Hasbro Studios Presents 80s TV Classics: Music From The Transformers

Hasbro Studios Presents 80s TV Classics: Music From The Transformers
Label:	Enjoy The Ride Records
Release date:	March 8, 2018

Hasbro Studios Presents 80s TV Classics: Music From The Transformers is an official LP release of the score and background music of the G1 Transformers cartoon, as composed by Robert J. Walsh, Johnny Douglas, Anne Bryant, and Ford Kinder.

The album was released in March 2018 by Enjoy The Ride Records. For initial release, the records were pressed in either Optimus Prime red or Megatron grey, with Bumblebee yellow available as a store exclusive. With a limited run of only 2,000 pieces, these first versions quickly sold out, so in July 2018 subsequent printings were made available in Optimus Prime, Megatron, or Starscream themed "split" decor. Those reprints are still available on the ETRR website as of November 2019.

Edits and Omissions

As this was the first official release of the G1 cartoon soundtrack, it attracted considerable fan interest - though since those same fans had been cataloguing that soundtrack for nearly 35 years, it wasn't long before they noticed some unusual recording artifacts and time-saving decisions that Hasbro had made with the release.

• The first track of the LP is, naturally, the G1 theme song - but it is the original studio recording with un-modified human singing voices on the lyrics, before Marvel / Sunbow added the robotic flanging effects over the singers.

• The LP features 39 tracks, out of approximately 140 unique musical elements that the series had actually used. A full 25 of those are from season 1 of the cartoon. Only 6 represent season 2, and the remaining 11 are from season 3.

• At least 20 of the tracks - more than half those included - have been shortened for inclusion on the LP. Depending on the track, anywhere between 2 and 45 seconds of music has been omitted. These edited versions were the ones provided by Hasbro to ETRR.

Track listing

Side A
1. Opening Theme Song
2. Life
3. Cybertron Sorrow
4. The Bridge to Iacon
5. Unwelcoming Committee
6. Prepare
7. Attack! Attack!
8. Decepticon Drama
9. Explore! Repair!
10. Facing Disaster
11. Ominous Discovery
12. Elements of Danger
13. Something’s Wrong
14. Overcoming the Unstoppable
15. No More Worries
16. Unyielding
17. Heavy Mettle
18. Man and Machine
19. Matters and Antimatters
20. Battle Fearlessly
21. Ancient Legends
22. The March of War

Side B
1. Roll For Home
2. The Glimmer of Hope
3. Earth to Cybertron
4. Into the Jaws of Death
5. Doomed Together
6. The Wrong Readings Mean the Right Doom
7. Transformers Medley
8. Mad Planet
9. Conflict on Cassette
10. Pastoral Tranquility
11. From the Secret Files of Teletraan II
12. Separation Anxiety
13. Synthesized Magic
14. Sinister
15. Uneasy Advances
16. Epic Struggles
17. Mysterious Airs

External Links

• Studio website and order page
• alt.toys.transformers thread by Dave Edwards detailing the track omissions and edits

Notes

• The cover artwork is a hodgepodge cobbled together from several sources:

• The vast majority of it is based on an old Japanese piece of artwork that was featured on the interior flaps of the dustjacket of Transformers Generations, among other places. However, it's not an simple reuse - presumably in part because no high resolution version of the original artwork was available (the only known versions that can be found on the internet are merely about 600x600 pixels in size), the artwork was either digitally "restored", or redrawn entirely… "redrawn" in the sense that it was traced from the original art, with several changes made. Notably, Soundwave's right arm and concussion blaster are drawn from a completely different angle, with the front end of the blaster now in front of Jazz's photon rifle rather than behind it; said photon rifle has a slightly thicker barrel; Jazz's fairly basic face has numerous "shading" lines added to it that end up looking rather odd due to their line thickness; Megatron is missing some detail lines on his pelvis; Ultra Magnus is added behind Jazz; Hound's original artwork is replaced by an entirely different piece of art; and the Autobots Brawn and Huffer are omitted entirely and replaced by Ironhide and Bumblebee, respectively.
• The artwork of Ultra Magnus is based on a screencap from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Call of the Primitives". Like the aforementioned Japanese artwork, Ultra Magnus was presumably also traced from the original image.
• The aforementioned new artwork of Hound is based on a screencap from the first episode of Transformers: Armada that featured numerous cameos of generics resembling Generation 1 characters, including Hound. Like the rest, Hound was presumably also traced from the original image.
• The artwork of Bumblebee is based on an image (artist currently unknown) that appears on the inside covers of all four issues of IDW's Bumblebee limited series, as well as on the cover of volume 39 Hachette's Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection, among other places.
• The artwork of Ironhide is based on a screencap from the Generation 1 cartoon episode "Divide and Conquer".