Circular reporting
As befitting a franchise that has run continuously for 42 years, the Transformers brand is a vast and sprawling one. However, as an intellectual property based around the inherently transient medium of merchandising, both Hasbro and TakaraTomy have, historically, taken a laissez-faire approach to storytelling and have shown general reluctance to compile any kind of official "lore bibles" or "development documents" designed to help new creatives in the franchise get up to speed with individual characters, concepts, or settings.[1]
As a result, the largest compendium of Transformers knowledge is, in fact, this very website you are reading this article on right now, and many creatives have confirmed that they have used our wiki when writing stories or looking for toy references. While wikis have a few advantages over "in-house" lore bibles—they can be edited by anyone, not just professionals, for instance—their main downside is that... well, they can be edited by anyone. Although we at TFWiki.net strive for accuracy and neutrality when covering Transformers topics, there have, historically, been cases where inaccurate or misinterpreted information or photographs on this very wiki have gone on to inform official Transformers toys and fiction.
Of course, people working on official Transformers work use references outside of the wiki, namely other sites reporting on Transformers, leaving the door open for many, many more errors.
Examples of circular reporting through the TFWiki
Tale of Two Tailwinds
In Spotlight: Hardhead, a Gorlamite (basically the Micromasters of this continuity) based on Tailwind, appeared with others attacking Hardhead and Nightbeat, however this at first went undocumented on the wiki. Years later in More than Meets the Eye #12, James Roberts, probably considering him fair game, would depict a full-sized Cybertronian Tailwind being bisected by Drift.
(Heavy) Artillery Drones
The Vehicon drones belonging to Strika were never named in the Beast Machines cartoon, toyline, or related media. Back when TFWiki started out on Wikia (now Fandom), an anonymous user created the article for Strika's drones in 2008 using the fan name "Heavy Artillery Drone". Due to an oversight (as no one knew that it wasn't an official name), this remained the article's name on here for nearly a decade. In a rare, non-visual, text-only instance of this roundabout way of reporting, the 2016 prose story Derailment officially named Strika's drones as "Artillery Drones" based on our use of the name "Heavy Artillery Drone". Our article was soon moved to "Artillery Drone" shortly after in early 2017, to reflect the official name. But, the official name only came about in the first place because our unknowingly using a completely made-up fan name.
Power of the Primes Matrix of Chaos
The Power of the Primes toyline and cartoon gave Hot Rod's Unicron-corrupted form an evil Matrix, dubbed the "Matrix of Chaos". As it happens, this was also a variant name for the Matrix of Conquest used by Shokaract in the Transformers: Beast Wars Sourcebook. The main image of our wiki page for the Matrix of Conquest was likely referenced instead of the toy accessory in question, and thus Rodimus Cron in the cartoon wields a Matrix of Shokaract's design. Much like the Bailiff coloring error below, it is possible this was an intentional aesthetic choice, as the Matrix of Chaos included with Power of the Primes Evolution Rodimus Unicronus is a simple recolor of the Matrix of Leadership.
Studio Series Scrapmetal
The character that the wiki identifies as "Scrapmetal" was created through a complicated, decade-long tennis match between the wiki and Hasbro. In 2009, shortly after the theatrical release of Revenge of the Fallen, the wiki created a page for the then-nameless character under the half-jokey title "Ze little one". Rather than assuming that the character was a Scrapper clone, wiki editors at the time decided that he was his own character, as the scene where Constructicons went underwater featured a yellow Volvo excavator that didn't match to any of the other characters. "Ze little one" quickly picked up an ironic fan following, and by December of 2009 Hasbro called him "Scrapmetal" and identified his alternate mode as "the bulldozer."[2] The wiki documented this and moved on. Around the same time, Revenge of the Fallen Devastator's page noted that the film version of the character was formed from an extra bulldozer compared to the official list of his components.
Almost ten years later, Hasbro announced a giant, fully-articulated Devastator toy formed up from multiple figures from the Studio Series toyline. It is not 100% clear, but what appears to have happened is that whoever was planning the character selection looked at both Devastator and Scrapmetal's pages and decided to marry these two random tidbits by making Scrapmetal the extra bulldozer. Then, the individual(s) assigned to design Scrapmetal's toy consulted the wiki page to figure out who the character was and instead made them a yellow excavator with the robot mode of the concept art randomly chosen for the main picture of the article—the end result of the wiki stringing together tidbits of contradictory information from the movie.
