Seth MacFarlane is going to revive “The Flintstones”.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. If you’re not a fan of Seth’s work, you may be gaping at your screen in horror, imagining endless “e-rock-tion” jokes and Dino’s reincarnation as a fey triceratops with a glue addiction. Even I have to admit that I am slightly dubious, given how disappointed I was with the most recent offerings from Family Guy and Cleveland.  However, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I actually think he’ll pull this project off quite well.

After all, American Dad just keeps getting better and better. And for all that Family Guy is rude and crude, it is well written, clever at times, and expertly drawn and acted. You can’t argue with Seth’s track record or successes as a show creator and producer.  I really genuinely do believe that he’ll handle this project – revamping one of America’s most beloved TV series – with tact and sensitivity.

And let’s face it; The Flintstones could do with revamping. Don’t get me wrong, the original series was great (in fact, I have seasons 1 – 3 on DVD), but a few things, which Seth and his team can easily overcome, let it down.

First is the animation. The illustrators were working to the best of their ability with the technology they had at the time, but nowadays it looks clunky if you focus on it. Things like long walks with the same trees and buildings re and re-appearing in the background, the fact that Wilma is frozen solid while Fred is talking, or that only her head moves once she picks up the dialogue all distract (me at least) from the story lines. Seth and his team can bring their expertise (and computer graphics) to the project to resolve this. I do wonder, though, if he’ll continue to use his signature style or if he’ll deviate from it.  If he does choose to use the same style, he already has character designs for quite a few of his new cast – they have appeared in Family Guy cutaway gags on a few occasions.

Secondly, the original series was set in the 60s. The prehistoric animals posing as household appliances were posing as manual can openers and foot pedal sewing machines. Things have moved on a lot since then. “What’s the animal version of the iPod? That’s the kind of thing we have to think about,” said MacFarlane.  So he’s not so much changing the old show as simply bringing it into the modern world, with relevant jokes and appliances.

How he will do this has been the cause of some debate. Critics are afraid that Seth will turn the Flintstones and the Rubbles into sex crazed farting wife beating animals for the sake of reproducing the kind of humour that has served him so well on Family Guy and Cleveland. They fear that modernising the idea means modernising the humour. And it will, to some extent, in the same way that Scrubs was different to Cheers which was different to I Love Lucy. Different eras have their own types of comedy, and what you can say and do on TV changes as the way TV is produced and the way society’s sensibilities adapt. So, yes, the new Flintstones will have modern humour in it.

But I don’t think we should take that to mean that Seth and his team will ruin the essence of the show. I will again take a chance here and say that I suspect he will go the way of American Dad, and opt for clever, quick paced writing, which is only occasionally uncomfortably lewd, and forgo his traditional cutaway gags and celebrity bashing. There’s plenty of material in the world of Bedrock for Seth to sink his teeth into without having to bring those sorts of jokes into it. I don’t think even he wants to produce “Family Guy, but set in the Stone Age” – I think he’ll go for something quite different.

In bringing the show into the modern world, he opens up the possibilities for all new jokes and story lines. I’m not sure how much he intends to change it, but he could give Wilma and Betty jobs (rather than just having then play the doting housewives), for example, or give the appliances starring roles instead of just using them as a punch line. Bear in mind, as well, that even the cheesy old Flintstones had some ground breaking story arcs, including being the first ever show to look at the issue of infertility when Betty and Barney adopted Bamm-Bamm. So there’s plenty for Seth to explore and work with.

Let’s hope that he does it well, and that I don’t have to eat my words two years from now (or seven, by the time it finally gets around to air in Britain!)  I can’t wait to see how it turns out. For now though, I’ll just have to be patient, and hope I can get the theme tune out of my head. Everybody: “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones”…

He-Man was, like many cartoons in the 1980′s, created primarily to promote a toyline. The said toyline was a series of action figures that blended some sci-fi elements, such as laser guns, vehicles, and robots, with the trappings of fantasy, especially Conan the Barbarian, for inspiration too.

