November 19, 2024 • 34 mins
If you’re anything like Will and Mango, you remember playing with Transformers as a kid. Or maybe you still enjoy transforming bots, in which case you should know the correct verb is “converting.” On today’s episode, we take a closer look at this ubiquitous toy with a surprising history that includes tea-serving dolls, WWII scrap metal, and a strangely touching example of corporate collaboration.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So you know that impulse when you pass an electric
fan and no one is around and you just want
to lean in and say more than meets the eye.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm not sure if you know what I was doing
for the ten minutes before you got in here, But
do you mean like this more than.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That impulse is officially forty years old. Wow, so Transformers
might have a new movie out, but they are old,
baby like, these toys are elder millennials, meaning we would
have been about five when the first ones came out.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
That is crazy, which would have given us plenty of
time to spend chanting more than meets the eye into
household appliances everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Household applian. It's like a toaster or whatever. You know,
Transformers or for everyone these days. But there are about
two dozen different product lines and the first movie was
directed by Michael Bay that broke the box offices all
from these toys that had us like crunching tiny pterodactyls
into the shape of cassette tapes.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Wait, is that is that a real transformer or did
you just make that up?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, it's totally real. My aunt, when I was in
fourth grade as a birthday president, took me to Toys r
US and let me pick out anything, and so I
picked out these tiny mini cassette Transformers. And our fact checker,
slash researcher and resident Transformers guru Gabe said it was
not a pterodactyl. It was a falcon or a condor.
So I've already been fact checked, just as his intro.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah, you want to get that wrong with Gabe, but.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It was rad Anyway, Today's episode is a dive back
into the world of Transformers. How did these incredible toys
come to be? And why is it that kids still
can't get nothing them? So let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketter and on the other side of
that soundproof glass trying and sadly failing to convert a transformer.
That's our friend and producer Dylan fag And he's good
at a lot of things, but this is something he's
not so great at, and I don't know, if you
(02:41):
can see it from our angle, mango, But he's sweating
and he's playing pump up music to get him through
it all. And I say that with no judgment, by
the way, like Dylan showed me the instruction sheet and
it takes forty steps to wrestle that thing into a truck.
So he's really got his work cut out for him.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, I am rooting for him, as I always But well,
I know we were both into basketball and the Lakers
as kids. We were both into SNL pretty early because
of our dads. But was transformer or something you were into?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Oh, it was one hundred percent something I was into. Now,
I didn't always know what I was talking about. In fact,
to this day, if I were to tell my parents
we were doing an episode on the Transformers, they would
say more to Measdi. Because I would run around the
house pretending to be a Transformer. I had no idea
what the theme song said, and in my mind they
said more to Measdi, and so I just sang along
(03:32):
with it. So it meant something to me, and that's
what's most important.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But how about you, Yeah, I mean, I remember when
I was like five or six, living in North Carolina.
It was the one cartoon that I'd watched religiously in
the afternoons. I was not into G I. Joe, which
I think was the thing that came on after, but
I was obsessed with Transformers. I love the toys and
just the idea that you could get your hands on
(03:56):
a robot and not know what it would transform into
until you like bent and twisted it into all these
different directions and then you'd be like totally delighted by
whatever return to you, like, even if it was a van.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
You know, you've never been so delighted to play with
a van. But just as it adds up, so you
mentioned Gabe earlier, and he is really a stickler forgetting
the facts right about transformers and all of toys and
toy history. And so just to make sure we know
you didn't transform your transformers, you converted them. I think
we've gone to a new level of nerd here.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But that is the fact.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Why why did I convert them?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, one of the weirdest things I learned this week
is that Hasbro, the company that makes Transformers, purposely avoids
using the verb transform when you know, referring to their
products because they don't want to risk genericizing their trademark.
It's like how Escalator used to be the registered brand name,
but then the term became so common that people started
calling every set of moving stairs and escalator. So it's
(04:57):
just really hard to maintain a trademark the protection around
that once the public starts treating your brand name generically.
So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Like Xerox. It's funny my my uncle's firm in India
actually made a campaign with the slogan was make your
Xerox on an HP.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
This is pretty great.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, and I guess it's a problem more when the
brand name is a straight up description of what your
product does. Like you can't trademark an electric mixing machine
as a blender because that's what it does. It blends
food together. So the same story with escalators, and it
could be argued with transformers too.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So Hasbro wants to make sure that people associate transformers
with a specific set of characters and not with like
gobots or any other transforming toys in general.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yeah, that's exactly right, And part of maintaining that tricky
legal distinction is never admitting that transformers transform, so we
will not get them in trouble by saying that, and
I'm sure it is a challenge for the marketing team
that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Anyway, I know you've got the backstory on these converting
robots that we refer to as Transformers, so why don't
you lay it on us?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
This was a fun origin here, so to start with,
it's easy to overlook this if you aren't familiar with
the series, But Transformers isn't a purely American invention. The
original nineteen eighties toy line was largely made up of
pre existing products from several different Japanese toy lines, most
notably Diaclone and micro Change.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You know both of these, right, Yeah, I'm a huge
Diaclone head. Of course, I have no idea what you're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, I didn't either.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It was part of the research, but it was interesting
to look into. So Japan was way ahead of the
curve when it came to thinking robots were cool. And
that's because, unlike the US and other Western nations, Japan
had been developing robotic inventions as far back as this
seventeenth century, which for reference, was about three hundred years
before the term robot was first coined. So the earliest
(06:56):
automatons on record in Japan were these tea serving mechanical
dolls that could wheel a cup and saucer back and
forth from the kitchen, and they were a huge hit
with a few wealthy families who could afford them, and
before long, clockwork automatons began popping up in stage productions
and other forms of entertainment that were much more accessible
(07:17):
to the masses. So you fast forward to the early
twentieth century and Japan was already well acquainted with the
idea of robots, far more so than most Western countries
at the time. Then, during the Atomic Age, the idea
of super robots sparked a cultural craze in Japan, and
these colorful robotic warriors began to dominate the manga stories,
(07:38):
the anime shows, and eventually the nation's toy ales.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
That's really funny, Like you think about that magazine Giant
Robot that used to exist. That's all about Japanese culture,
So it's kind of that's about their linked. I'd heard
that the first couple of decades after World War Two
actually were like a golden age of toys in Japan,
which is obviously not what you'd expect since the atomic
bombings destroyed some to the country.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, that's true, But the Japanese people were very resourceful,
like they realized there was plenty of ten lying around
from the Allied soldiers ration cans, and by recycling that metal,
they were able to produce inexpensive toys that got the
industry up and running pretty quickly, and in fact, the
sales of those toys actually helped the Japanese population bounce
back much faster than it otherwise would have, because once
(08:23):
US soldiers saw the innovative and affordable toys that were
being produced there, they started buying them up and sending
them back home to the States, and it was that
enthusiasm that eventually led to Japan being authorized to sell
toys in the global market, which means that toys were
actually the country's first real export following it surrender in
nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Were these metal toys mostly robots then, I.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Mean there were lots of wind up toys, but also
a lot of vehicles. And as time went on, production
methods improved and more materials became available, but robots and
vehicles remained the lifeblood of this industry. Started to pair
the two categories together in different ways. Sometimes the robot
came with their own vehicles to ride in, and other
(09:07):
cases a fleet of non transforming vehicles could be combined
together to form kind of like a giant robot. But
it wasn't until the mid nineteen seventies that the Japanese
toy companies in Takara, they began to push the marriage
even further by making robot figures that could convert into vehicles,
and it was the best of both worlds in a
(09:27):
single toy, and kids just went nuts for them.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
So these early transforming robot toys sound great, but they
still weren't technically transformers.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right, Yeah, they were both toy lines from a company
I mentioned earlier called Takara. So back in the nineteen seventies,
Takara found success with a series called Microman, which centered
on a race of tiny cybernetic spacemen who had come
to protect the Earth from an alien invasion. And they
came with all these interchangeable accessories that could be put
together in all sorts of ways, and you would build
(09:58):
these vehicles and robots for the little guys to pilot. So,
after a couple of years of success, the designers at
Takara decided to launch a spin offline and that would
focus more on transforming robot toys rather than the spacemen,
and the resulting series was called Diaclone, which is a
combination of the words diamond and cyclone.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Which sounds like those diamond storms where rains diamonds on
Neptune or Jupiter, which is just an incredible phenomena.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But you know, these toys were small, like. They consisted
of tiny little robots that transformed into these futuristic vehicles
and sci fi fortresses which the new even smaller micromen
could interact with.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Which sounds fun. But it still feels a bit off
from the Transformers.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We know, Yeah, we just you know, it's evolution.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
It takes a little time. We're working our way there.
