To sell toys

Hasbro wasn't quite sure whether to advertise this expensive toy until the fans forced their hand.

To understand Transformers fiction, it is important to understand that it exists to sell toys. Hasbro and TakaraTomy are toy companies, and they are primarily interested in continuing to sell toys to children and adults. The cartoons, comic books, etc., mostly exist to make this happen. To be sure, they normally make a profit in their own right, but this is regarded as mere gravy.

The "to sell toys" effect often distorts the fiction in interesting ways. Primarily, since you can't usually sell someone the same toy twice, HasTak constantly introduces new toys, and often requires the creators of the fiction to introduce the new characters into ongoing storylines. Older characters (whose toys are no longer being sold) are shoved aside to make room.

Another effect of "to sell toys" is when the toys have gimmicks which must be explained in the fiction. Sometimes (Mini-Cons) this is relatively easy, while other times it requires a lot of imagination on the part of the writers (the in-comic explanations for the Headmasters and Targetmasters are kinda wonky).

Blatant examples of "to sell toys" in the fiction include:

Generation One cartoon

Guess who's no longer in the Mini Vehicles case assortment?

• In The Transformers: The Movie, numerous main characters were killed or changed, including Optimus Prime and Megatron. They were replaced by a slew of new protagonists, such as Hot Rod and Cyclonus. Indeed, the poster for the movie shows only new characters.

• Season 3 of the cartoon almost completely ignored the characters of the previous two seasons that were no longer on toy shelves. The 1985 Autobot cars, for example, are not seen at all. Bumblebee, by contrast, shows up now and again, as his toy was still shipping.

• The Rebirth abruptly introduced about 60 new characters, including all the first waves of Headmasters and Targetmasters, all their Nebulan partners, the Clones, Sixshot, and Punch/Counterpunch.

Generation One comic

Publisher's clearing house.

• The Underbase Saga: A super-powerful Starscream killed literally dozens of characters; some place the count over fifty. The survivors were mostly from the Pretender, Headmaster, and Targetmaster ranks, those being the then-current toy lines. Those characters would eventually get their own turn to die two years later, during the climactic battle with Unicron, which also showcased many of Starscream's victims returning to action. Their return could largely be attributed to the UK Classics line re-releasing older toys, and the American Actionmasters line, which featured new figures of old characters.

• A similar phenomenon can be witnessed in the Marvel UK comics saga Time Wars, where the body count at the hands of Megatron and Galvatron is similarly high. Albeit a little subtler than the Underbase Saga in characters shuffling off their mortal coils (and from the toy shelves), older, more obscure characters such as Roadbuster, Topspin, Twin Twist, and even Cyclonus and Scourge nonetheless met their ends—sometimes, in decidedly more grisly ways than their US counterparts. And once again, the Grim Reaper seemed to spare either popular characters (to wit: Galvatron and Megatron) or newer characters (Carnivac, Catilla, Scorponok, and all of the Terrorcons, for example.)

• Many issues of the Marvel comic had cover blurbs in the form "Introducing the _______!", where the blank was whatever the latest line of toys was. (The following issues specifically introduce new toys on the cover: 8, 10, 11, 19, 21, 29, 30, 40, 46, 47, and 60. Throw in a few covers where new characters were pictured but not named, and that's 1/5th of the series.) Sometimes the storyline had to jump through hoops to explain these new characters. (In particular, for both the simultaneous introduction of the Aerialbots and Stunticons, and the introduction of the Pretenders, there was a lot of rigamarole involved in explaining why both the Autobots and the Decepticons had new members with identical gimmicks at the same time.) Other times, the characters were simply there, with no explanation for why we'd never seen them before. In both cases, the comic often used blatant exposition to introduce characters and their special powers; see article introdump for more.

• An even more extreme example of the above point came in 1987, when Hasbro released too many new toys at one time to be sensibly fit in the existing storyline. The result was the Headmasters miniseries, which existed to introduce the Headmasters, Targetmasters, Technobots, Terrorcons, and Monsterbots (sixty-two characters total), and provide a semi-rational explanation for "little guys who turn into heads and guns", without having to shoehorn all that into the regular comic. (Amusingly, after the miniseries concluded and all the above characters journeyed to Earth, it only took two issues before another dozen characters (the Pretenders) had to be introduced . . . )

• At one point, Marvel UK had to promote the Special Teams toys before they knew how they'd be appearing in the US reprints. To get around this, Simon Furman wrote a short story arc leading up to Second Generation!, where Buster Witwicky, Optimus and Shockwave watched an advert saw a Matrix-induced vision of the Special Teams.