He-Man himself was a character who gained his strength from his furry pants magical sword, given to him by a sorceress, and his arch nemesis was an incompetant hilarious evil sorceror named Skeletor. 

But they also existed in a world where his best friend and bravest ally was Man-At-Arms, who rocked around in a suit of technological armour and a moustache to make the village people proud.

He-Man never held the cult notoriety that Transformers did, and it didn’t last as long on TV or in comic books. However, it is well remembered for it’s toyline, and like many other retro cartoons, people remember most of the basic facts about it – that He-Man had an alter-ego in the boyish and irritating Prince Adam, and that every week he’d regularly trounce the incompetent and mostly comedy relief forces of evil, with no real effect on it the next week, all in order to sell more toys.

My memories of He-Man are vague at best. It wasn’t on TV as often as Transformers, and I liked that more because it had robots, which are machines, that turn into other machines. And I like machines and technology, even when I was little. Most of my friends were also into Transformers more too, but I do remember catching He-Man from time to time.
He-Man also has the dubious honour of being the first cartoon to be turned into a live-action movie, with Dolph Lundgren being the ‘most powerful man in the universe’. It also starred a young Courtney Cox, who would later go on to become Monica in Friends.

The move was a commercial flop…

Anyhow, YouTube has the whole He-Man series available in complete episodes for free, so I started with the first episode of the first season – The Cosmic Comet (what a title!) so let’s see how things go…

So, the episode begins with the very familiar opening theme. Once that’s done, we’re launched into the episode with two of the bad guys attacking Castle Grayskull, the source of all He-Mans’ powers, and apparently a whole lot more, because, according to Evil-lynn the sorceress, the ‘stars are right’, and a comet streaks across the sky-

But this is the first episode of the first season… we don’t get any explanation of the origin of He-Man, the castle, who the baddies are, or any kind of real in-depth origin other than the opening credits. It’s full furry pants engaged! We’re just going straight into things!

Anyhow, He-Man throws Beast-man (wow, imaginative name!) off the drawbridge, and then reflects Evil-lynn’s magic back at her using his sword. They fall into a big pit of mud, or maybe poo, under the drawbridge, complete with comedy sound effects, and then swear to be back another day.
Well, so far so Hanna-Barbara.

One thing to note about this show so far, is that the animation is pretty chunky and primitive – it looks very 70′s and crude. All the characters are quite simple-looking, and the colours are quite… plain, with little shadows or shading. But maybe I’ve just been spoilt by anime… either way, it really hasn’t aged well…

So, He-Man, Man-At-Arms, and Man-At-Arms moustache are sent by the Sorceress (I wonder what her real name is?) to go and find a wizard who is apparently the ‘Keeper of Comets’. She doesn’t explain what that means, so maybe it’s like being their carer, or their handler or something. Maybe he has to feed them and water them every day, and let them out for a blast around the solar system.

So, they ask permission from the King to go (He-Man has changed back into Adam at this point), and he comments that he is glad Adam is ‘taking some responsibility at last’, like he’s some kind of unruly teenager who sits in his bedroom all the time, or keeps coming home drunk.
Considering the fact that he’s still buff as hell as Adam, he obviously must have some sense of responsibility or drive. And if I was him, I’d just be like ‘Responsibility? Fuck you dad, I’m He-Man!”
Anyhow, that sadly does not happen, and instead the King decides they should take Teela along, in case Man-At-Arms porno moustache and Prince Adam’s pink shirt don’t let them get taken seriously enough. The two guys give each a ‘WTF’ look, which they should have reserved, because then Orko decides he wants to come too.

Now, just a break for a moment to explain Orko.

In every action cartoon there’s always an Orko. Thundercats had Snarf, and the Transformers… well, they had Wheelie. And I fucking hate Wheelie. But there’s always comedy, light-hearted companion character, who regularly screws up, gets in the way, or otherwise performs some kind of action that either makes things worse for the bad guys, or unexpectedly saves the day for the heroes. Orko is this character in He-Man, complete with annoying voice and stupid look. He’s apparently a magician, but his magic goes wrong every single time he tries to do it, making him less that useless in any capacity.

