Have the Decepticons defeated us once and for all?

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That's not how you use a phone, Johnny.
"Have the Decepticons defeated us once and for all?"
Publisher	Hasbro
Cover date	1985
Art by	Mark Watts, possibly others

"Have the Decepticons defeated us once and for all?" is one in a series of mail-order flyers included with Generation 1 toys, offering various Transformers via exclusive mail-order. All of the toys available were either being discontinued from the main line or had never been available in retail. A small amount of story content helps sell the characters.

Synopsis

A portion of this flyer is written in the second person, recruiting the reader into S.T.A.R.S. While the story proper is presented in traditional omniscient-narrator third-person, the style of the other S.T.A.R.S.-related material suggests that this entire flyer is propaganda which exists within its own fiction.

He's cutting through space-time, right into the next page!

While Overdrive's message seemed to be aimed at G.I. Joe members, this one is meant to recruit the young. It begins with a tale about a boy named Johnny who is watching TV when suddenly all the power goes out. While the others in the house call out for him, he rushes to the roof and scans the skies with his telescope until he finds the source of the disturbance: Thundercracker, hovering above the town and absorbing its energy with a bright white beam. Johnny knows what to do: get to his S.T.A.R.S. Command Center (which is somehow still powered-up) and alert the Autobots. In response, a team of seven Autobots arrives one-by-one and meets up with Johnny.

Doomed! Doomed! You're all DOOOOMED!

The story ends there, and the reader is invited to join S.T.A.R.S. The membership kit is the same as before, but with briefer descriptions. In addition to that, a recruit can also order two videocassettes detailing Transformer strategy. The reader is urged to "use this interplanetary transmission report to thwart Thundercracker's evil aims".

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Camshaft (6) Downshift (5) Mirage (8) Overdrive (9) Ratchet (4) Sunstreaker (3) Wheeljack (7)	Thundercracker (2)	Johnny (1)

Notes

• This continues a loose story that runs through a few years' worth of toy pack-in flyers. The micro-continuity, taken at face value, cannot fit within any known larger continuity; however, the "unreliable narrator" factor prevents any declarations on the matter.
• The Japanese equivalent of this flyer, released in 1986, features Dirge in Thundercracker's place, with the artwork adjusted accordingly. Dirge naturally also replaces Thundercracker in the figures on offer.

• The team of Autobots sent to Johnny is also slightly different in the Japanese version, with Warpath and Cosmos (both figures otherwise not available in the regular retail line in Japan) replacing Sunstreaker, Wheeljack and Mirage.
• Lastly, the choice of two videocassettes on offer in the Japanese S.T.A.R.S. flyer are "Resurrection of the Super Robot Lifeforms!!" and "Scramble City: Mobilization".