Podcast Transcript

Hey, everyone! Connor here again with another episode of Shortwave Sci-Fi. I’m going to talk about a topic that I covered last year, that being Transformers. Maybe it’s oversaturated since it’s the second time I’ve done this, but I wanted to improve upon that episode I made a year ago, since I’ve improved my standards since the previous podcast was made. Transformers is one of my biggest interests, and I could talk about it all day. But for the sake of getting other work done, I won’t. Without further ado, I’m going to go on a huge tangent about something that I try not to annoy people by talking about.

The original show debuted on television in 1984, and that’s where we’ve gotten some of the most iconic character designs in the franchise. This cartoon was made to sell toys, but it has substance on its own. If you want to watch it for yourself, the entire show is free on YouTube, uploaded by Hasbro themselves. The quality differs between episodes, so this show has some really good and some not so great episodes. What ended up being a work of art was “The Transformers: The Movie,” a 1986 film that continued on the cartoon. The film is higher quality than the cartoon, but it was still a glorified commercial in the end. Many beloved and iconic characters were killed off during the movie so that Hasbro could introduce a new toyline. Even after the movie, the cartoon continued to be produced until the early 1990s with seasons 3 and 4 continuing to air new episodes on Saturday mornings. The movie did tank viewership, as the main protagonist Optimus Prime died in the film. The cartoon suffered so badly as a result that the writers brought him back. After the original run of the cartoon, new toys were introduced but the media stayed the same. Hasbro played around with the idea of robots turning into animals rather than vehicles. In 1996, “Transformers: Beast Wars” began. Not many people loved the show at the time, but it’s seen as a cult classic in the modern day. Eventually, we reach the live action films. The first one came out in 2007 and the most recent one was in 2023. Those films are very hit or miss in my opinion, but “Transformers One”, which came out earlier this year, was an amazing film.

So, how does a capitalist marketing franchise have any meaning in real life? Well, there are many people such as myself who love the action figures produced for the series, but this isn’t important to the rest of the world. Even with the surface-level writing, I believe the 80s cartoon is worth “more than meets the eye”… It mostly has themes of the heroes only using violence when necessary and attempting to negotiate with the villainous Decepticons. The live action films abandon all of this and turn Optimus into a borderline psychopath. This theme came back with “Transformers One”, which portrays well-known characters before they became who we know and love. Optimus leads a voice of reason towards his impulsive friend who ends up going down a violent path and becoming the tyrant Megatron. It also has themes of becoming more than what society expects you to be, and I think it works pretty well.

In summary, some of the media in the Transformers franchise isn’t the best, the theme is valuable and personality traits of the original characters still resonate with people to this day. I’m Connor with The Globe, and I’ll see you next time.