Greece

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a NATO member and nation in southeastern Europe, with a multitude of attached islands that we can't be bothered to list here. Its capital is Athens.

It had a very colourful mythology in ancient times, much of which has turned out to be true after all!

Oh, and it was also apparently annexed by Bulgaria at some point.

Fiction

Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Transformers cartoon

Not pictured.

The ancient Greek myth of Atlantis was based on a real sunken city. Atlantis, Arise!

Maps from the mid-'80s indicate that Greece has been conquered and absorbed into "Bulgalia". Trans-Europe Express

Super Spy Changers catalog

In 2002, Junko was having a vacation in Greece when the Mutant Burnout attempted to kidnap her! The attempt was thwarted by Super Eagle Killer. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/01

The Headmasters cartoon

By 2010, Greece had escaped the Bulgalian tyranny and was an independent state. It also suffered a minor Decepticon incursion, as they used Athens as a launch ground for a satellite. The Final Showdown on Earth (Part 1)

Super-God Masterforce cartoon

The Decepticon Pretender Dauros rampaged throughout Ancient Greece, leading to the myth of the minotaur.

Drinking game suggestion: Watch every piece of Transformers media and take a shot every time that "Atlantis is real" is a plot point.

Victory cartoon

The ancient Greek myth of Atlantis was based on a real sunken city. Probably the same one. The Terror of the Giant Tidal Waves

Unicron Trilogy cartoon continuity

Armada cartoon

The ancient Greek myth of Atlantis was based on a real sunken city. Again. Ruin

Cybertron cartoon

The ancient Greek myth of Atlantis was based on a real underwater spaceship. Also, the Sirens? Based on an ancient Decepticon. United

Unite for the Universe

Starscream operated out of a hidden base on the Greek island of Delos in the Aegean Sea as he worked to steal the results of NEST's Project: Unite. Bludgeon's Revenge

Prime cartoon

Observe to your left the ancient ruins and olive trees and please ignore the blurry robots.

At some point Cybertronians visited ancient Greece and left an Energon Harvester there. When Bulkhead and Miko paid a visit to check out an energon trace, they found an ancient fresco among ruins at a construction site, which featured the device. At some point the Harvester had been relocated to a museum in the U.S. and the Decepticons got their hands on it. Starscream took it back to Greece to test it out on the energon deposit there, however Bulkhead managed to break it, and it exploded in the sky over the site. Deus ex Machina

Ask Vector Prime

In some universal streams, the Thirteen visited ancient Greece. Because technology had not yet advanced to the point where the Thirteen could disguise themselves as machinery, they interacted with humans using holomatter avatars, which caused them to be interpreted as gods. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/07/20

2005 IDW continuity

In 2016, the Dire Wraiths attempted to procure a cache of Ore-13 from Mount Olympus, but Baron Karza's simultaneous unstable transport of the ore into Microspace caused a massive explosion. Concorde Hymn Shortly thereafter, Kup and Aileron arrived to investigate and were assaulted by M.A.S.K. in Athens, with Kup winding up captured. The Divine Source of Liberty Action Man Programme agent Terrence Salmons recovered footage of the incident from a surveillance camera, prompting Action Man to head to Governor's Island. The Modern World

A group of Dire Wraiths formed an anarchist movement in Greece under the Cobra banner, which Lady Jaye and Gung-Ho were sent to deal with. G.I. Joe vol. 5 #3

Transformers in Greece

Hi, I have a slightly different shade of yellow. Buy me.

Transformers media arrived relatively late to Greece with the original cartoon only premiering on TV network MEGA Channel in 1991 <ref>A YouTube channel featuring multiple episodes of the Greek Transformers G1 dub, as well as some adverts and toy commercials</ref>, coinciding with a boom in popularity for the franchise across Europe during this time. Panini would also release The Transformers Sticker Book in the country, albeit it's unknown whether it was released before or after the show (the sticker album was originally produced in 1986 but it would only release in some regions all the way into the 90s) <ref>An Ebay listing for the Greek version of the Panini album</ref>. At this moment, there isn't any known Greek release of the original comic.

Greece would, however; get the Transformers toyline quite a few years before the cartoon in 1986, and in a pretty unique fashion: national toy manufacturer El Greco scored the rights from Hasbro to nationally manufacture and distribute their own copies of Transformers figures, which resulted in a handful of Mini-Vehicles with different color tones (which can mostly be attributed to their use of different plastics), as well as some alternative paint applications, slightly altered sticker designs, and the lack of either any faction insignia or rubsigns. The blister cards for these figures were also fully translated into Greek and featured unique regional names for the characters, with Huffer earning the name "Gígantas", Powerglide earning the name "Keravnόs", Seaspray earning the name "Thalassόlykos", and so on <ref>"Oh, Greece..." from Fred's Workshop</ref>.

A later quirk of Transformers distribution in Greece during the 90s was the bundling of figures alongside Easter candles, a practice first done by El Greco while the Generation 1 line was still ongoing and later adopted by Hasbro with some Beast Wars toys seeing a similar arrangement <ref>A handful of El Greco G1 figures packed alongside Easter candles: Link 1 (First Aid) Link 2 (Streetwise) Link 3 (Dead End)</ref>. Greek apparel brand Paxos has also made some Transformers merchandise over the years, mostly of the school supply variety - the most distinctively quirky amongst these being a 1992 pencil case with art of Overlord in bright green, blue, and pink <ref>A listing for Paxos's weird off-color Overlord pencil case</ref>. And you thought only bootlegs were allowed to have funky colors!

Given the popularity of Greek mythology, it might not be much of a surprise that various Transformers characters have been named after characters and concepts derived from it, albeit adjusted to the Latin spelling, like Hades, Proteus, Amphitrite, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Momus. Plenty of Transformer names also integrate the Greek alphabet (e.g.; Alpha Trion, Beta, Delta Magnus, Zeta Prime, Omega Supreme, etc), and the Lithones derive their name from the ancient Greek word for stone (λίθος, "lithos").

Notable people

• Giannis Milonogiannis, a Greek comic book artist who's been involved with some Transformers projects.
• Nick Abadzis, a British-born Transformers comic book artist with Greek ancestry.

Notes

Better than nothing, we suppose.

• The aforementioned seeming occupation of Greece on part of Bulgaria is, of course, almost certainly the product of a geographical error on part of the cartoonist who drew the aforementioned map and forgot to separate both countries (this same map is filled with a number of other absurd European geography blunders). It would only be until Transformers: Prime in 2011 when a correct map of Greece would appear in Transformers media.

References

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External links

• [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Greece|{{#if:||Greece}}]] at Wikipedia
• Greek Transformers!