Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001 franchise)

The name or term "Robots in Disguise" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Robots in Disguise (disambiguation).

Robots in Disguise (2001) Toyline Cartoon Comic Commercials

Transformers: Robots in Disguise is a Transformers franchise that launched in the year 2001. It was an American port of the 2000 Japanese Transformers series Transformers: Car Robots (トランスフォーマー カーロボット). The franchise was the first full-on reboot series in Transformers history on both sides of the globe, which caused a heck of a ruckus among the fandom when it was new. Since then, however, it has faded into relative obscurity.

Taking place on Earth at the turn of the century, the series follows Optimus Prime (or "Fire Convoy") and his Autobots (or "Cybertrons") protecting the planet and its long-lost Cybertronian artifacts from the ambitions of the evil Megatron (or "Gigatron") and his Predacons (or "Destrongers").

In-universe, the Robots in Disguise continuity is referred to as "Viron" in the TransTechs' universal stream designators... but Car Robots is not. We'll explain that below.

The Robots in Disguise franchise featured the following primary components:

• A toyline
• A cartoon series
• A single American comic book story by Dreamwave (produced after the series ended production) set in the same continuity as the cartoon series.

Due to retcons by the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime, the franchise is also tied to:

• Another toyline which is composed of Dinobots
• Another American comic book story

History

File:Car Robots logo.jpg

The series's original incarnation, Car Robots, was created in response to the continually-declining sales of Takara's Beast Wars toyline. As Hasbro moved into Beast Machines, Takara opted instead to start anew—and tap into nostalgia as well—by bringing back the traditional modern Earth vehicle heroes with the classic Autobot big red face faction symbol. However, the villains of the series did not follow suit; while "Destronger" leader "Gigatron" was an all-new toy mold, his lackeys were all redecoed Transmetal 2 molds that had been developed for Beast Wars, and the team was given the Predacon symbol as had the villains from the prior shows. Further villain reinforcements, the Combatrons, were even older molds based on modern Earth vehicles, but got a black, upside-down Generation 2 Autobot symbol... apparently due to Takara's unwillingness to retool one of the toys to remove the faction symbol from it.

A year later in America, Hasbro decided it was time to end the Beast Era (which was also flagging in sales). Hasbro and Takara began work to co-develop the next series intended for both markets, Armada, but Hasbro refused to not have Transformers toys on the shelves despite Beast Machines under-performing. Thus, they quickly ported over Car Robots, re-branding it as Robots in Disguise, as a low-cost, low-work "filler" line. While the animalistic bad guys retained the Predacon logo (and faction name), all of the bad guys who turned into Earth vehicles got the traditional Decepticon emblem. Hasbro even expanded the product offerings with more redecos and minor retools of older molds, including a few previously-canceled ones. (Takara, meanwhile, apparently had no qualms about letting almost two years pass with no kid-aimed Transformers toys on the shelves.)

Where Car Robots sputtered in Japan, Robots in Disguise took off with a roar in America, thanks in no small part to the cartoon airing on the popular Fox Kids programming block.

The continuity kerfuffle

To put it bluntly, the continuity placement of the original Car Robots version of the series has been a point of contention within the fandom, particularly in the West.

When the first television promo for Car Robots aired immediately after the final episode of Beast Wars Metals, said promo featured Fire Convoy thanking the Maximal Beast Warriors for preserving Earth's history and promising to keep the modern day safe from the Destrongers. Preliminary information found on TVTokyo's website described Car Robots as "The next great entry in the Super Lifeforms Transformers: Beast Wars series" and even referred to the Great War of previous series by name. Said site and the first toy catalog also claimed the Destrongers had come to the 21st century through a dimensional rift, with Fire Convoy's team being a "Dimensional Patrol" sent to oppose them. The catalog even described the series premise as "Car Robots versus Beast Wars". Coupled with the first episode featuring a celebration for the new millennium, setting it in the year 2000, all this led to initial speculation that the series would be set in the existing Japanese Transformers continuity, during the at-the-time unexplored gap between the second season of the Generation 1 cartoon and its movie, with the Car Robots cast having time-traveled from the future à la Beast Wars.

As the series continued, however, it began to feel more like a fresh start, presenting itself as a self-contained story isolated from everything that had come before it. There were no obvious ties or references to the Generation 1 cartoon that it apparently was set within contemporaneously, no guest appearances from any Generation 1 characters (who, logically, ought to have noticed the globally Earth-based conflict of Fire Convoy and Gigatron's forces), and Fire Convoy's team took a more covert role in their relationship with humanity, using their vehicle modes to hide themselves when not in battle, unlike the G1 Autobots who regularly interacted with humans in their robot modes. What's more, none of the early information about the characters being time travelers was ever brought up in the show (save for one brief moment in episode 12 where Fire Convoy vaguely hinted at having come from another time), with virtually no indication of the cast being anything but native to the year 2000.

Thus, fans began to reconsider the series' original continuity placement and wondered if it might instead be an alternate universe—a sort of continuity reboot—dismissing the early time-traveling info as mere rumors or dropped concepts (or simply never knowing about it in the first place). But, as this thinking persisted, Car Robots entered its second half and had finally begun to do some actual world-building by introducing concepts and lore originally from Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, two Japanese series that the greater Western fandom had only sparse knowledge of at the time. Those who did catch these new references (and hadn't fully dismissed the original continuity speculation) theorized if maybe the cast of Car Robots had come from a future set after Beast Wars Neo. But, the more vocal fandom (mis)belief of Beast Wars II and Neo taking place chronologically before Beast Machines challenged and attempted to quell this theory.