It wouldn't be as exciting if it just happened over night.
And this is still the nineteen seventies, all right. So
fast forward nineteen eighty two, just two years before the
Transformers first came out to Car release the line called
Car Robots, and unlike all the transforming toys that came
before it, these ones converted into real life cars and
(11:07):
trucks instead of made up sci fi vehicles.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So do you know why they decided to move from
sci fi into something that was a little more realistic.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, I mean sometimes these kinds of things come from
the preferences of those who are working on this stuff
like this came from the head designer, a guy named
kojin Ono, and he thought it would be more fun
for kids if they were playing with the kinds of
vehicles you might see in real life. Of course, there
was a little in fighting among the group there, and
other members of the team weren't quite convinced, but when
(11:36):
the sales department backed up Ono's ideas, the company decided
to give it a try. But if you're wondering why
the sales team felt confident, Ono recently offered an explanation
during a twenty twenty four interview with Figure King magazine.
The sixty five year old designer, who still works it
to Kara, by the way, told the interviewer quote, there
(11:57):
was a part conveniently located right in front of our company,
allowing us to easily conduct surveys of children. Of course,
nowadays such practices would be an absolute no no from
a compliance standpoint, But as I mentioned earlier, there's a
certain persuasiveness in directly hearing from children. Their enthusiastic support
played a pivotal role in propelling us forward, and that's
(12:18):
what led them to making these toys that could transform
into real cars.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, so now we've got transforming robots that turn into
these realistic looking vehicles. But we've got to be getting
close to the capital t transformers.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, Yep, we are almost there.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
In fact, a lot of figures that were designed for
car robots in the early eighties were the same ones
that would later be repurposed actually as the original Transformers toys. So,
for example, the first one that cojin Ono designed was
this red super tuning Lamborghini, which was later released in
nineteen eighty four as a yellow autobot sports car named Sunstreaker.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And so what about all the other early transformers that
don't turn into cars and trucks, Like I know, there
were also mechanical animals and dinabots. And wasn't there even
one that turned into like a handgun Megatron?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I think that's exactly right, Megatron.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Good memory, Mango. And so in one of the universes,
he turns into a Walter p. Thirty eight pistol, which
is really embarrassing that you didn't know that, But actually
I only know that because of Gabe once again coming
to the rescue here. But no, you're right, they really
left no stone unturned when choosing the figures alt modes,
which by the way, is the official term for the
(13:32):
non primary mode of a Transformer.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I love that we have all the jargon down thanks
to Gabe.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, he insisted. I slipped that in there.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So just to recap here, like, Takara had a bunch
of standalone toy lines in Japan which contributed to elements
of what would become Transformers, but none of those treated
the robots as distinct characters. And then what Hasbro comes
in and ditches the spacemen and makes the robots the
stars of the show is not what happens.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
That's basically right. So Takara struggled to find a foothold
in the crowded American market, but then in nineteen eighty
three their products caught the eye of a Hasbro representative,
and this was at the Tokyo Toy Show. So the
rep brought back some sample figures, and before the year
was out, Hasbro had signed a contract with Takara to
license the figures for the US market, but the next
(14:20):
step was figuring out how to rebrand the toys for
an American audience. Hasbro's partner in the task was an
advertising agency called Griffin Bacall, who had helped develop Gi Joe,
and it was the ad firm's idea to combine Takara's
various toy lines under one umbrella and to make the
robots the main characters. The company also suggested having the
robots be sentient aliens rather than just accessories to the spacemen,
(14:45):
and proposed splitting them into two rival factions to create
a bit of built in conflict. Hence the heroic autobots
and the evil Dysepticons first time we mentioned them in
this episode. I can't believe it took us this long.
A git there, but lastly, the all import named Transformers
was contributed by j Baccall, the son of the company
chairman Joe Bacall.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Okay, so the ad agency comes up with the bones
of the story, these two warring factions of alien robots,
But who actually ends up filling in the details here?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
That job actually fell to the writers and editors at
Marvel Comics, who had already helped Hasbro flesh out the
world of Gi Joe just a few years earlier. The
original story treatment was written by Marvel editor in chief
Jim Shooter, and it explained that the Transformers had been
locked in a civil war fighting for control of their
home planet, Cybertron, for millions of years. Millions of year,
(15:38):
that's a long war. The constant fighting had left the
planet in ruins and almost completely devoid of eon, which
is the life blood or fuel that powers both the
robots and the planet itself. So the two factions left
their home world in search of news sources of energy,
only to crash land on prehistoric Earth. So they spent
(15:59):
the next four million years than the side of a mountain. Then,
after being awakened by a volcanic eruption in nineteen eighty four,
they adopted the forms of Earth's machines and resumed their
endless war once again.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
I mean, it's a great soap opera, but it is
interesting that Shooter framed this conflict does a struggle for
resources right.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
It's also interesting that he drew his inspiration from real life,
like specifically the energy crisis of the nineteen seventies, So
in his conception, the difference between the two factions was
what they planned to do with the energy.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
That they collected.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
So you have the Autobots that just wanted to restore
their home planet and live in peace, but those evil Decepticons,
like they wanted to conquer other planets and then create
an empire. Of course, it is worth noting, though, that
Shooter's treatment left plenty of room for future writers to
deepen that mythos.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So did Shooter's treatment delve into all the character names
and backstories because I actually, like separately, was looking up
the earlier trends and they were like thirty different characters
released in just the first year of the toy line.