Black Roritchi's antennae
For years, the main image for Black Roritchi on this wiki showed him against a black backdrop, which his equally-black antennae blended into. When Generations Selects Black Roritchi was produced in 2020 as a redeco of Fasttrack, the figure was given a custom head solely to remove the antennae under the mistaken belief that he didn't have them.
Color conundrum
IDW Robots in Disguise Horri-Bull
In the IDW Publishing comic issue Robots in Disguise #1, Horri-Bull's colorization is apparently based on photos of a photodegradated example of his original toy that was once used on his page. When asked Josh Perez said he chose to use the yellow to "help him stick out a lot more".[3]
Fall of Cybertron Vortex
Vortex's color scheme in Fall of Cybertron is an unusual red and beige, derived from G1 Vortex's More than Meets the Eye character art that is his main page image. The warm tone of the coloring led to concept art where his limbs are beige instead of gray, which evolved to the in-game colors.
Legends Roadburner
In what can only be described as a fit of actual insanity, not only is Roadburner's appearance in the Transformers Legends mobile game based off of a catastrophic misinterpretation of this wiki's photography for the toy, misinterpreting his partner Wheel Blaze as white, (as opposed to the greyed-out photo this wiki uses for simplicity's sake) but it's highly likely he wasn't supposed to be in the game to begin with. Given that the theme of the event he appeared in was basically "These Autobots with military alt-modes do stuff," and the fact that Roadbuster would make more sense given Whirl's prevalence in said event... yeah. Not helping matters is that when in the process of typing "Roadbuster" into this wiki's search bar, Roadburner shows up first in the search results. Someone must have been in a hurry.
Beast Wars: Uprising Preditron
The Beast Wars: Uprising character Preditron, based on the Armada toy Predacon was drawn by Matt Frank based on toy stock photos from 2003, hosted on this very wiki. Unfortunately, said stock photos have color differences compared to the final product, causing Frank to color Preditron based on the prototype deco rather than the finalized deco.
IDW Transformers Azimuth
Azimuth was originally a minor character who appeared in The Covenant of Primus. Beyond a brief namedrop, she went unseen for several years until 2015, when the "Ask Vector Prime" Facebook feature revealed that she sported a body based on the gold MC-6 Kronoform toy. However, when a different version of Azimuth appeared in 2020, in IDW's Transformers comic, she was colored silver—a mixup that almost assuredly stems from the photo on Azimuth's wiki article more prominently displaying that figure, with the "correct" gold figure tucked away on the far right.
War for Cybertron Trilogy Bailiff
The War for Cybertron Trilogy "Quintesson Bailiff" is depicted in a brownish-green deco based on an inaccurately-colored character model previously uploaded to the wiki (see left), as opposed to their more leafy-green coloration seen in The Transformers: The Movie. While seemingly a mistake, it's worth noting that the artist used the older version of the referenced file for the toy's coloration, as opposed to its (at the time) current version.
Earthrise Race Track Patrol
Like all G1 Micromaster Patrols, the members of the Race Track Patrol were gang-molded. Barricade's car shell uses the same blue plastic as his teammate Roller Force's chest and upper legs, while the pink plastic used for Roller Force's car shell matches the color of Barricade's chest and upper legs. Likewise, Ground Hog's car shell uses the same purple plastic as his teammate Motorhead's chest and upper legs, while the yellow plastic used for Motorhead's car shell matches the color of Ground Hog's chest and upper legs.
However, since toys can photograph very differently depending on the camera, its settings and the lighting (plus several decades of plastic chemically reacting with its environment can result in serious discoloration), Barricade's blue, Ground Hog's purple and Roller Force's pink can all photograph drastically differently, to the point where none of them rarely ever seems to have the same color between two different photos, ranging from light teal to a very saturated medium blue for Barricade, from a very saturated purple to downright blue for Ground Hog, and from light peach to a very saturated pink to almost red for Roller Force. This color discrepancy then creeped its way into Dreamwave's More than Meets the Eye profile books, which depicted both Barricade and Ground Hog's car shells in what looks pretty much like the same shade of blue. Even more bizarrely, Roller Force's chest and upper legs are colored in a considerably lighter shade of blue, with the contrast making his car shell look like a very saturated red.