The little dumbass threatens to practice his magic for an upcoming banquet, so the king decides to let him go along, instantly dooming Prince Adam, Man-At-Arms and Teela, and off they go to find the Keeper of the Comets.

Then we get our first glimpse at the bad guys and their eeeeeevil lair, Snake Mountain – which is, as it suggests, a mountain in the shape of a snake. Evil-Lynn and a gormless looking beast man stand around, until Skeletor, who’s their boss, shows up and starts speaking in his hilarious voice. The bad guys all hold hands (Awww!) and use their magic to take over the comet. Skeletor has a bit of a laugh, which is also hilarious, and then we cut back to the good guys, who are in a tourbus on weird-looking tracks, which no one appears to be driving.
At this point, the animation looks really really cheap. The inside of the vehicle has no detail at all – no one is even sitting on seats, they’re just sort of… hovering… and the cab has no details of any kind. The actual movement of the ‘attack track’ is also steady and solid – now, I know that things were a little more primitive back then, but seriously?

Anyhow, their journey isn’t exactly wrought with danger, as they just sort of turn up and are there.
The Keeper of the Comets turns out to be a moron, and apparently is clueless and kind of dumb and ditzy. It turns out that he accidentally blew up one of the comets he was trying to control, and turned the other one evil (sentient comets? who knew!), and now he’s too old and lazy to solve the problem, and has no confidence in his abilities.

Skeletor and the baddies decide to capture the wizard just in case, and use the comet to send some monsters to capture the wizard. Adam and Teela run around a bit, and then the comet fragments hit, and turn into faceless grey golem-thingies.

Cringer (A big green tiger-thing that’s a coward) runs away, and Adam follows him, giving Teela and Man-At-Arms a chance to show that they’re useless. Adam turns into He-Man, and turns Cringer into Battlecat.
The wizard tries to control the comet monsters and fails. He-man beats them up, while Orko simpers pointlessly.

The wizard passes out, and Orko collects the comet chunks for later. They take the wizard to Castle Grayskull to heal him up, and then go to fight Skeletor in the RV. Beast man attacks them in a stupid looking jet, and the Mobile home decides to grow a sense of humor, which falls flat on it’s face. Some bad animation later, and they shoot down Beast-Man.
Skeleton face and Evil-lynn hold hands again (aww! there’s so much love with the villains) and then attack the good guys using their powers. He-Man declares let’s get ‘em… and then they pass out.
Fortunately, the Sorceress rescues them by teleporting them away before Skeletor can rape them all to death, and the wizard decides they should start a comet arms race by making a cosmic comet of their own filled with ‘good’. They use the bits of comet Orko picked up to make one, filled with the power of good from their hearts…
How digustingly saccharine >.<

Anyhow, the comet is sentient, and they have to send it off into space before the evil one hits.
The comet is on route, and He-Man says he has to try and slow it down. The sorceress uses her magic to make him fly, and then we see how He-Man is the most powerful man in the universe, because he ignores the fucking laws of physics.
He gets propelled into the air, and holds the comet still in mid air.
Yes, not standing on anything, or pushing against anything except thin air, he holds the comet back.

Anyhow, the good comet is propelled back into the air, and they make friends again, and all is happy and right. Skeletor gets a comet in the face, and then everyone regroups at the banquet, where Orko shows off some lame magic, and everyone has a laugh, before Man-At-Arms gives us the ‘moral of the story’ which is not to give up on yourself.

So, that’s the first episode of the series, and it’s got to be said – it’s a lot worse than I remember it being.

The plot is stupid, the characters are weak, and the script is piss-poor. And the animation is ugly, clunky and flat. The character designs aren’t pretty either, and look shoddy and crude.
It is kind of dumb fun to watch, if only to rip into it, and it shows it’s age. Maybe when I was younger I might’ve watched it – but even then, I can see why it wasn’t my favourite show compared to some others.