Like that is so many bios to write.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be a pretty
tall order for just one person, And that's probably why
Jim Shooter decided to hand the job off to somebody else.
It was a Marvel writer named Danny O'Neill who came
up with the name Optimus Prime, but the rest of
the original cast was developed by an editor named Bob Budianski,
and he was just given a few days to come
up with the names. Personalities, powers, weaknesses, and even personal
(17:31):
mottos of dozens of different robots. That's a ton of
pressure and nothing to go on except the toys themselves.
And to make the assignment that much harder, his deadline
was set for the Monday after Thanksgiving. I mean, how
cruel is that? It just seems like the way that
it works, I guess. But Bob rose to the challenge,
and the work he did over that long, long weekend
(17:52):
became the basis for the four issue comic mini series
that launched the franchise later that year, and he came
up with some real heavy hitters. He had Bumblebee, Starscream, Megatron. Also,
his work didn't go unnoticed. Bob is only one of
four human inductees into the Transformers Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I was not familiar with the fact that they have
their own Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yah. Pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Well, I want to switch gears and talk a little
bit more about the lore of Transformers, but first let's
take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Welcome back to Part time Genius.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Okay, Mango, So we're in the weird wide world of Transformers,
and I'm curious where do you want to go next?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Since you gave us the real life history of Transformers.
I thought i'd share a little bit about the origin
story in the Transformers universe because it's actually pretty strange
and like surprisingly spiritual, because transformers have souls.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I took I think two philosophy courses in college, and
neither of those covered this, and so I'm curious to
learn about it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, I mean, for the amount of money we paid,
it shouldn't have. But in the transformer's lore, they all
have something called sparks, like the spark of life, and
unlike most conceptions of a human soul, a transformer spark
is a tangible object, so it's kind of like an organ.
It is a weird idea, but Gabe pointed me to
a nice explainer from tfwiki dot net, which he assured
(19:36):
me is the foremost Transformers wiki on the internet.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
No, I'm definitely familiar. I forgot to put my phone
on do not Disturb the other night, and I just
kept getting text with these links to the information on
that on Gabe. So let's go ahead and share what
you've learned here.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Okay, So tf wiki rights quote, the spark is the
core of Transformer life and electrically charged massive positrons formed
from the supernatural absence known as rarefied energy. On like
a heart, a spark pulses at a certain frequency to
animate a mechanical body frame like a soul. A spark
is generally accepted to contain some part of a Transformer's
(20:12):
immaterial being, which persists after death by transcending into the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
So you're saying in Transformers, there's a robot heaven too, like,
is there a robot god who made them all?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I am so glad that my kids never asked me that,
because I would not have been prepared. But just like
in the real world, the answer kind of depends on
who you ask. So if you go back to the
first Transformer story ever published, that Marvel comic that uh
Boudianski worked on, the origin story is completely secular, right, Like,
so life on Cybertron springs up through the naturally occurring
(20:48):
interaction of gears, levers, and pulleys, which you know is
kind of a silly idea, but I also love it.
But then in later comic books and the cartoon series,
and now actually with the latest movie, the creation of
the Transformers is credited to a deity and fittingly, his
name is Primus, which is just a Latin word for
first and as the story goes, he started out as
(21:11):
this ancient ethereal entity, kind of like a cosmic ghost.
But then Primus decided to lay down some roots by
joining his essence to a barren, metal rich planet, as
you do, and then by imbuing each Transformer with a
piece of his essence.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
And I'm guessing that's what a spark is, right.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, They're all little pieces of Primus, which, by the way,
is also why they have the power to transform. It's
a reflection of his ability to change form, like how
he became their planet. And when a Transformer dies, it's
spark is set to rejoin with Primus's life force, which
they call the all Spark.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
This is bizarrely fascinating, but it's also starting to feel
a little bit like I'm being inducted into a cult,
So I want to be a little careful here, but
do keep going.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's fascinating, Yeah, I mean, I do think The lower
highlights one of the most unique things about the Transformers,
which is that these aren't machines built by humans or aliens. Instead,
they are the aliens, with their own unique culture and background.
Which you know, is fertile ground for sci fi storytelling.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
It's a good point, and with the deep dive we
took this week, it does seem like Transformers comics and
cartoons have been mining that potential for a while now.
It's just interesting that the same can't be said for
all of the live action movies, which are probably the
version of the franchise that most people are familiar with.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Now, yeah, seven live action movies. There are five directed
by Michael Bay. In particular, these movies are a huge
outlier from everything else we've been talking about, Like for fans,
the robots in the series are mostly interchangeable, with no
real time spent on developing them as unique characters or
even giving them much agency in the story. Instead, it's
(22:50):
the human characters who get most of the screen time,
with the Transformers mostly just suiting up when it's time
for one of those big, messy action sequences.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Well, and if you talk to fans of Transformers, and
I was asking a few of their thoughts on the
movies themselves, they would say, you know, to make matters worse,
the stuff with the human characters is at best completely uninteresting,
and it worst painfully dumb. Not exactly a great review there,
and there isn't much in these movies that they would
actually consider suitable for children. So, for example, the absolute
(23:22):
low point they would say has to be in the
fourth movie, Transformer's Age of Extinction. It's got this whole
scene dedicated to a twenty year old human character explaining
why it's legal for him to date a seventeen year
old girl due to Texas's Romeo and Juliette law. So
we started to get a little weird here. I know,
he even pulls out a laminated card to prove that
(23:44):
his relationship is approved by the state.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It's just weird that it goes in that direction.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
That is insane. Kay was actually telling me that the
whole thing is kind of ironic because Transformers comics have
all these big philosophical ideas baked into their storytelling and
they wrestle with like concepts of God or evolution or whatever.
But to make the movie more appealing to adults, fans
think that they dumbed down the adaptations, which is kind
(24:10):
of amazing actually yea, also for super fans, the live
action stuff never looked right apparently, and I didn't realize this.
Producer said the traditional BLOCKI designs of the Transformers in
their robot moods would look silly for the two thousand
and seven live action movie that Michael Bay did, so
they were redesigned to be much more visually complicated, with
(24:30):
lots of like shifting panels and tiny moving details, which
is obviously visually interesting, but that makes the characters look
virtually unrecognizable, which obviously didn't please fans. Also, their robots
were dumbed down. In the comics, Optimus Prime's motto is
freedom is the right of all sentient beings and he
only turns to violence as a last resort, right, like
(24:53):
that's his whole ethos. But in these movies he's a
bloodthirsty robot shouting out lines like we will kill them
all and give me your face, which is a real.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
You don't think that's a sophisticated and tenidating line. That's
not quite the same vibe.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
It's sort of paraphrasing mlkay.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Definitely, yes, yeah, yeah, I remember that one, but you know,
it's not quite the same vibe as the old motto.
