Public service announcement

"And knowing is half the battle!"
"Okay, so what's the other half?"
"Bashing Decepticons!"

Public service announcements (or "PSAs") are short clips shown at the end of many television cartoon shows from the 1980s that are unrelated to the content of the rest of the episode, and feature some of the show's main characters teaching a real-life lesson to kids. For the second season of the original The Transformers cartoon, a series of five PSAs was produced, but was never aired on TV.

History of public service announcements

The first cartoon series to feature public service announcements was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (produced by Filmation), which started in 1983. According to an interview with the show's staff, this was a conscious decision to balance out the inherently violent nature of the show.

Subsequently, other productions companies copied the concept for their own shows, such as Sunbow for G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and Jem and the Holograms, DiC for Inspector Gadget, C.O.P.S. and M.A.S.K., Ruby-Spears for Mister T and Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, and Filmation again for their Ghostbusters cartoon (not to be confused with DiC's The Real Ghostbusters, which was too cool to feature PSAs).

PSAs largely went out of fashion by the late 1980s, and only briefly reemerged in the mid-1990s, on shows such as Captain Planet and the Planeteers, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the DiC dub of Sailor Moon, only to disappear altogether soon afterwards.

Transformers public service announcements

For the Transformers cartoon, a series of five public service announcements was produced for the second season, each with a different lesson to be learned. These PSAs were assigned to air on television alongside the last five episodes of the season to be produced, but for reasons unknown this never happened, and they went unseen by the public for over a decade.

The animation for these shorts was handled by Toei, while the scripts were almost exact duplicates of the PSAs used for the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon, only replacing the G.I. Joe characters with Transformers characters. As a matter of fact, each PSA ended with one of the troubled kids spouting "Now I know!" The featured Transformer would then follow it up with the infamous catch-phrase, "And knowing is half the battle!"

Several of the same scripts used for the G.I. Joe and Transformers PSAs were also recycled for another Hasbro/Sunbow cartoon, Jem and the Holograms, albeit the catch-phrase was changed to, "Doing the right thing makes you a superstar!"

List of Transformers PSAs

• "Don't run away from home" featuring Bumblebee (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Shipwreck). Assigned to air with Cosmic Rust (episode)
• "Don't steal cars" featuring Tracks (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Shipwreck, reused for Jem featuring Jem and Aja). Assigned to air with Starscream's Brigade
• "Don't bike at night without reflectors" featuring Red Alert (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Dusty, reused for Jem featuring Jem and Kimber). Assigned to air with The Revenge of Bruticus
• "Don't boat without a lifejacket" featuring Seaspray (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Deep Six). Assigned to air with Masquerade
• "Don't jump to conclusions about people/Don't be sexist" ironically featuring Powerglide (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Gung-Ho). Assigned to air with B.O.T. (episode)

Availability

• The Kid Rhino Generation 1 Season 3 part 1 DVD set (first° public release).
• Melbourne House Transformers PlayStation 2 game (bonus content).
• Madman Entertainment's Generation 1 part 6 DVD box set.
• Shout! Factory Generation 1 DVD sets (Bumblebee with Season One, Tracks and Red Alert with Season Two Vol. 2, and Seaspray and Powerglide with Seasons Three and Four).