It did get two reboots as well – one in the early 90′s as which was essentially ‘He-Man in space,’ which didn’t take off and only lasted a single season of 52 episodes (enough for syndication), but did have a lot better animation and character design, and one which was done in the early ’00′s and had a more ‘manga’ art style, and attempts at a decent plot – and thus was sure to fail, despite apparently being a lot better and having vaguely threatening villains and an arc-plot.

He-Man’s fondest memories are probably from the legions of fantastically bizarre and surreal toys, which were supported and advertised by the cartoon, rather than transformers, which had a fictional appeal of it’s own, alongside the toys. It’s interesting to see the differences between the two and how they’ve changed over time, but He-Man is certainly one for the camp-and-dumb archives, and something to remember and watch for shits and giggles, more than anything else.

Transformers

Other than the well-remembered cartoon of that time, there have been many, many more incarnations of the ‘robots in disguise’ that have contributed to the franchise and pop-culture,  stretching from the original series, right up until the current day, and varying wildly in their storylines, continuity, quality, and style.
All of them are regarded differently by the legions of Transformers fans that exist, both casual and hardcore. But to the more relaxed and less transformers-orientated geek, I’ve decided to undertake a voyage into the realms of transforming robot animation to give the rest of you a guide to the galaxy and generation spanning adventures of the warriors from Cybertron, and hope that you can find some fun, adventure and appreciation for them.

The long, confusing, and twisty legacy of Transformers in animation began way back when, years ago, when I was young, and you were even younger. When business suits with shoulder pads, perms for men and women, and leg-warmers ruled the world of high fashion, when the synth was the only instrument pop needed, and when Mobile phones were big enough to bludgeon sea mammals to death with.

The year was 1984, and the original transformers cartoon had arrived.

This is the animated series that most transformers fans, and non-fans be they around when it first aired or after, are familiar with, and will think of when someone says ‘transformers’ to them. This has the classic line up of recognized characters – the Autobots, lead by Optimus Prime (“the truck guy”), and Decepticons, lead by Megatron (“that dude who turned into a gun”), and their friends and underlings, such as Starscream (“wasn’t he, like, red?”), Soundwave (“what use is a tape deck?”), Jazz (“Wasn’t there one who was like, a sports car?”), Bumblebee (“I always thought Bumblebee was awesome!”) and the rest.

The original transformers cartoon established a lot of precedents in the shows that follow it – the Autobots mostly turn into cars, the Decepticons into flying craft and weapons (although later episodes changed those things). There was a war between both factions that had raged for millions of years, and that the robots were from outer space. And both sides were in competition for energy and resources.
These ideas have been repeated over and over again in later incarnations, and these versions of the characters returned to many, many times to continue their adventures. Most fans remember this series strongly, and many of them have grown up to work on later incarnations of transformers. The characters, continuity, and familiar aspects of this show later came be to be known, unofficially, and later officially, as Generation 1, a term that has become widely-known by both fans, and even some-non fans and non-geeks to represent these stories and characters, and their associated works.

However, watching it again nowadays, it’s very much fair to say that it hasn’t aged well.
The show is rife with terrible animation errors, with limbs, heads, and even whole characters disappearing from frame to frame, characters being the wrong colour entirely, inconsistencies in plot, animation, character, and abilities for the tranformers shown, and all sorts of other terrible problems.

Much of this is due to animation being ‘farmed out’ for production to other houses and studios than the main one, for lower costs and quicker working times, which meant mistakes in the finished episodes were inevitable.
The plots of the individual episodes are often rediculous and silly – none more so than the infamously bad episode ‘B.O.T.’ – but there are some that are entertaining, and even excitingwhen viewed now, and as an older fan.
And if you can place yourself back in a child’s mind-set, it’s easy to see why you were entertained, and enthralled at the time.

The characters are kind of simple too, but nonetheless – this is a children’s cartoon, that was designed to sell toys – and it did so very well, as well as capturing the imaginations of a generation of kids so much that the show went on to have three seasons.
Likely the best of which was the second, which introduced new characters alongside the originals, and also had more adventurous plots involving the background of the transformers and Cybertron.