And I'm curious, though, did you get a sense of
how the Transformers fandom responded to those kinds of changes.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, it's deeply polarizing. A lot of fans were unhappy
to see the characters treated as these one note killing machines,
and all of them suddenly were clarifying online that there
were fans of Transformers but not the live action movies.
There's actually a joke that referenced a lot about how
bad these movies are within the community. And it's from
the good place. You know that sitcom course, love that
(25:45):
show and Ted Danson's character tries out a new scent
of Acts deodorant, which supposedly makes you feel the way
that Transformers movies make you feel loud and confusing.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
I love that they threw that line on there, But
clearly somebody liked these movies though, right, Like they seem
to be super successful and they keep making them.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Oh man, they were massive, like the Bay movies made
so much money, and they made the Transformers culturally relevant again,
like in a way it hadn't been since the nineteen eighties. Also,
they serve as an entry point for a whole new
generation of fans, both kids and adults. You know, some
of the people in the community say, even if you
don't like the movies, it's a great way to get
people into Transformers, and they're okay with that. Just to
(26:28):
show you the difference though, like between the high minded
concepts versus the gory action. The comics that came out
at the same time as the Bay movies were dealing
with questions about the nature of war, societal expectations, PTSD,
and gender dysphoria like all while positioning it in this
like fun sci fi romp. So for fans of the comics,
(26:51):
the new animated movie is more akin to what they like,
since there are no annoying humans to steal the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
All right, Well, for the sake of all the Gabes
of the world, I hope we got all of the
lore and myths right because otherwise our moms are going
to get some angry letters, and they're always good at
responding very calmly to those. But let's hope they only
get positive notes this week.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm sure they can handle it. But before we say
anything even more inflammatory or get our moms in trouble,
let's start the BacT off. Okay, So here's a weird
one to start us off. It turns out that Transformers
has an odd connection to the nineteen eighty eruption of
(27:35):
the Mount Saint Helen's volcano in Washington State. Namely, it
helped inspire the story of how the robots first came
to Earth. So in the Marvel comic that you mentioned,
the Transformers spaceship crashes into the side of a dormant
volcano called Mount Saint Hilary, which is a made up
peak that was said to reside in Oregon, just outside
of Portland, and the real world inspiration is easy enough
(27:57):
to spot, but it's even more explicit in the original
story treatment. And that's because the volcano was actually called
Mount Saint Helen's. The change was likely made out of
respect for the victims and because you know, they're trying
to market toy robots to children.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's good call, all right.
So we talked about how the original Transformers toy line
was cobbled together from existing to car products. But something
cool I found this week is that TAKR is still
very much involved in the brand. Once the series took
off in the US, TAKR actually imported it back to Japan,
essentially re releasing their old toys in new packaging. The
(28:34):
line became such a big hit there that once Hasbro
ran out of existing toys to release his Transformers, the
two companies began working together to produce new ones. The
result is one of the toy industry's most unique and
long lasting partnerships, because even though they're on opposite sides
of the world, the two companies now collaborate on every
aspect of figure design development, with the Hasbro team handling
(28:56):
the character selection and the concept design and the Kara
doing the heavy lifting on figuring out the engineering and
how the toy will actually transform or actually, excuse me, convert.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
That is so cool that they're like still working together,
you know.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It really is, you think of It is like such
a competitive space and the fact that they're collaborating is awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah. So, as strange as the franchise is sometimes, it
has attracted so much celebrity talent over the years, and
the list of actors who lent their voices to Transformers
includes everyone from Weird al Yankovitch, Steve Sheemi, Angela Bassett,
Leonard Nimoy, and Lawrence Fishburn. But the biggest talent to
ever voice a Transformer is, of course, the late great
(29:40):
Orson Wells and This was back in nineteen eighty six,
when the first animated Transformers movie was coming out and
Wells was cast as the movies big bad transformer named Unicorn.
Wells's career had been in a downturn for many years
by that point, which is obviously why he agreed to
the role. But Unicron turned out to be his final
film performance, which he hadn't been expecting before he passed
(30:03):
away just one week after recording his lines. He spoke
out about the role, making it clear how much contempt
he had for the whole production. So this is his
quote and what he told the press. You know what
I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy,
some terrible robot toys from Japan that change from one
thing to another. Japanese have funded a full length animated
(30:24):
cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all
bad outer space stuff. I play a planet I menace,
somebody calls something or other, then I'm destroyed. My plan
is to destroy whoever it is is thwarted and I
tear myself apart on the screen.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Is so great.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I've never heard that before, but I love that, so
I agree. I know it really is, and I love it.
I love every word of it, all right. So there
are thousands of different transformers at this point. Most of
them have their own unique names, and let me tell you,
they get so much weirder than Bumblebee. So here are
a few of my favorites. You've got Power Hug, who
turns into an organic pill bug. You've got Cup with
(31:03):
a K who turns into a pickup truck. You get
it where that comes from. And Tarantulus, who, despite having
the word tarantulas and his name, actually transforms into a
generic spider and not a tarantula.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I don't know why. It's kind of confusing.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
And there's also a cross section of transformers with oddly
inappropriate sounding names. You've got Randy the Wild Boar, You've
got Big Daddy, who's actually a tiny hot rod, a
pair of trucks called Huffer and Puffer. And then, last,
but not least, you've got Master Dominus, who transforms into
the bones of a mastodon or wooly mammoth.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's so reirdly he transforms just as the bones, but
just the bones. I am surprised you didn't include my
favorite weird transformer name, Steve from Accounting.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So there's a character called Steve from Accounting Yeah and.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Fly he transforms into a stapler. Is that amazing?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
That is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Got a same ango between the Steve from Accounting fact
and the orson Wells one. I just can't stop thinking
about that quote. I'm gonna have to give you today's
fact off.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So congrats, well, thank you. No, obviously I watched Transformers
as a kid. You watch them. We love the toys.
We were vaguely aware of some of the stuff before
the show, but Gabe is obviously the powerhouse span here
who applied us with all the research. And also, Gabe
maybe promise to mention this if anyone is interested in
(32:27):
really falling down the Transformers rabbit hole with him. Tfwiki
dot net is a great place to start. And he
says that there is a YouTube series by an Irish
fan named Chris mcpheeley. It's called Transformers the Basics and
Gabe highly recommends it.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
That is pretty awesome. I love it when our team
members just get to dig in on things that they're
passionate about and prepare for episodes like this. It's what
it's all about, that celebration of knowledge and all the
fun stuff that's out there.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Too, weirdness and weirdness.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
We love that part too, but I think that covers it.