It's quite possible that at least some of the color renditions from the Dreamwave profiles directly influenced the Earthrise toys of these characters: Initially, Hasbro only released a two-pack of Roller Force and "Decepticon Ground Hog" as part of the Micromaster assortment, each of whom was cast in a single plastic color (except for the wheels), with the chests and upper legs painted. While Ground Hog's car shell ended up positively blue, Roller Force's car shell uses a much more purple plastic than any of the G1 toy's photos ever made him out to be (not to speak of the positively red color from the Dreamwave profile). Even more bizarrely, both his upper chest and his car mode's spoiler do sport peach paint operations.
A short while later, Hasbro redecoed Earthrise Ground Hog and Roller Force into their teammates Motorhead and "Decepticon Runner" (aka Barricade), respectively, who were released as part of an Amazon exclusive "Galactic Odyssey" 6-pack of redecoed Micromasters. Mindbogglingly, almost none of the two redecoed figures' colors match the corresponding colors of their teammates: Motorhead features (more or less G1-accurate) purple paint for his chest and upper legs, as compared to Ground Hog's blue car shell, whereas "Runner" uses dark blue plastic for his car shell and (more or less G1-accurate) hot pink paint for his chest and upper legs, compared to the purple plastic color used for Roller Force's car shell (and the aforementioned peach paint operations used for Roller Force's upper chest and car mode spoiler) and the azure blue paint operations used for Roller Force's chest and upper legs. Worst of all, whereas G1 Barricade's car shell was light blue at best, and Ground Hog's was purple, their Earthrise versions both use dark blue plastic for their car shells, with Runner's blue being even darker than Ground Hog's. Either both sets' decos were done by different people who didn't communicate with each other, or they didn't realize that the G1 figures shared colors.
Prime 10 Year Anniversary Igu
The 10 Year Anniversary reissue of Igu (Jet Vehicon's Arms Micron partner from the TakaraTomy Prime toyline) mistakenly colors him bright silver, as opposed to the dark gray of the original release. This can be attributed to the set designer using the image from the "Toys" subheading of Igu's wiki page for reference—which was actually an "elite" redeco packed with Jet Vehicon General. The original dark gray release of Igu is used as the article's mainpic, instead of being used in the "Toys" section. From a toy design perspective, this error means that the now-silver Igu breaks aesthetic cohesion with his mostly-black partner Jet Vehicon.
Kingdom T-Wrecks
The Kingdom toy of T-Wrecks has a colour scheme which is much more drab than the original Beast Machines release, with the brown-tinted torso being swapped for a dull grey, and the bright bronze of his helmet being swapped for the same red as his beast-mode skin. More noticeably, only the lower portion of T-Wrecks's crotch is molded blue, with the waist itself being left unpainted grey. It seems that these changes are the result of the wiki's photo of the original toy being primarily used for reference; the lighting in the image is a little misleading, and the toy's posed leaning forward such that its belly overhangs its waist entirely! The Kingdom T-Wrecks's eyes are also yellow rather than the green of the Beast Machines toy. It would seem that some of the other pictures on his page may have played into this color change also.
Non-TFWiki references
Of course, people working on official Transformers work use references outside of the wiki, and research errors (which are understandable given how large the Transformers brand and fanbase are) can lead to unofficial or incorrect interpretations of official work for references.
Third-party designs used for reference
More than Meets the Eye Huffer and Gears
More than Meets the Eye #18 saw Huffer and Gears drawn based on unofficial figures "Rager" and "Cogz". Hasbro and IDW did not comment on this, although it seems likely that somebody somewhere might've gotten a slap on the wrist. (The artist in question has not done any comic covers since...)
