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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).

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.

Casting

Huge casts

Hasbro makes a lot of toys at once, and they want all of them to appear in their fiction. This can force writers to bring in vast numbers of characters all at once, sometimes with awkward results. Examples include:

• Transformers #1, in which 28 different robots appear and introduced themselves, even though only a handful are important to the plot.
• The Headmasters Limited Series, which introduced over 60 characters in the course of four issues.
• 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.
• In the first four episodes of Robots in Disguise, eighteen characters are introduced in quick succession.

Random casting

The Hasbro-induced need to show all the toys can also cause stories to suddenly focus on a new character, sometimes dropping ongoing plot threads about older ones. Examples include:

• The comic issue Pretender to the Throne!
• 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.
• 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.
• Mainframe planned to use Wolfang in Beast Wars, 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).

Limited casting

On the opposite side of things, Hasbro doesn't want to pay to animate characters that aren't selling toys. This can force a story to have a smaller cast than it otherwise might. Examples include:

• Beast Wars. The expense of CGI animation meant that each faction was limited to about seven troops.
• Armada. The early episodes featured only the toys available on the shelves. This resulted in two ridiculously small teams going to Earth for the all-important mission of gathering Mini-Cons, rather inexplicable in story terms.

Plot

Forced explication

Rather than simply showing up in the background, new toy/characters often introduce themselves in various ways. The Marvel comic is rife with examples, but it shows up across numerous fictions.

• Again, Transformers #1 has two huge splash pages in which 28 characters do nothing but stand around and tell each other who they are and what they can do.
• The cartoon episode "Dinobot Island" features many new 1985 characters getting their own short little introductory scene, often with a characteristic bit of self-description (Tracks: "I'd rather stay in my stunning auto mode!" Inferno: "I'm always ready for action!")

Gimmicks

When the toys can do something special, fiction writers must often go out of their way to show the gimmick in action.

• 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. 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).

Strange developments

Shoehorning loads of new characters with new powers can compel the writers to do things they otherwise wouldn't.

• The comic issue Pretender to the Throne! features Scorponok proudly creating the Pretenders, gloating that they will hide the Decepticons' identities from the Autobots "until it is too late". Not only does the plan not actually work, it's also a plot point with absolutely zero lead-in or build-up. It was brought about solely because the new toys had to be jammed into the story.
• 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.
• 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. Jazz was also seen occasionally, but never had a speaking role, but that was also because his voice actor Scatman Crothers died.
• In the Marvel comics, the simultaneous introduction of the Aerialbots and Stunticons, and the introduction of the Pretenders, saw a lot of rigamarole involved in explaining why both the Autobots and the Decepticons had new members with identical gimmicks at the same time.
• 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.)

Power levels

In order to make new characters seem more totally awesome, they're often depicted as ultra-powerful in their initial appearances. Once they become old news, they frequently seem to lose their super-charged abilities.

• The Generation 1 cartoon introduced Devastator as the ultimate threat. Once newer combiner teams came along, however, he was less of a threat, easily defeated at various times by Menasor, Broadside and even Perceptor.
• In her first cartoon appearance, Airazor effortlessly blasts Terrorsaur to pieces. She never displays such a level of power again.

New bodies

There's rarely a compelling reason for a Transformer to get an a brand-new body in fiction; it's simply to promote a new toy. It has become a default way to keep a popular character on shelves, rather than having to kill them off and introduce a new character to keep moving toys.

• Season 2 of Beast Wars introduced the new Transmetal toys in short order, requiring some strange sci-fi waffling to explain why members of both teams suddenly got special new bodies.
• 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.
• UT redecos
• Cybertron Defense Team
• Movie Bumblebee

Death

Killing off old product

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

The most obvious To Sell Toys effect comes from the temporary nature of retail sales. Even in the 1980s, toys rarely stayed on the shelves past two years; today that timespan is much smaller. Once a toy is no longer selling, Hasbro has no interest in supporting fiction about that character -- especially when there's newer toys to promote. Therefore, writers are often compelled to remove characters from the story by killing them off. Sometimes this happens through carefully developed story arcs, but it's easier to do it with huge, apocolyptic battles with massive numbers of casualties.

• 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 and antagonists, such as Hot Rod and Cyclonus. Indeed, the poster for the movie shows only new characters.

• Numerous characters are killed in the Marvel UK comics saga Time Wars. The Grim Reaper seemed to spare either popular characters (Megatron and Shockwave) or newer characters (Carnivac, Catilla, Scorponok, and the Terrorcons, for example.)

Publisher's clearing house.

• The Underbase Saga features a super-powerful Starscream killing 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.

• The climactic battle with Unicron 25 issues later killed off many of the Underbase survivors, who were ending their shelf run at the time.

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

• With its enormously expensive CGI animation, Beast Wars was particularly vunerable to toy-based interference. The expense of creating and animating a CGI body model meant that the character roster had to remain fairly constant; 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 is killed off one episode after the debut of Rampage. Tigerhawk was introduced and then killed off within three episodes, due to corporate uncertainty about whether the toy would actually be produced.

Hi-then-die

Kids don't want to buy a toy of a character who's dead. So if the plot calls for someone to die, smart money bets on the character who has a toy as the survivor.

• This approach was particularly common in the UK comics. Characters created specifically so they could be killed off include Impactor, Tailgate's Autobot trainee buddies, and Stampede.
• The Energon cartoon introduced Padlock, whose purpose was to die at Shockblast's hands, proving motivation for Wing Saber.

Resurrection

Killing off a character isn't always toy-motivated; sometimes it's a dramatic plot development. But it could also be a problem if Hasbro decides to make a new character of that toy.

• Optimus Prime has been resurrected so many times that it's practically a defining character trait. His original revival in the cartoon didn't correspond to any actual toy release, but the Marvel comic brought him back specifically to advertise his Powermaster form. A second death-and-revival introduced his Action Master body. And a third death-and-revival brought him into his Combat Hero toy form.
• Numerous "dead" characters were brought back into the Marvel comic series when their Classics and/or Action Master versions were released. Many were "deactivated" rather than outright dead; however, very few non Action Master characters showed up alongside them.
• The series writers for Beast Wars considered Optimus Primal dead and gone at the end of Season One. Hasbro, however, had a Transmetal Optimus Primal toy to promote, and so he was returned to life.
• At the end of Season 2 of Beast Wars, 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.

Post-Marvel comics

"Hey, Runamuck, it's our first appearance on a comic book cover in twenty years!"
"Heh heh, now if only we could appear on toy store shelves..."

There's a notable exception to the To Sell Toys effect: 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).

Chris Ryall, IDW Editor-in-Chief and writer of the miniseries adapting the 2007 movie to comics has confirmed on IDW's forums that Hasbro do not dictate what comics IDW must make ("Nope, no dictates at all from Hasbro. We put the plan together, send to them for approval.").

Presumably, Hasbro do not now view the collector-based US comics market as a viable promotional exercise, and licences comic rights purely on the basis of how much money the licence itself will bring in.

Footnotes

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