Fueling the fire further was the fact that, when Car Robots was brought over to the West as Robots in Disguise, the cartoon's English dub was absolutely treated as a reboot by its production team (though, likely based on the same fandom belief in the first place), with episode scripts written in ways that made the dub completely irreconcilable with either of the major Hasbro-backed Generation 1 continuities. This caused no end of confusion among the fandom since the idea of a total continuity reboot in Transformers was still new and took some time to settle in... which was not helped by the English dub adding in numerous references to Generation 1 concepts and characters (which typically made things less compatible), nor the toy line having two characters from prior series (Axer and Optimus Primal) actually cross dimensions into its new continuity.

Eventually, the fandom got used to the idea of this series (both its English and Japanese versions) being on its own, helped along when Armada would similarly reboot the continuity one year after Robots in Disguise in the West and three whole years after Car Robots in Japan. This tactic of starting things over every year is common in long-running Japanese franchises, but had not yet been applied to Transformers. Subsequent series would later follow suit, creating more and more non-G1 continuities with each new reboot, making Car Robots/Robots in Disguise less of an anomaly and more acceptable as just the first of many non-G1 cartoons to come about after the Beast Era.

BUT THEN...

In 2004, the first hints of clarity turned up in the Robotmasters series. Created to celebrate the brand's 20th anniversary, Robotmasters featured a big crossover between Generation 1, Beast Wars, and more, with lots of characters time-traveling to the year 2004 of the Japanese G1 cartoon universe via dimensional rifts. One character in this series, an amnesiac Deception named Wrecker Hook, shared the same toy mold and Japanese name as Car Robots Wrecker Hook, known in Robots in Disguise as the Autobot Tow-Line. At the time, it was not clear if the Decepticon Wrecker Hook was meant to be the Autobot Wrecker Hook/Tow-Line having switched sides, but even if he was, there still lay the possibility of his coming from another dimension, since another suspected dimension-hopper was also part of the line.

Also in the Robotmasters line was a rerelease of the Car Robots Brave Maximus toy, offered as a contest prize and renamed "Cybertron Base" (a name not too dissimilar to the name of its city mode in the Car Robots cartoon, "Cybertron City"). But since Brave Maximus/Cybertron Base did not actually feature in any Robotmasters fiction, his inclusion in the line via this contest was largely ignored by the Western fandom. Also in this year, the toy bio of the e-HOBBY-exclusive G1 GoBots set made explicit reference to the Spychangers of Car Robots in a way that tied them directly to their toy mold predecessors, the Generation 2 Go-Bots. While the characters in this set would never be used by Japanese media, the Spychanger reference was but a small glimpse of much bigger things to come.

This has only gotten MORE complicated since its publication.

In 2007, Takara surprised the Western fandom by directly clarifying Car Robots's place in continuity. The Kiss Players series had begun a time-jumping story with the series' protagonists traveling aboard Brave Maximus, the very same one from Car Robots. One of their jumps even took them to the first episode of Car Robots without any dimension-hopping, only time-hopping. The series even ended with Brave Maximus crash-landing on Planet Master at a ppint in time set before the planet's refugee inhabitants had developed the Headmaster technology, with Brave Maximus's wreckage providing the catalyst for not just the technology but also the construction of the physically identical Fortress Maximus. Other print media and even a new website then produced a long, highly detailed timeline that mapped out just how the hell this all worked.

Yes, Takara had stuck to the original claims of the preliminary series info by officially declaring Car Robots to have been part of the massive, sprawling Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity all along, hand-waving the cartoon's lack of previous-series Transformers appearing on Earth by utilizing the abrupt ending of a short-lived, rather obscure Generation 1-based manga first published in 2003. Said manga took place in the latter 1990s and ended, very conveniently, with virtually the entire G1 cast getting swept away from Earth in a huge space bridge accident. With much of the fandom having grown used to the idea of Car Robots being as much a reboot as Robots in Disguise, this revelation was initially met with startled reaction; many fans even wrote it off as a nonsensical retcon. Regardless, subsequent Japanese media would adhere to this decision, leaning into the once-quashed idea of the Car Robots cast hailing from a future point set around the time of Beast Wars Neo.

BUT, with all of THAT said and sorted out...

Hasbro, on the other side of the pond, had NO such plans to align the English version with any of this. To this day, the Robots in Disguise cartoon remains its own little separate, distinctly non-G1 thing, and Hasbro has shown little inclination to revive its characters or concepts; most of the callbacks have come from licensees Fun Publications and IDW Publishing, but a few characters and ideas have persisted in toy form from Hasbro proper. Thus, Car Robots/Robots in Disguise is in the unique position of being simultaneously part of Generation 1 and completely separate from Generation 1... depending on which side of the globe you're looking at.

In order to keep things simple for readers and cut back on redundancies, TFWiki.net has opted to roll Car Robots character and cartoon information into the Robots in Disguise counterparts' pages. Just know that any Robots in Disguise character who appears in the "Category: Car Robots characters" category has a nigh-identical Generation-1-timeline doppelganger with a different name who did pretty much all the same stuff in the cartoon, only they did it all in a Generation 1 timeline. Though some modern Western fiction has introduced distinctly Generation 1 versions of Robots in Disguise characters, such as Sky-Byte, Side Burn, and Gigatron. These versions of the characters are all covered on the same pages as their Robots in Disguise counterparts since, it turns out, the original Car Robots versions that started it all were G1 characters anyway.

Head hurt yet? GOOD!

Notes

• Despite fan rumors to the contrary, Car Robots was never called and was never going to be called "Transformers 2000".
• "Car Robots" is also the original name of the Autobot Cars (including Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus) in the Diaclone toyline.

External links

• Takara's Transformers Continuity Map places Car Robots in Generation 1.