Imaginarium Art Rodimus Prime and Devastator
Official third party licensee Imaginarium Art's statues of Rodimus Prime and Devastator seem to be based on the unofficial figures "Carry" and "Green Giant", with Rodimus Prime featuring detailing on his forearms otherwise unique to Carry and Devastator having kneepads only found on Giant. One has to assume Hasbro wasn't looking too closely, or were understandably unaware of those figures, when they signed off on these.
Power of the Primes Dinobots
The Power of the Primes cartoon features models for the Dinobots based on the Fanstoys' "Iron Dibots" figures, rather than those from the concurrent toyline.
Lost Light vehicles
E. J. Su, fulfilling the role of guest artist for Lost Light #19, was not given vehicle mode references for Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet, and Chromedome. Consequently, he had to make do with googling and came up with unlicensed toys from "third-party" company Mastermind Creations for Rodimus and Drift's vehicle modes. Meanwhile, Ratchet, who had not previously been illustrated in vehicle mode in this body, got to be the Prime Ratchet design which inspired Alex Milne in the first place. Finally, Chromedome got to be his Titans Return toy, which was inspired by his beefier pre-war comic design in contrast to his skinny post-war comic design.
Earth Wars and Forged to Fight
Although stylized, the Transformers: Earth Wars models for the Predacons are recognizably based upon the "Feralcons", one of the three notable sets of "third party" Predacons, including their combined mode. Meanwhile, Motormaster is modeled on the TransFormMission "Powertrain" interpretation of Motormaster's design from IDW's 2009-2011 ongoing series. Much like the Power of the Primes Dinobots above, the Earth Wars Dinobots are based on the Fanstoys' "Iron Dibots" figures.
In an odd occurrence for a game almost exclusively using screen models and recent toys, Jazz in Transformers: Forged to Fight is directly modeled on Toyworld's "Coolsville" figure.
Bumblebee Arcee
An ILM design presentation about the 2018 Bumblebee movie used an image of Fans Toys "Rouge" as a "Generation 1" Arcee design reference for Bumblebee Arcee.[4] This is probably an unsurprising fruit of research as Arcee did not receive an official Masterpiece figure until 2020, with multiple unlicensed third-party companies vying for fans' attention throughout the 2010s.
Incorrectly-colored animation models
Siege Astrotrain
The Siege Leader Class Astrotrain figure has a deco based on a widely-shared but incorrectly-colored screenshot of the character from the episode "Triple Takeover", as seen with mostly-grey wings. This coloration also ended up being used on a fan-coloring of his character model that regularly makes its rounds on the web since it is readily available on Pinterest and his Fandom wikia page; making it one of the top results on Google Images. The origins of this fan-coloring come from a Ukrainian Transformers fan website (Transformers.kiev.ua) that attempted to recreate Sunbow cartoon models using screen captures of episodes, with some models also featuring traced headshots from episode screen captures.
The original origins of the coloration used in the episode is from an older, unfinalized model sheet, which AKOM and the other animation studios usually ended up with, instead of the finalized ones Toei Animation used. Having other studios use unfinalized models, would often result in episodes with characters having drastic color changes or even completely different models (e.g. Junkyard).
As it happens, "correctly" colored versions of the Sunbow models can be found on Allspark.com, by a user who has attempted to find each and every piece of production material that is available on the web to accurately recreate the Sunbow models. While there are likely to be some slight inaccuracies, their models are likely the best representation of what once was.
Combiner Wars Reflector and Siege Refraktor
The Combiner Wars and Siege versions of Reflector feature a red stripe on their wrists that did not appear on Reflector's original Sunbow models. Like Astrotrain, this detail is, however, present on the Transformers.kiev.ua fan-colored model. While it is unknown where this red stripe originated from, there are at least two possible explanations. The first of these is the fan who colored it may have thought that it was where the red stripe from camera mode ends up (an easy mistake, given the robot modes share very few details with the camera mode). The second comes from the third-party company, Perfect Effect, who released their "Scouting Force X" team long before Hasbro and Takara made new figures of Reflector, and used different colored stripes painted around the individual figures' wrists to tell them apart; with one of these colors being red.
Much like the aforementioned official Reflector products, several third-party companies have also used Transformers.kiev.ua's character models, resulting in the red stripe also being present on their respective interpretations of the character. Everybody loses.