The series also spawned a movie, which was of much higher quality in both story and animation that the series it came from

The movie was a big thing for transformers, and another that all fans remember well. Not least for the fact it killed off almost eighty percent of the characters from the first two seasons of the cartoon!
A daring departure… in which many small children could observe the contents of their toy shelf being systematically elminated. However, it was poorly received at the box office, but went on to become a cult classic.

The third season of the cartoon followed the movie, and took place after it’s events, with the same cast of characters. However, by this point, toy sales were falling, as was the budget for the series, and many of the stories were outright rediculous comedies and many characters – such as the loved by fans, and previously powerhouse Dinobots – were changed into comedy caricatures of themselves.
Eventually, with a final, and pretty awful, 5-part story named ‘Rebirth’, and acting as the most toy-commerical-like episodes yet, the original Transformers Generation 1 series came to an end.

In the USA and UK, that is.
In Japan, things continued…

The transformers toyline had continued after the end of  ”Season 4′ with many new toys and new gimmicks to go with them. Japanese audiences were thus treated to a new storyline to go with their shiny new toys that featured many, if not all, of these new characters and the continuing adventures of the classic characters alongside them in ‘Headmasters’ the new series of transformers.
Uniquely Japanese, it featured many traits of anime aimed at younger audiences, with simplified motivations and plots for the good and bad guys and their personalities, as well as plots involving characters romping all around the galaxy to fight the Decepticons.

This series was not available to western audiences for a very, very long time, but was finally released in a terrifyingly bad, bad, bad, bad! dub by a company named Omni Productions, and most fans wish they hadn’t bothered.
While the dub is widely available, and easy to get hold of on DVD, it is best enjoyed after having consumed most of your body weight in strong alcohol, or possibly window cleaner. There are a multitude of reasons for it’s sheer awfulness, not least of which is the fact that the voice actors all sound like they’re not interested in what they’re doing or saying, having no expressive qualities in their voices at all, even when their friends are dying.
Part of this is probably due to the fact that they’re faced with a terribly translated script that has no relation to what’s really going on onscreen, or any idea what came before it in terms of the previous series and it’s events, who the characters are, or even their names! Several of the characters names are in fact hilariously changed – such as Blaster becoming ‘Billy’ and Blurr choosing the more conventional name of ‘Wally’…
Fortunately, you can find the subtitled (by fans) versions elsewhere. While occasionally a bit silly and simple, they are nonetheless fun, and most often of a decent quality of animation.

Things didn’t stop there for Japan – Headmasters was a big success, and so it was followed up by another series, following the toyline along with new changes, and introducing a new cast of characters.

Masterforce took on a whole new angle, with new characters and a new background than the previous series, and standing away from them to make it’s own story.
Humans were the central focus of the plot, and the theme of ‘personal transformation’ was paramount, as the characters could ‘become’ transformers by donning special suits to ‘combine’ with transformer bodies.

More light-hearted and comical in tone than the previous series, Masterforce was a Big Damn Adventure, though set almost entirely on Earth, as humans were central to the plot and it’s events. While a radical departure, it was well-received and remembered, and had many spin-offs and nods in later fiction.
Unlike Headmasters, Masterforce was available in the UK (because the world loves us), subtitled instead of being awfully dubbed, and continues to be available.
Japan wasn’t done with transformers yet either, and they had one more Generation 1 show in their arsenal to be deployed.

Victory was a return to the roots of the franchise, and followed two small groups of Autobots and Decepticons (or, rather, in Japanese, Cybertrons and Destrons) as they fought across the Galaxy, defending peaceful civilizations from attacks by the Destrons.

New characters, such as the heroic Cybertron commander ‘Star Saber’ and the evil Destron leader ‘Deathsaurus’ (yes, really) were introduced, alongside returning cameos and appearances from Masterforce characters.
The show spanned a short run only, which is surprising due to it’s high quality of story and especially high-quality animation – but perhaps that’s why, as the budget must have been a lot higher.

