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. See the IP theft page for more information.
Wikipedia formally terms this circular reporting, and we also nickname the phenomenon citogenesis, based on the xkcd strip that satirized the concept.
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 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 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 on 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. For official work affected by "third party" toys, see the IP theft page for more information.
Third-party designs used for reference
The expansion of the Transformers fandom in the late 2000s brought on a new wave of unlicensed toys produced at a semi-commercial level to fulfill some collectors' desires for high-grade cartoon- and comic-accurate figures. Naturally, this has allowed creators to intentionally or accidentally use unlicensed toys as reference material in official media. In the comic panel at right, Rodimus and Drift are drawn according to the vehicle modes of Mastermind Creations' "Calidus" and "Stray" figures, which were inspired to begin with by earlier comic appearances of said Rodimus and Drift.
Various Internet references
Discmaster
This might be one of the earliest cases of circular reporting in the history of the Transformers brand and fandom (and one of the rare, non-visual, text-only cases). The toy bio for Beast Wars II Autolauncher refers to both himself and his rival Mantis with the turn of phrase 円盤使い (enban tsukai, meaning "disc user"/"disc wielder"/etc.). When the bio was translated into English in the late 1990s/early 2000s by longtime fan translator Doug Dlin, the phrase was written in English as "Discmaster"; Dlin likely having taken some creative inspiration from the various forms of "-master" technology of Generation 1.
During the mid-2000s, when putting together the Beast Wars Sourcebook, longtime fan Ben Yee (who was co-author of the Sourcebook with Simon Furman) took Dlin's translation to heart—unaware that "Discmaster" was merely a creative decision on Dlin's part and not actually what was written in the bio text—and applied the term to the book's profiles for both Autolauncher and Mantis. As a result, the term "Discmaster" now referred to a martial art practiced by both characters, despite the term having never actually existed beforehand in the first place.
Combiner Wars G2 Menasor
At first glance, Hasbro's Generation 2-themed redeco of Combiner Wars Menasor looks to be a simple homage to the original, canceled Generation 2 toy. However, a closer inspection reveals that it took some notable inspiration from a 2014 fanmade digibash posted to DeviantArt by longtime fan artist Air Hammer, which was itself based on another fan's hand-painted customization of the original Generation 1 Stunticons in an attempt to recreated the canceled Generation 2 toys.
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 to 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 fan artist Air Hammer (similar to the above case of Combiner Wars G2 Menasor). 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.
Incorrectly-colored animation models
The 1984-1987 The Transformers animated series that has become a centerpiece of the brand was, to be blunt, not a high-quality production in the animation department. All four seasons were prone to animation errors, adding an additional challenge to modern fans attempting to isolate simple views of any given character model. To make matters worse, Hasbro and licensees have often relied upon a set of fan-colorings from the Ukrainian Transformers fan website (Transformers.kiev.ua) that attempted to recreate Sunbow animation models using screen captures of episodes, with some models also featuring traced headshots from episode screen captures. Said fan-colorings regularly make rounds on the web since they are readily available on Pinterest and Fandom wikia pages.
As can be seen in the example at right, the 2020 R.E.D. [Robot Enhanced Design] Soundwave figure'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.
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
