Transformers: BotBots (franchise)
Transformers: BotBots is a Transformers franchise that began in 2018, involving small, cartoony, super deformed robot characters who transform into mundane items. What made this series rather unique in design was the fact that most of the objects or items they transformed into feature non-electrical components that would realistically make their existence impossible.
In the universe of the BotBots, a mysterious cloud of energon gas drifted through a shopping mall, bringing tools, electronics, and even food to life as tiny transforming robots. By day they hide, and by night, mischief aplenty.
Starting off originally as a toyline, the running success helped grow the franchise enough for it to gain books, a mini-comic, a pack of convention exclusives and a bunch of other merchandise. In 2021, a Netflix-original cartoon was revealed with a release date set for later the same year.
BotBots took place within its own continuity—and for the most part—ignored any of the factions or concepts that had previously been used in Transformers. Instead, the line gave birth to a wide variety of "tribes" based on the stores or places they were brought to life inside. On very rare occassions, references would be made to extant Transformers universes or incarnations of existing characters; which indicated those to exist as mass-market fiction within the BotBots universe.