Victory continued to introduce new characters based on new toys, such as the micromasters, based on the smaller pocket-sized toys (which were a trend at the time), and other combining-type robots, most of which were Japanese exclusives – especially the unintentionally hilariously named ‘breastforce’, with their combining breastplates.

As with Masterforce, Victory was thankfully made available in a subtitled format many years after it’s original release, rather than the crackhead dub by Omni, and is still available.
But this was the last series based on Generation 1 (or G1) concepts produced in Japan, and it was many years before anything new came along.

Back in the west, things had been extremely quiet too. The remainder of the 1980′s had been devoid of any new animated, televised or otherwise tranformers content, despite the toylines continuing strength and presence, and the only blip had occurred from 1993-95 when a cartoon named ‘Generation 2′ had aired.
Consisting simply of the original 1980′s Generation 1 cartoon, and even select episodes at that, with added grating and annoying primitive CGI borders, opening and closing credits, and scene changes all in badly-done, noisy and intrusive effects. The series was a flop as much as the ‘Generation 2′ toyline was, and the only impact it had was allowing the original fans to see many of the original episodes over again – something that, at the time, was unique, as the internet was a nascent idea, DVDs were a few years off, and the only other copies of the show were on very rare VHS releases, that had often been passed around by many hands, and were aging quickly.

A few years later however, things changed as a wholly-new (at least to begin with) show came to the airwaves in 1996, with a new style of animation, and a brand-new setting and cast of characters.
Reviled by original fans upon it’s beginning, Beast Wars soon and very quickly, with the slick plotting and characterisation, became a superb example of Transformers-related storytelling, and amassed a legion of fans.

Most of this was due to the fact it had excellent characters and ideas behind it, and moved swiftly, with individual episodes that contributed to overall arc-plots (something never seen in a transformers show before!) and while aimed at kids, also had many elements that appealed to older viewers.
While the first season stood on it’s own, and made only very passing and casual references to the ‘Great War’ between Autobots and Decepticons, and a few casual name-drops that were mostly for the sake of humour, by the second season, the writers and show staff had realised that the majority of their viewers were transformers fans – and many of those writers were also fans. Synchronicity was achieved, and the references began to gather pace and the show was now explicitly tied to the original G1 series – and no more so than in the third and final series, where the original characters were featured (after a fashion), along with a slew of other elements.
Beast Wars was an unexpected success of it’s time, and is still well-loved and celebrated today by transformers fans. And it was followed up by it’s own sequel show – another first, at the time.

Beast Machines continued the adventures of the Beast Wars cast after the end of their original storyline, transplanting the action back to the Transformers home planet of Cybertron.
However, in the voyage home, their enemy Megatron had escaped, and has taken over – resulting in a much darker, dystopian and bleaker story than the earlier show. the CGI was much more refined, and the theme tune much more rockin’, leading to a smoother and more slick show.

Characters motivations changed from their roles in Beast Wars, many of them growing in different ways and becoming different to what they were, as the world around them is a dangerous, dark, and scary place. Often battles are a result of simply having to survive or flee, and getting caught, and the Maximals (the good guys) are often on the back foot against superior numbers, and more ruthless and warlike foes.

Beast Machines was mature in it’s approach and story-telling style, and didn’t talk down to it’s audience. It wasn’t without moments of levity and humour, or even hope, but was certainly on a different level than earlier shows – but in the end, that may have been part of it’s downfall, as it lasted only two seasons, and came to a somewhat abrupt and non-triumphant ending. It’s still a hotly contested and debated show in the transformers fandom, but for my opinion, makes a perfect cap on the Beast Wars storylines.