For today's Part Time Genius from Mango Gay, Mary, Dylan
and Me, Thanks as always for listening. We'll see you
next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongagetikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social
(33:42):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Vinie Shoy.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
So you know that impulse when you pass an electric
fan and no one is around and you just want
to lean in and say more than meets the eye.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm not sure if you know what I was doing
for the ten minutes before you got in here, But
do you mean like this more than.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That impulse is officially forty years old. Wow, so Transformers
might have a new movie out, but they are old,
baby like, these toys are elder millennials, meaning we would
have been about five when the first ones came out.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
That is crazy, which would have given us plenty of
time to spend chanting more than meets the eye into
household appliances everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Household applian. It's like a toaster or whatever. You know,
Transformers or for everyone these days. But there are about
two dozen different product lines and the first movie was
directed by Michael Bay that broke the box offices all
from these toys that had us like crunching tiny pterodactyls
into the shape of cassette tapes.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Wait, is that is that a real transformer or did
you just make that up?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, it's totally real. My aunt, when I was in
fourth grade as a birthday president, took me to Toys r
US and let me pick out anything, and so I
picked out these tiny mini cassette Transformers. And our fact checker,
slash researcher and resident Transformers guru Gabe said it was
not a pterodactyl. It was a falcon or a condor.
So I've already been fact checked, just as his intro.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah, you want to get that wrong with Gabe, but.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It was rad Anyway, Today's episode is a dive back
into the world of Transformers. How did these incredible toys
come to be? And why is it that kids still
can't get nothing them? So let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketter and on the other side of
that soundproof glass trying and sadly failing to convert a transformer.
That's our friend and producer Dylan fag And he's good
at a lot of things, but this is something he's
not so great at, and I don't know, if you
(02:41):
can see it from our angle, mango, But he's sweating
and he's playing pump up music to get him through
it all. And I say that with no judgment, by
the way, like Dylan showed me the instruction sheet and
it takes forty steps to wrestle that thing into a truck.
So he's really got his work cut out for him.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, I am rooting for him, as I always But well,
I know we were both into basketball and the Lakers
as kids. We were both into SNL pretty early because
of our dads. But was transformer or something you were into?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Oh, it was one hundred percent something I was into. Now,
I didn't always know what I was talking about. In fact,
to this day, if I were to tell my parents
we were doing an episode on the Transformers, they would
say more to Measdi. Because I would run around the
house pretending to be a Transformer. I had no idea
what the theme song said, and in my mind they
said more to Measdi, and so I just sang along
(03:32):
with it. So it meant something to me, and that's
what's most important.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
But how about you, Yeah, I mean, I remember when
I was like five or six, living in North Carolina.
It was the one cartoon that I'd watched religiously in
the afternoons. I was not into G I. Joe, which
I think was the thing that came on after, but
I was obsessed with Transformers. I love the toys and
just the idea that you could get your hands on
(03:56):
a robot and not know what it would transform into
until you like bent and twisted it into all these
different directions and then you'd be like totally delighted by
whatever return to you, like, even if it was a van.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
You know, you've never been so delighted to play with
a van. But just as it adds up, so you
mentioned Gabe earlier, and he is really a stickler forgetting
the facts right about transformers and all of toys and
toy history. And so just to make sure we know
you didn't transform your transformers, you converted them. I think
we've gone to a new level of nerd here.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But that is the fact.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Why why did I convert them?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Well, one of the weirdest things I learned this week
is that Hasbro, the company that makes Transformers, purposely avoids
using the verb transform when you know, referring to their
products because they don't want to risk genericizing their trademark.
It's like how Escalator used to be the registered brand name,
but then the term became so common that people started
calling every set of moving stairs and escalator. So it's
(04:57):
just really hard to maintain a trademark the protection around
that once the public starts treating your brand name generically.
So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Like Xerox. It's funny my my uncle's firm in India
actually made a campaign with the slogan was make your
Xerox on an HP.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
This is pretty great.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, and I guess it's a problem more when the
brand name is a straight up description of what your
product does. Like you can't trademark an electric mixing machine
as a blender because that's what it does. It blends
food together. So the same story with escalators, and it
could be argued with transformers too.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
So Hasbro wants to make sure that people associate transformers
with a specific set of characters and not with like
gobots or any other transforming toys in general.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Yeah, that's exactly right, And part of maintaining that tricky
legal distinction is never admitting that transformers transform, so we
will not get them in trouble by saying that, and
I'm sure it is a challenge for the marketing team
that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Anyway, I know you've got the backstory on these converting
robots that we refer to as Transformers, so why don't
you lay it on us?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
This was a fun origin here, so to start with,
it's easy to overlook this if you aren't familiar with
the series, But Transformers isn't a purely American invention. The
original nineteen eighties toy line was largely made up of
pre existing products from several different Japanese toy lines, most
notably Diaclone and micro Change.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You know both of these, right, Yeah, I'm a huge
Diaclone head. Of course, I have no idea what you're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, I didn't either.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It was part of the research, but it was interesting
to look into. So Japan was way ahead of the
curve when it came to thinking robots were cool. And
that's because, unlike the US and other Western nations, Japan
had been developing robotic inventions as far back as this
seventeenth century, which for reference, was about three hundred years
before the term robot was first coined. So the earliest
(06:56):
automatons on record in Japan were these tea serving mechanical
dolls that could wheel a cup and saucer back and
forth from the kitchen, and they were a huge hit
with a few wealthy families who could afford them, and
before long, clockwork automatons began popping up in stage productions
and other forms of entertainment that were much more accessible
(07:17):
to the masses. So you fast forward to the early
twentieth century and Japan was already well acquainted with the
idea of robots, far more so than most Western countries
at the time. Then, during the Atomic Age, the idea
of super robots sparked a cultural craze in Japan, and
these colorful robotic warriors began to dominate the manga stories,
(07:38):
the anime shows, and eventually the nation's toy ales.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
That's really funny, Like you think about that magazine Giant
Robot that used to exist. That's all about Japanese culture,
So it's kind of that's about their linked. I'd heard
that the first couple of decades after World War Two
actually were like a golden age of toys in Japan,
which is obviously not what you'd expect since the atomic
bombings destroyed some to the country.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, that's true, But the Japanese people were very resourceful,
like they realized there was plenty of ten lying around
from the Allied soldiers ration cans, and by recycling that metal,
they were able to produce inexpensive toys that got the
industry up and running pretty quickly, and in fact, the
sales of those toys actually helped the Japanese population bounce
back much faster than it otherwise would have, because once
(08:23):
US soldiers saw the innovative and affordable toys that were
being produced there, they started buying them up and sending
them back home to the States, and it was that
enthusiasm that eventually led to Japan being authorized to sell
toys in the global market, which means that toys were
actually the country's first real export following it surrender in
nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Were these metal toys mostly robots then, I.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Mean there were lots of wind up toys, but also
a lot of vehicles. And as time went on, production
methods improved and more materials became available, but robots and
vehicles remained the lifeblood of this industry. Started to pair
the two categories together in different ways. Sometimes the robot
came with their own vehicles to ride in, and other
(09:07):
cases a fleet of non transforming vehicles could be combined
together to form kind of like a giant robot. But
it wasn't until the mid nineteen seventies that the Japanese
toy companies in Takara, they began to push the marriage
even further by making robot figures that could convert into vehicles,
and it was the best of both worlds in a
(09:27):
single toy, and kids just went nuts for them.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
So these early transforming robot toys sound great, but they
still weren't technically transformers.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right, Yeah, they were both toy lines from a company
I mentioned earlier called Takara. So back in the nineteen seventies,
Takara found success with a series called Microman, which centered
on a race of tiny cybernetic spacemen who had come
to protect the Earth from an alien invasion. And they
came with all these interchangeable accessories that could be put
together in all sorts of ways, and you would build
(09:58):
these vehicles and robots for the little guys to pilot. So,
after a couple of years of success, the designers at
Takara decided to launch a spin offline and that would
focus more on transforming robot toys rather than the spacemen,
and the resulting series was called Diaclone, which is a
combination of the words diamond and cyclone.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Which sounds like those diamond storms where rains diamonds on
Neptune or Jupiter, which is just an incredible phenomena.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But you know, these toys were small, like. They consisted
of tiny little robots that transformed into these futuristic vehicles
and sci fi fortresses which the new even smaller micromen
could interact with.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Which sounds fun. But it still feels a bit off
from the Transformers.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We know, Yeah, we just you know, it's evolution.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
It takes a little time. We're working our way there.
