toy lines in the public consciousness and popularity.
Periphery Demographic: Transformers has a massive and varied fanbase of people from numerous demographics. Hasbro is quite aware of this; the comics can essentially do the things that the children-focused cartoons can't so that adult fans aren't left out.
- Specifically, Transformers has a huge fanbase of women and girls who grew up with the shows and collect the toys.
Ron the Death Eater: According to some the Autobots were horrible oppressors who are being overthrown by the "heroic" Decepticons. This view pretty much requires for one to believe that dictators frequently encourage their slaves to express free will and despise cultural discrimination.
Rooting for the Empire: A small contingent of fans feel that the Decepticons are the real good guys, and that the Autobots are evil. Granted, a few continuities show that the Bots aren't perfect paragons of justice, and the Cons had good reasons to rebel, but stories where Decepticons take small children hostage (or kill a puppy) show that they are NOT nice mechs.
- Given a bit more weight in Transformers: Animated in which the Autobots are the ruling empire led by someone who's just a bit too willing to do bad things to achieve victory for comfort while the Decepticons are the scrappy rebels, albeit vicious and ruthless ones.
- In the IDW comics the Autobot government was evil (well corrupt at least) and the Decepticons were laid off blue collar workers living in slums until this one miner showed up... (Most of the story is set millions of years later, by which point they're rather less sympathetic).
- One of the movie prequel comics showed one part of the falling out between the Autobots and Decepticons was Prime wouldn't allow Megatron to attack a hostile force on their way to Cybertron, until they arrived and started attacking. Megatron was just trying to protect Cybertron.
- In the Transformers: War for Cybertron continuity, Megatron was initially a gladiator who rebelled against an oppressive, caste-based society ruled by the Autobots, so initially it was the Autobots themselves who were the Empire and you should have rooted against. But Megatron became too prideful and ruthless, to the point his ideal of a caste-less society was buried by his desire to rule. Transformers seems to have been moving over the years from "Decepticons evil, Autobots good" to an almost Star Wars-like setup, where Cybertronian society badly needed shaking up but the Cons went too far and the necessities of war turned the Autobots into the casteless society the Decepticons wanted, while the Decepticons became too obsessed to remember their original intentions.
- The Megatron in Beast Wars seems to imply that the Predacons are currently stuck as servants to the ruling Maximal class and its Council of Elders. Megatron himself is made into a very nationalistic figure, fighting to improve the lot of his suffering people after their terrible losses in the last war, damn the consequences. And get power himself in the process.
Sacred Cow: Optimus, as an icon of popular culture since The '80s. Many of his fans strongly believe that he's a universally-loved character, and will adamantly defend him from outright criticism.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: One of the most infamous fandoms for this - TFWiki.net was first to describe the behaviour, and term, of Ruined FOREVER. The fandom's full of differing opinions so now all changes are met with criticism by a certain group, and the changes back are met with criticism by other groups. It's gotten to the point of parody, and beyond, so now there are tons of fans making fun of this mindset mixed in with those who actually do dislike the changes, leading to a severe case of Poe's Law.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Some have noted that Warpath would perfectly fit into the live-action films, due to his love of explosions and action.
- Despite Springer being a Han Solo esque Deadpan Snarker, the very first Autobot triple changer, and having a good dynamic with Arcee, he's been pretty much Demoted to Extra since Generation 1.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The infamous-for-a-reason manga Kiss Players was basically pure concentrated Squick created purely for shock value. However, its plot is something that could've been amazing if taken seriously: Galvatron's cells infect machines and turning them into techno-organic Eldritch Abominations, the Earth Defense Command creates artificial Transformers to fight them, but pilots also infected by Galvatron's cells are needed to power them up to their fullest. Enter... random people who happened to have them take hold instead of anyone you'd logically pick for this, including someone so timid as to make Shinji Ikari look like Jack Bauer by comparison, someone so psychotic as to make Hannibal Lecter look like Shinji Ikari by comparison, and others - thankfully we've got the truly heroic Marissa Faireborn along. All led by someone who seems to mean well, and is downright motherly to her troops… but more and more clearly has ulterior motives. What’s down that stairwell that only Commander Amao has access to? And who’s that mysterious girl that sometimes appears? The first to find out ends up in a Vat Of Science Goo being experimented on! It all just deserves better than to be nothing but licensed Troll Fic. The second year of the line actually tried to undo some damage by turning it into a time-travel story packed with references to fan favorite moments and eras, but by then the damage had been done.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Whether if the TV show/movie is good or bad, you can always expect Peter Cullen and Frank Welker to deliver stellar performances as Optimus Prime and Megatron. They always gives it their all simply out of love for the characters.
Vindicated by History: Fairly common due to the fanbase being notoriously cautious towards change and new series. Beast Wars is probably the most notable example; at first condemned as a borderline shark-jumping moment, it's now regarded as one of the best periods in the franchise's history and even some of the most diehard GEEWUNNERS compliment it.
- In a case of this happening with one person's contributions to the brand rather than any individual franchise, Bob Budiansky was derided as an hack in the early Usenet fandom for his work on the Marvel G1 comic, largely due to a string of campy issues before the end of his tenure on the comic. As the years passed and the behind-the-scenes of the franchise's creation became more understood, fans learned that Budiansky had been instrumental in Transformers's success, coming up with the premise, most of the character names, personalities, bios for the first three years toyline and basically being single-handedly responsible for many of the iconic and memorable aspects of the franchise. While his later issues of the Marvel comic still invite some derision, Budiansky's name is seen in a much positive light.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
- Kiss Players is infamous for how incredibly not kid-friendly it is. To give an idea of how bad it was, Kiss Players is a Sailor Moon-esque Magical Girl manga. TFWiki.net compares it to Shadow Star. The writer/artist of the manga has explicitly said he deliberately designed the comic to shock people for kicks.
- Despite their name, the "Kids Stuff" series of audio books are filled with (non-graphic) violence on a massive scale. To name a few examples - the Rocky Mountains are melted into a molten puddle, world weather patterns are violently altered, thousands of humans die in a huge explosion, and Skyfire dies via burning up on re-entry. Nobody seems very much bothered by any of this.
The Woobie: Stepford Smiler Bluestreak, who talks over his own bad thoughts and memories of what happened to his hometown.

YMMV / Transformers

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