Things hadn’t been quiet in the land of the rising sun however. Japan had loved Beast Wars too, despite their dubbing and rewrites turning it into a bizarre and madcap comedy with almost no relation to the original show. However, it had been popular, and as a result, two sequels followed

Like the re-dubbed Beast Wars, Beast Wars II was a comical and zany take on the battle between Maximal and Predacon, though it followed it’s own story and direction than the American series – and, noticably, made a transition to 2D cell animation instead of CGI.
The series received, and has received so far, no release outside of Japan, but is notable because it included many characters who appeared in the toys, but did not appear in the CGI TV series – Likely due to the cost and time involved in creating new models for the characters.

Beast Wars: Neo followed up Beast Wars: II in Japan, and was as equally goofy and odd as it’s predecessor, carrying on the same storyline with the majority of the same cast.

Things were happening in the USA though – the planned follow up toyline and series to Beast Machines, named Transtech, for which only a few designs were produced, never appeared, and instead, a new series was imported from Japan – a first for the franchise, and later to become a common practice – and was renamed, and the story rewritten. This was called Robots in Disguise

This new show was a complete reboot of the franchise, as it featured no connections to the timeline established by the original cartoon, and expanded on by Beast Wars and Beast Machines. It also featured a much more humour-orientated and kid-friendly approach than the other shows had taken, including comedy characters and dubs as standard, and new voice-acting talents (essentially, the entire cast of Digimon) and was broadcast only on cable-exclusive channels.
Robots in Disguise was not well-known even at the time, and has remained something of an obscure curio. It was the first time though that many of the anime ‘stock’ traditions were presented to familiar Transformers audiences, including things like the ‘anime sweatdrop’ to indicate confusion or embarassment, the ‘speedlines’ of a background in a character moving fast, and other notable stock-in-trades, such as stock footage and shouting the names of attacks in battle.
RiD survived for only one season from 2001 to 2002, and has never received much in the way of followups or popularity, but was the first to pave the way for imports of Japanese shows.

Transformers: Armada followed hot on the heels of RiD, and was heavily promoted, with a new toyline to accompany it. Featuring a new host of voice talent (who were not from Digimon), it follows the adventures of the Autobots and Decepticons of another new continuity as they struggle against each other to find missing smaller robots called ‘minicons’ who can unlock special abilities in all of their larger brethren to allow them to battle their enemies and achieve victory in the ongoing war, as the fleshbag annoyance human sidekick ‘Rad’ explains in the clip above.

With the theme of collecting smaller robots with special abilities that don’t speak and instead spout nonsensical sounds, and having to travel around the world to do so, Armada received many less-than-complimentary comparisons to Pokemon, which was also very popular at the time of it’s release.
Pokeformers was however, fairly well animated, and had a good-length run. However, it was boring, repetitive, and had a tedious plotline that managed to encompass several shifting allegiances throughout it’s run.
Somehow, it included several references to G1 characters in name, but was not well-received by many fans of the original shows, though it gained an audience of new and younger fans during it’s time.
Armada became the first part of a trilogy.

Energon was the second part of the so-called Unicron Trilogy, and was a direct sequel to Armada, taking place 10 years after the end of the previous series.

It featured a returning cast of characters embarking on a new plot, and used a brand-new cel-shaded CGI style that seemed to have been deliberately designed to make the transformer characters look as absolutely awful as possible.
All of the characters lacked in any range of movement and expression, and were covered in overly thick details and panel lines, often resulting from the models being bad-scaled in far-off shots or closeups.
They lacked any weight of movement, and had embarassingly bad body language, walk and run cycles, and sheer depth or range of movement in any way, and had faces that could not even move to perform expressions. It’s especially sad and depressing when one remembers that Beast Wars and Beast Machines were made made literally years earlier, and in those two shows the characters – even the ones with nonhuman faces – made facial expressions and displayed body language perfectly!

Combined with bad writing and even worse voice acting, the show was a dismal failure with fans, yet somehow managed to run for a brain-tumour inducing 51 episodes.

Most of the problem comes with the fact that the series ignored any and all character development and sub-plots, ignoring any ideas about personalities and motivations simply to include more scenes of stock-footage – which given the animation quality, have little-to-no visual impact or grand feeling to them.