It wouldn't be as exciting if it just happened over night.
And this is still the nineteen seventies, all right. So
fast forward nineteen eighty two, just two years before the
Transformers first came out to Car release the line called
Car Robots, and unlike all the transforming toys that came
before it, these ones converted into real life cars and
(11:07):
trucks instead of made up sci fi vehicles.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So do you know why they decided to move from
sci fi into something that was a little more realistic.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, I mean sometimes these kinds of things come from
the preferences of those who are working on this stuff
like this came from the head designer, a guy named
kojin Ono, and he thought it would be more fun
for kids if they were playing with the kinds of
vehicles you might see in real life. Of course, there
was a little in fighting among the group there, and
other members of the team weren't quite convinced, but when
(11:36):
the sales department backed up Ono's ideas, the company decided
to give it a try. But if you're wondering why
the sales team felt confident, Ono recently offered an explanation
during a twenty twenty four interview with Figure King magazine.
The sixty five year old designer, who still works it
to Kara, by the way, told the interviewer quote, there
(11:57):
was a part conveniently located right in front of our company,
allowing us to easily conduct surveys of children. Of course,
nowadays such practices would be an absolute no no from
a compliance standpoint, But as I mentioned earlier, there's a
certain persuasiveness in directly hearing from children. Their enthusiastic support
played a pivotal role in propelling us forward, and that's
(12:18):
what led them to making these toys that could transform
into real cars.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, so now we've got transforming robots that turn into
these realistic looking vehicles. But we've got to be getting
close to the capital t transformers.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, Yep, we are almost there.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
In fact, a lot of figures that were designed for
car robots in the early eighties were the same ones
that would later be repurposed actually as the original Transformers toys. So,
for example, the first one that cojin Ono designed was
this red super tuning Lamborghini, which was later released in
nineteen eighty four as a yellow autobot sports car named Sunstreaker.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
And so what about all the other early transformers that
don't turn into cars and trucks, Like I know, there
were also mechanical animals and dinabots. And wasn't there even
one that turned into like a handgun Megatron?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I think that's exactly right, Megatron.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Good memory, Mango. And so in one of the universes,
he turns into a Walter p. Thirty eight pistol, which
is really embarrassing that you didn't know that, But actually
I only know that because of Gabe once again coming
to the rescue here. But no, you're right, they really
left no stone unturned when choosing the figures alt modes,
which by the way, is the official term for the
(13:32):
non primary mode of a Transformer.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I love that we have all the jargon down thanks
to Gabe.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, he insisted. I slipped that in there.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
So just to recap here, like, Takara had a bunch
of standalone toy lines in Japan which contributed to elements
of what would become Transformers, but none of those treated
the robots as distinct characters. And then what Hasbro comes
in and ditches the spacemen and makes the robots the
stars of the show is not what happens.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
That's basically right. So Takara struggled to find a foothold
in the crowded American market, but then in nineteen eighty
three their products caught the eye of a Hasbro representative,
and this was at the Tokyo Toy Show. So the
rep brought back some sample figures, and before the year
was out, Hasbro had signed a contract with Takara to
license the figures for the US market, but the next
(14:20):
step was figuring out how to rebrand the toys for
an American audience. Hasbro's partner in the task was an
advertising agency called Griffin Bacall, who had helped develop Gi Joe,
and it was the ad firm's idea to combine Takara's
various toy lines under one umbrella and to make the
robots the main characters. The company also suggested having the
robots be sentient aliens rather than just accessories to the spacemen,
(14:45):
and proposed splitting them into two rival factions to create
a bit of built in conflict. Hence the heroic autobots
and the evil Dysepticons first time we mentioned them in
this episode. I can't believe it took us this long.
A git there, but lastly, the all import named Transformers
was contributed by j Baccall, the son of the company
chairman Joe Bacall.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Okay, so the ad agency comes up with the bones
of the story, these two warring factions of alien robots,
But who actually ends up filling in the details here?
Speaker 3 (15:15):
That job actually fell to the writers and editors at
Marvel Comics, who had already helped Hasbro flesh out the
world of Gi Joe just a few years earlier. The
original story treatment was written by Marvel editor in chief
Jim Shooter, and it explained that the Transformers had been
locked in a civil war fighting for control of their
home planet, Cybertron, for millions of years. Millions of year,
(15:38):
that's a long war. The constant fighting had left the
planet in ruins and almost completely devoid of eon, which
is the life blood or fuel that powers both the
robots and the planet itself. So the two factions left
their home world in search of news sources of energy,
only to crash land on prehistoric Earth. So they spent
(15:59):
the next four million years than the side of a mountain. Then,
after being awakened by a volcanic eruption in nineteen eighty four,
they adopted the forms of Earth's machines and resumed their
endless war once again.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
I mean, it's a great soap opera, but it is
interesting that Shooter framed this conflict does a struggle for
resources right.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
It's also interesting that he drew his inspiration from real life,
like specifically the energy crisis of the nineteen seventies, So
in his conception, the difference between the two factions was
what they planned to do with the energy.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
That they collected.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
So you have the Autobots that just wanted to restore
their home planet and live in peace, but those evil Decepticons,
like they wanted to conquer other planets and then create
an empire. Of course, it is worth noting, though, that
Shooter's treatment left plenty of room for future writers to
deepen that mythos.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So did Shooter's treatment delve into all the character names
and backstories because I actually, like separately, was looking up
the earlier trends and they were like thirty different characters
released in just the first year of the toy line.
