Package art

Card art for Rollbar, a Throttlebot from 1987.

Throughout the life of the Transformers brand, package art has been one of it's most common elements. Though not as widely noted and celebrated as Tech Specs, it is just as enduring and iconic to the brand. In the fandom, it is also referred to as box art, though it also appears on carded toy packages.

Transformers package art most often serves to portray the toy in the mode that it isn't packaged in. As most Transformers are sold in their non-robot forms, it typically shows them as robots (or whatever their equivalent primary mode is.)

Generation 1

And if you complain once more, you'll meet an army of me.

Every Transformer sold in Generation 1 featured hand-painted artwork on the front of the package, most often showing the robot mode, with the vehicle form of the actual toy visible alongside it through a clear plastic window or bubble. A smaller version of the art was shown as part of the character's biography and Tech Spec profile.

Generation 1 package art often provided a rather fictionalized version of the robot mode, showing the character in poses that were utterly impossible with the limited articulation of most Generation 1 toys. The lower the posability, the greater the exaggeration tended to be; thus, the Throttlebots and Battlechargers were shown with jointed arms, separate legs and feet, and poseable heads, when the toys lacked all these features.

With the advent of the multiple-form Pretenders, package art began to feature several modes, often the outer shell and both modes of the inner robot. As the more complicated Pretender schemes came along, this resulted in some rather crowded package art.

Another exception to the rule was the Clones, sold packaged in their identical robot modes, with artwork of their different alternate modes alongside them.

When I win the lottery, this is where I'm going.

Much of the late-run Generation 1 package art was the work of Japanese illustrator Hidetsugu Yoshioka, whose work brought a dynamic and appealing style to the often blocky and simplistic toys.

A number of the original Generation 1 paintings have appeared for sale at recent BotCons, at asking prices starting at $650 and ranging up to several thousand dollars.

Back of the Box Art

For the first five years, the boxed toys of Generation 1 also featured hand-painted, mural-like artwork depicting that year's toyline engaged in battle.

Compared to the fiction which developed around the toys, these paintings often feature some rather surreal elements. Multiples of the same character are shown (possibly a result of the Transformers toys' origin as piloted mecha), and cars are seen to fly through space. Occasional off-model characters appear as well, such as a red Tracks or a strange-looking Broadside.

The original 1984 painting showed the Transformers battling in deep space. In 1985, they were shown in Earth orbit, with the planet sustaining some massive damage below them. In 1986, they were on the barren surface of a planet. The 1987 battle was once again in deep space, with Fortress Maximus and Scorponok as the clear centerpieces; 1988 was likewise in deep space.

With the proliferation of Micromaster bases in 1990, the standard back-of-box art was replaced with a series of rather crude and cartoonish hand-drawn scenes, each showing several of the bases and their owners engaged in combat.

Generation 2

Generation 2 featured a combination of retouched Generation 1 (obviously for the repainted or retooled Generation 1 toys) and all-new artwork to accompany the new toys. This new artwork was closer in resemblance to the artwork seen in the last years of Generation 1 than the early art.

Beast Wars

Beast Wars continued the painted-art standard of Generation 1, though the artwork tended to exaggerate the beastly qualities of the robot modes. Occasional use of the mutant head feature on the early Beast Wars toys sometimes led to some strange results.

Beast Machines

The Beast Machines toyline was the first to break with the tradition established by Generation 1. Most packages featured the CGI-rendered robot mode of Cheetor, rather than the character whose toy was being sold. The primary exceptions to this were other characters featured in the Beast Machines show, whose CGI models were shown on their respective packages.

Robots in Disguise

Robots in Disguise restored individual character portrayals to the front of packages... but these were simply computer-enhanced photographs of the actual toys within, often transformed to varying degrees of accuracy.

Armada

With the new Armada toyline and franchise continuity, Hasbro's Transformers packaging returned to hand-drawn character art for the first time since the end of Beast Wars. Drawn by artists from Dreamwave Productions, this art followed a comic book style with modern Photoshop colouring, rather than the hand-painted work of Generation 1.

This art was also reproduced onto a collectable sticker that was included with all Armada toys from the Supercon sice class and upwards.

• The Mini-Con class toys featured a single piece of artwork of one of the Mini-Con team members on the insert tray card
• The Supercon class toys did not feature artwork directly on the packaging card itself, instead opting to display the collector sticker in the packaging bubble.
• Maxcon, Gigacon, Super Base and Supreme class toys all featured art directly printed onto the packaging.

Commemorative Reissues

The Generation 1 Commemorative Reissue series featured a wide range of previously seen art such as the original 1980s packaging art to the Transformers Collection reissue artwork by Hirofumi Ichikawa. Additionally, all-new art by Dreamwave artist/president Pat Lee was commissioned for several of the later reissues.

Universe

Universe packaging art were mostly by the Dreamwave affiliated artists, but while the pencilling was of the same general quality and style of the mainline art, the colouring was often much flatter and lacking in depth. Additionally, some toys featured artwork by Hasbro's in-house artists attempting to emulate the then-popular Dreamwave style, to extremely varied results.

Energon

The Energon toyline featured the same style of comic artwork first seen in the Armada line, this time featuring all of the characters included in a toy package where possible (for example, an entire Mini-Con team as opposed to just a single member as seen during Armada). Once again, artists affiliated with Dreamwave Productions provided the artwork.

Alternators

The Alternators toyline originally featured the same style of full-body artwork seen in the other Transformers toylines at the time, once again by various Dreamwave artists. However, when the packaging style switched to the large plastic bubble/cardboard tray configuration in late 2005, the packaging art style was changed to emulate the focused upper torso style see in the Cybertron toyline, though the art was coloured more closely to the comic book style.

Cybertron

Cybertron's packaging artwork headed in a dramatically different direction to the previous years, dropping the comic book style in favour of focusing on the upper torso of the character while they were in a 'ready to fight' pose, similar to boxers. The artwork was drawn mostly by now-freelance ex-Dreamwave artists, and coloured in a style passably similar to the painted Generation 1/Generation 2 art.

Classics

Similarly to Robots in Disguise, the Classics toyline was created as a 'filler' line, to plug the gap between the end of Cybertron and the beginning of the 2007 live action movie toyline. As such, Hasbro once again returned to using photographs of the toys instead of actual drawn artwork.

Transformers (2007)

Toys from the 2007 movie toyline feature a computer-rendered headshot of the character. In Europe, this art was replaced by a photo of the toy in robot mode that was also used on the rear of the packaging.

External links

• Botch's Transformers Box Art Archive
  
  
  From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.