The plot itself ends up being repetitive and pointless, as the characters constantly attempt to perform the same goals over and over again, ending up in a show padded out with – yet again – more stock footage, and far too many scenes of exposition and characters telling the audience what they know already, or dubbed in non-sequitors, caused by the lack of a proper translation, or sheer confusion in what is an already confusing and badly-drafted script, resulting in the voice acting being stilted and jarring, and often not matching what is happening on screen, or the characters speaking nonsense!

Supplemental comics and spin-offs were produced for some reason, and the series had a small following of fans, most of whom were presumably too young to care about the horrible visual design, or were lobotomised.
Even more sad to realise, was that Energon marked the 20th anniversary of Transformers on TV, which is quite a sad state of affairs.
Worse still, was that this abortion had a sequel.

Cybertron carried on the story of Armada and Energon, as the Autobots raced into space to find the ‘cyber-planet keys’ to stop their homeworld and many others, from being destroyed – at least in the west. In Japan, it was a stand-alone series, with a new continuity and premise, and didn’t feature the same characters.

Fortunately, considering it’s predecessor, Cybertron actually had some work put into it (someone must have told the producers about the reaction to Energon), and as a result the dub ended up with a much better script and much better performances, along with much more work being done to explain things that were otherwise lost in the translation from Japanese to English, and the rewriting performed to make the show part of the Unicron Trilogy.

Nonetheless, the show does suffer from the horrible flaw of endless stock animation sequences for transformation, and the plot often feels laboured in some places, and compressed in others, lacking any real balance. However, it is overall a much better effort than previous attempts.

Following the debut of the Live-Action transformers movie in 2006, a new all-american produced animated Transformers series was produced. It iddn’t tie into the movie itself, but featured a lot of common elements – and it also didn’t tie into G1, but was heaped with references to the series – many of them tongue in cheek, and for fans only.
The new series was called, quite simply, Transformers: Animated

With an animation style that was more reminiscent of Cartoon Networks’ home-grown shows, such as Teen Titans, and Ben 10, the initial reaction to Animated (as in, the few in-production pictures that surfaced before the show even aired) was extremely negative – although that was nothing new, as Transformers fans are routinely extremely hard to please, and considering that the franchise revolves around changing from one form to another, remarkably opposed to change.

Nonetheless, many of their opinions transformed when they finally viewed the new show. It was witty, intelligent, and smart, and had a very clever and well-paced arc story that linked the individual episodes.
The continuity also received a fresh reboot, placing the characters on an Earth in a near-future, in which the Autobots and Decpticons are unknown, and the war is long over.  Similar to Beast Wars, they are also not warriors, unlike the Decepticons, and must learn to fight their enemies as they go, often needing to team up to take out even a single Decepticon.

The series went from strength to strength, and featured masses of cameos and nods to G1 characters, or Animated versions of those characters or movie characters, to draw in more fans. There were many things featured that would draw in older fans – for example, Wreck-Gar being voiced by Weird Al Yankovic, who had written and performed a song on the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack. Or the cameo appearances of Daniel, Spike and Carly from the original G1 series, or the mention of Metroplex and Fortress Maximus, characters from the earlier shows.

The series was massively popular with Transformers fans everywhere, and news of any new episodes was widely awaited. The production staff also apparently widely enjoyed working on the show, and interacting with the fans, as well as producing and writing the show itself.

As such, it was a resounding shame that Cartoon Network confirmed that Season 3 was the last season of the show, and there would be no more episodes forthcoming, for some unspeakably stupid reason.

So far, Animated marks the last series to be um, animated, for the screen, but 2010 will mark the debut of a new series, Transformers: Prime, which has, as yet, little information released about it.

So, transformers continues to go from strength to strength on-screen, and has many, many different incarnations that offer something to everyone.
But the story doesn’t end with the cartoons, as there are other avenues down which the background and universe of the robot warriors from another world have been explored – that of the printed page, and it’s in the next part of my article that I’ll discuss the transformers comics, and their storylines and histories – and how they altered the transformers as they were portrayed on screen.

Until all are one!