Like that is so many bios to write.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be a pretty
tall order for just one person, And that's probably why
Jim Shooter decided to hand the job off to somebody else.
It was a Marvel writer named Danny O'Neill who came
up with the name Optimus Prime, but the rest of
the original cast was developed by an editor named Bob Budianski,
and he was just given a few days to come
up with the names. Personalities, powers, weaknesses, and even personal
(17:31):
mottos of dozens of different robots. That's a ton of
pressure and nothing to go on except the toys themselves.
And to make the assignment that much harder, his deadline
was set for the Monday after Thanksgiving. I mean, how
cruel is that? It just seems like the way that
it works, I guess. But Bob rose to the challenge,
and the work he did over that long, long weekend
(17:52):
became the basis for the four issue comic mini series
that launched the franchise later that year, and he came
up with some real heavy hitters. He had Bumblebee, Starscream, Megatron. Also,
his work didn't go unnoticed. Bob is only one of
four human inductees into the Transformers Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I was not familiar with the fact that they have
their own Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yah. Pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Well, I want to switch gears and talk a little
bit more about the lore of Transformers, but first let's
take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Welcome back to Part time Genius.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Okay, Mango, So we're in the weird wide world of Transformers,
and I'm curious where do you want to go next?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Since you gave us the real life history of Transformers.
I thought i'd share a little bit about the origin
story in the Transformers universe because it's actually pretty strange
and like surprisingly spiritual, because transformers have souls.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
I took I think two philosophy courses in college, and
neither of those covered this, and so I'm curious to
learn about it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, I mean, for the amount of money we paid,
it shouldn't have. But in the transformer's lore, they all
have something called sparks, like the spark of life, and
unlike most conceptions of a human soul, a transformer spark
is a tangible object, so it's kind of like an organ.
It is a weird idea, but Gabe pointed me to
a nice explainer from tfwiki dot net, which he assured
(19:36):
me is the foremost Transformers wiki on the internet.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
No, I'm definitely familiar. I forgot to put my phone
on do not Disturb the other night, and I just
kept getting text with these links to the information on
that on Gabe. So let's go ahead and share what
you've learned here.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Okay, So tf wiki rights quote, the spark is the
core of Transformer life and electrically charged massive positrons formed
from the supernatural absence known as rarefied energy. On like
a heart, a spark pulses at a certain frequency to
animate a mechanical body frame like a soul. A spark
is generally accepted to contain some part of a Transformer's
(20:12):
immaterial being, which persists after death by transcending into the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
So you're saying in Transformers, there's a robot heaven too, like,
is there a robot god who made them all?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I am so glad that my kids never asked me that,
because I would not have been prepared. But just like
in the real world, the answer kind of depends on
who you ask. So if you go back to the
first Transformer story ever published, that Marvel comic that uh
Boudianski worked on, the origin story is completely secular, right, Like,
so life on Cybertron springs up through the naturally occurring
(20:48):
interaction of gears, levers, and pulleys, which you know is
kind of a silly idea, but I also love it.
But then in later comic books and the cartoon series,
and now actually with the latest movie, the creation of
the Transformers is credited to a deity and fittingly, his
name is Primus, which is just a Latin word for
first and as the story goes, he started out as
(21:11):
this ancient ethereal entity, kind of like a cosmic ghost.
But then Primus decided to lay down some roots by
joining his essence to a barren, metal rich planet, as
you do, and then by imbuing each Transformer with a
piece of his essence.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
And I'm guessing that's what a spark is, right.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, They're all little pieces of Primus, which, by the way,
is also why they have the power to transform. It's
a reflection of his ability to change form, like how
he became their planet. And when a Transformer dies, it's
spark is set to rejoin with Primus's life force, which
they call the all Spark.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
This is bizarrely fascinating, but it's also starting to feel
a little bit like I'm being inducted into a cult,
So I want to be a little careful here, but
do keep going.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's fascinating, Yeah, I mean, I do think The lower
highlights one of the most unique things about the Transformers,
which is that these aren't machines built by humans or aliens. Instead,
they are the aliens, with their own unique culture and background.
Which you know, is fertile ground for sci fi storytelling.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
It's a good point, and with the deep dive we
took this week, it does seem like Transformers comics and
cartoons have been mining that potential for a while now.
It's just interesting that the same can't be said for
all of the live action movies, which are probably the
version of the franchise that most people are familiar with.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Now, yeah, seven live action movies. There are five directed
by Michael Bay. In particular, these movies are a huge
outlier from everything else we've been talking about, Like for fans,
the robots in the series are mostly interchangeable, with no
real time spent on developing them as unique characters or
even giving them much agency in the story. Instead, it's
(22:50):
the human characters who get most of the screen time,
with the Transformers mostly just suiting up when it's time
for one of those big, messy action sequences.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Well, and if you talk to fans of Transformers, and
I was asking a few of their thoughts on the
movies themselves, they would say, you know, to make matters worse,
the stuff with the human characters is at best completely uninteresting,
and it worst painfully dumb. Not exactly a great review there,
and there isn't much in these movies that they would
actually consider suitable for children. So, for example, the absolute
(23:22):
low point they would say has to be in the
fourth movie, Transformer's Age of Extinction. It's got this whole
scene dedicated to a twenty year old human character explaining
why it's legal for him to date a seventeen year
old girl due to Texas's Romeo and Juliette law. So
we started to get a little weird here. I know,
he even pulls out a laminated card to prove that
(23:44):
his relationship is approved by the state.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
It's just weird that it goes in that direction.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
That is insane. Kay was actually telling me that the
whole thing is kind of ironic because Transformers comics have
all these big philosophical ideas baked into their storytelling and
they wrestle with like concepts of God or evolution or whatever.
But to make the movie more appealing to adults, fans
think that they dumbed down the adaptations, which is kind
(24:10):
of amazing actually yea, also for super fans, the live
action stuff never looked right apparently, and I didn't realize this.
Producer said the traditional BLOCKI designs of the Transformers in
their robot moods would look silly for the two thousand
and seven live action movie that Michael Bay did, so
they were redesigned to be much more visually complicated, with
(24:30):
lots of like shifting panels and tiny moving details, which
is obviously visually interesting, but that makes the characters look
virtually unrecognizable, which obviously didn't please fans. Also, their robots
were dumbed down. In the comics, Optimus Prime's motto is
freedom is the right of all sentient beings and he
only turns to violence as a last resort, right, like
(24:53):
that's his whole ethos. But in these movies he's a
bloodthirsty robot shouting out lines like we will kill them
all and give me your face, which is a real.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
You don't think that's a sophisticated and tenidating line. That's
not quite the same vibe.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
It's sort of paraphrasing mlkay.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Definitely, yes, yeah, yeah, I remember that one, but you know,
it's not quite the same vibe as the old motto.