• In some cases, old and "beloved" characters were killed off only to be resurrected in new incarnations -- in line with their corresponding toy's re-release using a new "gimmick". The Autobots' leader was, if you'll pardon the pun, a "prime" example of this: killed by explosive detonation in his original form, Optimus Prime's personality was preserved on disk until he was returned to life as a Powermaster, only to be killed again in battle with Unicron, and brought back to life once more by the Last Autobot ... this time in his Actionmaster form. Similarly, Bumblebee was killed off in the US and UK comics, resurrected as Goldbug, killed again by Starscream during the Underbase Saga, and then returned to life once more as a Classic Pretender in his Bumblebee identity. Needless to say, these bargings back and forth through death's door required increasingly implausible explanations and reliance on the idea that Transformer life does not operate in the same way as human life.

• To add insult to injury, some dead characters got no rest before coming back to life, thanks to the marketing imperative. Optimus Prime, dead for some years in the Marvel US comic, had his first major "return" appearance when used primarily as a selling point an integral part of the introduction of the Pretenders. Not inhabiting a body during the course of that story, Prime instead operated as something of a "presence in spirit" to the Autobot forces in that issue and never conceived of himself as being alive. A similar device was used in the prelude to the Underbase Saga. Optimus Prime and Megatron were the lead characters in a story set before the Transformers came to Earth, but that story introduced (surprise surprise) the newest "gimmick" characters, the Triggercons and the Triggerbots.

Beast Wars

Scorponok, Terrorsaur, we're condemning you to a fiery death 'cause Waspinator has a bigger fan club.

• Hasbro would repeatedly interject its own marketing priorities into the development of series scripts, resulting in some characters having a very odd and confusing history. Tigerhawk was introduced and then killed off within three episodes, due to corporate uncertainty about whether the toy would actually be produced. Inferno was pretty clearly shown being killed--being disintegrated--but in the next season appeared to have just been bruised and cracked, because Hasbro was not ready to have a Mega-scaled toy removed from the series. Mainframe planned to use Wolfang but Tigatron appeared instead because he had an upcoming toy (and to save money as his cgi model was only a slight tweak of Cheetor's).

• The expense of creating and animating a CGI body model meant that the character roster had to remain fairly constant: pre-existing characters could gain new bodies that replaced their old ones (itself a conspicuous marketing device that was used many times throughout seasons 2 and 3), but the introduction of all-new characters usually required the removal of an equal number of pre-existing characters. And so, Scorponok and Terrorsaur die just in time for the arrival of Quickstrike and Silverbolt; Dinobot was killed off one episode after the debut of Rampage.

Robots in Disguise

• In the first four episodes, eighteen toys characters are introduced in quick succession.

Unicron Trilogy

• The Unicron Trilogy was noted for its gimmicks in all three toylines: Power-enhancing Mini-Cons in Armada, powerlinxing and hyper-modes in Energon, and cyber keys in Cybertron. The gimmicks shaped the cartoons as well, with powerlinx training in Energon and quests for keys in Cybertron. The Mini-Cons of Armada practically defined the plot of the cartoon, with both factions out to recruit or capture all the Mini-Cons, thus encouraging viewers to emulate their heroes, and buy 'em all. All three series were also marked by lengthy transformation sequences which highlighted the gimmicks in very toy-accurate animation (and also made production cheaper, thanks to recycled footage).

• Megatron is turned into Galvatron three times - at the end of each series, he's turned back into Megatron but with a different body. This is due to Hasbro wanting to keep the trademarks "Megatron" and "Galvatron" as well as to sell more toys.

• The first thirteen issues of the Armada comic were focused around the Mini-Cons, with plots often revolving around their desire to be seen as equals and not be enslaved. Then without any prior set-up, the last five issues turn into a dimension-spanning battle against Unicron - who had just had a new and expensive toy. (In the same story, Jetfire and Optimus abruptly change into their Powerlinx toy colours.)

Titan Magazines (Movie)

• The UK movie-based Transformers comic takes this to more blatant heights. Not only do the movie toys like Clocker and Skyblast appear in strips, not only has the editor told readers in Mech Mail that all the toys are great and should be bought...

• ...But there is a specific 4-page feature every week called Top Gear, which exists solely to promote the newest Transformers merchandise. This has led to readers being told how great Optimash Prime was.

Post-Marvel comics

Conclusion: Simon Furman must be a Nightbeat fan, since he hasn't had a toy since Reagan was president.

There's also an interesting exception: The Dreamwave and IDW comics. The two recent holders of the license to publish Transformers comic books sometimes produce comics using whichever toy line is current (e.g., Dreamwave's Armada comic or IDW's 2007 movie tie-ins), and sometimes publish comics using whatever characters they please (e.g., The War Within and Escalation). The characters in their "discretionary" comics are often not currently available in toy form (Hardhead, a current character in IDW's G1 continuity, has not had a toy in 20 years), sometimes are drawn with bodies that have never been toys (most of the War Within characters), and sometimes are toys that were never available outside of specific countries (Lio Convoy in IDW's Beast Wars). While the details of the licenses these companies received from Hasbro are not available to us, they apparently require the licensee to produce some comics "to sell toys", while also allowing them to do other comics with carte blanche.

Footnotes

From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.