What Is the Story of Transformers?

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What Is the Story of Transformers?

In the first of many errors, Optimus Prime's head is shown as disproportionately large.
Publisher Penguin Random House
Imprint Penguin Workshop
First published December 6, 2022
Writer Brandon T. Snider
Illustrator Ted Hammond
ISBN 978-0593384923
Page count 107
Price 6.99

What Is the Story of Transformers? is a book for young readers that documents the history of the long-running Transformers brand in the style of other What is the Story of...? books.

This does not bode well for those other books if this is a representative example.

Contents

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In chapter-by-chapter format, the book covers:

Notes

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Errors, omissions, and inconsistencies

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  • Most notably, What is the Story of Transformers? makes some odd decisions in deciding what material to include. Comparatively obscure series like the Prime Wars Trilogy cartoons or the My Little Pony crossover comics receive extensive coverage with full illustrations, while tentpole franchises like Transformers Animated and Prime aren't even mentioned. Lost Light receives a lengthy synopsis, while its predecessor More than Meets the Eye is only briefly glossed over, and its sister series Robots in Disguise isn't referred to at all. Hilariously, this all culminates in a timeline that simply jumps from the year 2007 to the year 2016, as though nothing happened in that entire nine-year interval.
  • The Marvel Comics section names Megatron's "treacherous deputies" as Starscream and... Soundwave. While Soundwave did act against Megatron in "Gone but Not Forgotten!", it was under the orders of perennial backstabber Shockwave, so presumably somebody got their S—waves mixed up.
  • An illustration for the The Transformers: The Movie section traces the frame where Shockwave erroneously shows up above the battle of Autobot City, but now includes Optimus Prime flying up to greet him.
  • Art on page 35 claims to show Megatron's Generation 2 toy... even though it's very clearly a traced version of his 2020 Earthrise toy, with an added made-up camouflage pattern.
  • On page 35, "Action Masters" are misspelled as "Actionmasters".
When you order a Transformers guidebook on Wish.com
  • The book's synopsis of the Beast Wars episode "Code of Hero" is noticeably jumbled, incorrectly amalgamating and misinterpreting events from multiple episodes. Notably, it claims that Dinobot joined the Maximals because Megatron "laugh[ed] in his face", but that "their alliance was short-lived"—even though he defected in the two-part pilot episode, and stayed a loyal Maximal up until season 2's "Maximal, No More", which ended with him rejoining Optimus Primal's team. The recap then goes on to claim that Dinobot's "shifty behaviour" compelled him to "switch sides whenever the moment suited him"... even though Dinobot did it a grand total of once, and he so regretted the decision to break his rigid code of honor that he nearly committed suicide over the whole affair.
  • The Beast Wars recap omits the second-season reveal that the Beast Wars took place on prehistoric Earth and does not mention the crashed Ark that formed the basis of the cartoon's third season. Similarly, the Beast Machines summary glosses over the show's prominent nature-versus-technology conflict and simply notes that Optimus and his team "[brought] life to the planet once again" after defeating Megatron.
  • Optimus Primal is described as having difficulty "juggl[ing] his animal temper with the demands of leadership," which is a bizarrely wrong way to describe the cartoon's most level-headed character.
  • The first image of Dinobot is traced from a knock-off of the Masterpiece toy that decoes his chest differently.
  • The supercomputer that reformats Optimus and the other Maximals is referred to simply as "Oracle", rather than the cartoon's consistent usage of "the Oracle".
hey guys remember jazz and bumblebee from armada
  • Chapter six features a piece of art that is ostensibly from the Legends of the Microns cartoon... an absolutely bizarre piece of traced and collaged art that features Generation 1 versions of Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Jazz from various 1980s Japanese sources, alongside what appears to be a badly-drawn Armada Thrust and Sparkplug. Suffice it to say that this did not actually happen in the Legends of the Microns cartoon.
  • In the same illustration, Jazz is incorrectly drawn without his visior, Megatron appears to have teeth, and Starscream is in mid-transformation when he is flying.
  • On page 53, "Powerlinx" is misspelled "Power Link".
  • Alpha Quintesson is consistently referred to as "the Alpha Quintesson". While he did refer to himself as such in the second English dub of the first episode of Energon, he only did so once, and was only ever referred to afterward in all other episodes as simply "Alpha Q".
  • For whatever reason, the synopsis for Transformers: Cybertron doesn't touch on the existence of Velocitron, Jungle Planet, or Gigantion. Similarly, the Combiner Wars summary dances around the existence of Caminus, which is only referred to in passing as "[Windblade's] planet".
  • The description of the Spotlight series on page 63 mentions that it focused on characters who "hadn't been given a chance to shine before", naming Blaster and Shockwave as examples... even though the pair received entire multi-issue storylines back in the Marvel days.
  • "Chaos Theory" was merely a two-part storyline that took place within the larger 2011 Transformers ongoing, but the text calls it Transformers: Chaos Theory, as though it was its own independent story.
  • A traced illustration of Lost Light Rodimus is labeled as "Rodimus Prime."
  • Another bizarre bit of art on page 77 amalgamates Dark of the Moon Sentinel Prime with a beardless, big-chinned head that evokes his Animated counterpart.
  • The description of Bumblebee notes that Optimus Prime was played by Peter Cullen in a way that makes it seem as though this was his first time returning to the role, ignoring that he'd previously voiced the character in all five preceding Transformers films.
  • The Bumblebee synopsis claims that Bumblebee crash-landed on Earth without his voice and memories after a "terrible Decepticon attack", as though this took place while he was in outer space en route to Earth. In the film, Bumblebee arrives on Earth completely intact, and it's Blitzwing who brutalizes him shortly after he makes landfall.
  • The Prime Wars Trilogy cartoons are described as a "TV show", when they were merely a collection of five-to-ten minute Internet shorts.
  • While the penultimate chapter touches on the Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and My Little Pony comics, IDW's two other crossover comics from around the same time period—Star Trek vs. Transformers and Transformers vs. The Terminator—aren't mentioned.
  • The description of Transformers/Back to the Future claims that Marty McFly made a "small mistake" that led to the Decepticons changing history; in the actual comic, he had nothing to do with the sequence of events that led to the Decepticons stealing Doc Brown's DeLorean time machine.
  • The timeline claims that The Transformers: Infiltration launched in 2006, when the first issue actually debuted in October 2005.
  • The timeline notes the release dates of Transformers, The Last Knight, and Bumblebee, but omits the intervening three films.

Other notes

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  • Believe it or not, this book is actually official Transformers product, as there's a teeny-tiny "Licensed by Hasbro" printed on the back.
  • The Bibliography section notes its sources include articles from Screen Rant, if you want to begin to understand how all this happened.

See also

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