Happy 25th Anniversary to The Transformers
Twenty-five years ago today, Marvel Comics’ The Transformers #1 was published, marking the official beginning of one of the biggest and most successful toy franchises of all time.
For me, Transformers has always been a favorite.
Well, almost always.
Waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day (late summer of 1984 to be exact), a friend of mine invited me to go for pizza and to see Ghostbusters for his 13th birthday.
After we ate, we had some time to kill and stopped into the local retail store where he pointed out the first Transformers toy I’d ever seen – which was Jazz. I wasn’t so impressed. At that point, I really liked GoBots, and called Transformers a “cheap ripoff”.
It wasn’t until the first episode of More Than Meets The Eye aired until I found out that Transformers were possibly the greatest thing ever. I immediately went to the store and bought my very first Transformer, Gears:
While I am obviously a G1 kid at heart, I loved Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and Transformers Animated, as well as the Michael Bay film franchise – and my collection shows this off, as I have whatever I like most from each line.
It’s hard to say just exactly what it is that I love most about Transformers, but hell – you just can’t go wrong with vehicles that change into robots.
None of this would have been possible without Bob Budiansky, the “father” of Transformers lore, who was responsible for much of writing of the original Marvel Transformer comic. Budiansky went on to become a legend among Transformers fans, having conceived the names of most of the original, most iconic Transformers, including Megatron, Ratchet, and Ravage. He also wrote the vast majority of the descriptive “tech spec” biographies printed on each Transformers toy package, giving each figure unique personalities.
While Hasbro’s idea was solid – I feel that we owe Bob more than any other individual for creating the characters that have lasted to this day.
And I feel that if the world is still here in 25 years, so will The Transformers.
As a wise fan once said:
As a singular entity, Transformers is not a religion. You cannot blaspheme it. Transformers is not politics. You cannot be a traitor to it. Transformers is not sacred. You cannot desecrate it. Transformers is not science. You cannot measure it or give it standards. Transformers is not dead. You cannot expect it to stop changing as long as there is a continuing fiction… or a continuing business need.