R.E.D. Soundwave's shins
R.E.D. [Robot Enhanced Design] Soundwave's shins were incorrectly left blue instead of being painted silver/gray due to Hasbro once again basing the figure on the Transformers.kiev.ua fan-colored model.
ReAction Perceptor
Earthrise Grapple
Another victim to Hasbro Google searching for character model references, Earthrise Grapple features a silver painted panel appearing under his front bumper that is not present on his original animation model. Much like Siege Astrotrain above, this detail comes from the fan-colored model from Transformers.kiev.ua, which can also be found on Pinterest and Grapple's Fandom wikia page.
Studio Series 86 Kup
Much like Astrotrain and Grapple above, Studio Series 86 Kup suffers a miscoloring in his vehicle mode as a result of Hasbro using the Ukrainian fan-colored models from Transformers.kiev.ua as references. Using this reference, Kup's vehicle mode roof section ended up being colored in the light green-blue plastic, with the darker green-blue panel that folds up on his back in robot mode painted to match this. This coloring is the result of a misinterpretation of the lighting used during the scenes where the Autobots make their way through the inner workings of Unicron's body in The Transformers: The Movie (see left). The correct color for this part is actually the darker green-blue used on most of his body.
As a result of this miscoloration, the figure's entire transformation appears to have been built with this color layout in mind, as the side sections that are molded in the lighter green-blue form his faux wheel wells/shoulders in robot mode.
Among other things the blueish tint used on the toy's body is also a result of movie screen captures as the actual coloring on the model has more green.
Studio Series 86 Slug
Yet another result of poorly researched Sunbow character model references, Studio Series 86 Slug features blue details on his knees that aren't present on his original cartoon model, which used black. This appears to be another fault of the Transformers.kiev.ua fan-colored models which are likewise readily available on Pinterest and Slag's Fandom wikia page. The biggest issue with using this image as a reference, is that fact that the fan who colored it added an extra line to divide these two color details, likely based on awkward screen captures where the knees were misdrawn (see image on the left as an example), as the original model places this detail on the lower part of the knee instead. As readers may have caught on by now, this blue coloration was likely taken from a screen capture using an eye-dropper tool in Photoshop; one where the black had since faded to a blueish tint in the aged, but partially restored DVD animation. Ironically, Hasbro neglected to add the gray paint to his robot head "vent" details on the final toy, which happens to be present on both the original and Transformers.kiev.ua models, as well as the official render for the Studio Series toy.
TakaraTomy on the other hand, did not make the same coloring mistake for their Generations Selects Dinobots, which had been just released prior, as they appear to have some sort of cartoon reference material that they can go back and use, unlike Hasbro.
Other Internet references
Warriorbot
In 2017, a Hasbro license, Open Road Brands, released a tin wall sign exclusively to Hobby Lobby stores, meant to showcase the many faction symbols from the brand's history, but one symbol stood out. The self-proclaimed "Warriorbots" were never a real thing. So were did they come from? The answer can be found on the "Insignia" page on the Transformers Fandom (formerly Wikia) wiki from 2014-2017, with it being listed among the others. Meaning whoever designed it, used the page as reference.
IDW Transformers Megaplex
In the IDW Publishing comic issue Transformers #20, the Machine Wars-based characters Starscream and Megaplex make cameo appearances in a crowd. Line artist Anna Malkova drew Megaplex according to a 2012 "virtual redeco" of Energon Starscream posted to DeviantArt by longtime fan artist Air Hammer. Given that "Starscream" is drawn according to his original toy, it would appear that Malkova turned up the digibash as a top Google result and mistakenly believed it to be an official toy.
References
- ↑ This is not to say that Hasbro is completely disinterested in ensuring some kind of consistency—the 2010 Binder of Revelation went on to inform vast swathes of modern Transformers storytelling, including the Prime and Cyberverse cartoons, and the 2019 IDW comics.
- ↑ Hasbro Q&A December 2009 at TFviews.com
- ↑ Post from Josh Perez on The Allspark Forums
- ↑ Bumblebee: Developing an Epic Set Piece - ILM San Francisco