And I'm curious, though, did you get a sense of
how the Transformers fandom responded to those kinds of changes.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, it's deeply polarizing. A lot of fans were unhappy
to see the characters treated as these one note killing machines,
and all of them suddenly were clarifying online that there
were fans of Transformers but not the live action movies.
There's actually a joke that referenced a lot about how
bad these movies are within the community. And it's from
the good place. You know that sitcom course, love that
(25:45):
show and Ted Danson's character tries out a new scent
of Acts deodorant, which supposedly makes you feel the way
that Transformers movies make you feel loud and confusing.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
I love that they threw that line on there, But
clearly somebody liked these movies though, right, Like they seem
to be super successful and they keep making them.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Oh man, they were massive, like the Bay movies made
so much money, and they made the Transformers culturally relevant again,
like in a way it hadn't been since the nineteen eighties. Also,
they serve as an entry point for a whole new
generation of fans, both kids and adults. You know, some
of the people in the community say, even if you
don't like the movies, it's a great way to get
people into Transformers, and they're okay with that. Just to
(26:28):
show you the difference though, like between the high minded
concepts versus the gory action. The comics that came out
at the same time as the Bay movies were dealing
with questions about the nature of war, societal expectations, PTSD,
and gender dysphoria like all while positioning it in this
like fun sci fi romp. So for fans of the comics,
(26:51):
the new animated movie is more akin to what they like,
since there are no annoying humans to steal the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
All right, Well, for the sake of all the Gabes
of the world, I hope we got all of the
lore and myths right because otherwise our moms are going
to get some angry letters, and they're always good at
responding very calmly to those. But let's hope they only
get positive notes this week.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm sure they can handle it. But before we say
anything even more inflammatory or get our moms in trouble,
let's start the BacT off. Okay, So here's a weird
one to start us off. It turns out that Transformers
has an odd connection to the nineteen eighty eruption of
(27:35):
the Mount Saint Helen's volcano in Washington State. Namely, it
helped inspire the story of how the robots first came
to Earth. So in the Marvel comic that you mentioned,
the Transformers spaceship crashes into the side of a dormant
volcano called Mount Saint Hilary, which is a made up
peak that was said to reside in Oregon, just outside
of Portland, and the real world inspiration is easy enough
(27:57):
to spot, but it's even more explicit in the original
story treatment. And that's because the volcano was actually called
Mount Saint Helen's. The change was likely made out of
respect for the victims and because you know, they're trying
to market toy robots to children.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's good call, all right.
So we talked about how the original Transformers toy line
was cobbled together from existing to car products. But something
cool I found this week is that TAKR is still
very much involved in the brand. Once the series took
off in the US, TAKR actually imported it back to Japan,
essentially re releasing their old toys in new packaging. The
(28:34):
line became such a big hit there that once Hasbro
ran out of existing toys to release his Transformers, the
two companies began working together to produce new ones. The
result is one of the toy industry's most unique and
long lasting partnerships, because even though they're on opposite sides
of the world, the two companies now collaborate on every
aspect of figure design development, with the Hasbro team handling
(28:56):
the character selection and the concept design and the Kara
doing the heavy lifting on figuring out the engineering and
how the toy will actually transform or actually, excuse me, convert.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
That is so cool that they're like still working together,
you know.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It really is, you think of It is like such
a competitive space and the fact that they're collaborating is awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah. So, as strange as the franchise is sometimes, it
has attracted so much celebrity talent over the years, and
the list of actors who lent their voices to Transformers
includes everyone from Weird al Yankovitch, Steve Sheemi, Angela Bassett,
Leonard Nimoy, and Lawrence Fishburn. But the biggest talent to
ever voice a Transformer is, of course, the late great
(29:40):
Orson Wells and This was back in nineteen eighty six,
when the first animated Transformers movie was coming out and
Wells was cast as the movies big bad transformer named Unicorn.
Wells's career had been in a downturn for many years
by that point, which is obviously why he agreed to
the role. But Unicron turned out to be his final
film performance, which he hadn't been expecting before he passed
(30:03):
away just one week after recording his lines. He spoke
out about the role, making it clear how much contempt
he had for the whole production. So this is his
quote and what he told the press. You know what
I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy,
some terrible robot toys from Japan that change from one
thing to another. Japanese have funded a full length animated
(30:24):
cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all
bad outer space stuff. I play a planet I menace,
somebody calls something or other, then I'm destroyed. My plan
is to destroy whoever it is is thwarted and I
tear myself apart on the screen.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Is so great.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I've never heard that before, but I love that, so
I agree. I know it really is, and I love it.
I love every word of it, all right. So there
are thousands of different transformers at this point. Most of
them have their own unique names, and let me tell you,
they get so much weirder than Bumblebee. So here are
a few of my favorites. You've got Power Hug, who
turns into an organic pill bug. You've got Cup with
(31:03):
a K who turns into a pickup truck. You get
it where that comes from. And Tarantulus, who, despite having
the word tarantulas and his name, actually transforms into a
generic spider and not a tarantula.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I don't know why. It's kind of confusing.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
And there's also a cross section of transformers with oddly
inappropriate sounding names. You've got Randy the Wild Boar, You've
got Big Daddy, who's actually a tiny hot rod, a
pair of trucks called Huffer and Puffer. And then, last,
but not least, you've got Master Dominus, who transforms into
the bones of a mastodon or wooly mammoth.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's so reirdly he transforms just as the bones, but
just the bones. I am surprised you didn't include my
favorite weird transformer name, Steve from Accounting.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
So there's a character called Steve from Accounting Yeah and.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Fly he transforms into a stapler. Is that amazing?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
That is fantastic.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Got a same ango between the Steve from Accounting fact
and the orson Wells one. I just can't stop thinking
about that quote. I'm gonna have to give you today's
fact off.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So congrats, well, thank you. No, obviously I watched Transformers
as a kid. You watch them. We love the toys.
We were vaguely aware of some of the stuff before
the show, but Gabe is obviously the powerhouse span here
who applied us with all the research. And also, Gabe
maybe promise to mention this if anyone is interested in
(32:27):
really falling down the Transformers rabbit hole with him. Tfwiki
dot net is a great place to start. And he
says that there is a YouTube series by an Irish
fan named Chris mcpheeley. It's called Transformers the Basics and
Gabe highly recommends it.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
That is pretty awesome. I love it when our team
members just get to dig in on things that they're
passionate about and prepare for episodes like this. It's what
it's all about, that celebration of knowledge and all the
fun stuff that's out there.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Too, weirdness and weirdness.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
We love that part too, but I think that covers it.
For today's Part Time Genius from Mango Gay, Mary, Dylan
and Me, Thanks as always for listening. We'll see you
next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongagetikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social
(33:42):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Vinie Shoy.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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