The Transformers (cartoon)/cast
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As The Transformers progressed over its four main seasons, characters would often come and go in the blink of an eye, while others stuck around for the majority of the show's length. As this show was made to sell toys to the audience, new characters were constantly being introduced to keep relevant products on-screen. For the purpose of this list, we have included every named Transformer, computer/robot, recurring human and alien in the cartoon, using concurrent names and terminology or, in the lack of any other option, names given after the fact via retcon. As with other cast lists for American Transformers shows, only the characters' English voice actors are listed and excludes any stand-in voices. Rather than listing every single character that appeared per season, each season's list only has newly introduced characters present.
Season 1
The first season primarily revolves around the Ark and Nemesis crews after landing on Earth and waking up in 1984. As the season progressed, the introduction of toys from the 1985 lineup started to make their appearance. This season also had recurring humans working alongside the Autobots and Decepticons.
Season 2
"Uh, Prime, we're gonna need a bigger camera..."
"Darn, looks like we may have to lose a few of our numbers."
The second season greatly expanded the cartoon's cast and focused more heavily on character-driven stories, with many characters getting their own "spotlight" episodes. With the new additions of figures sold in the 1985 lineup of toys, it practically doubled the original amount of characters that were seen in the previous season.
(New characters only)
The Transformers: The Movie and Season 3
1986 was the year Hasbro decided to wipe a clean slate and advertise the new molds that they had solely created. Thus the movie was made, killing off a lot of older season one characters in the then-future year of 2005, in order to pave the way for their new products that were hitting store shelves. The new cast of characters introduced in the film also became the focus for future stories. The third season, set mostly in 2006, added even more characters on top of the movie's cast, with the addition of Citybots, new combiners, new Minibots and more Triple Changers.
(New characters only)
Season 4
Lastly, season four aka "The Rebirth" was set months after the return of Optimus Prime. Being only three episodes long, most characters from the 1987 lineup that were not the main focus of the story, only received roughly 90 seconds of screen time each, as the introduction of the Headmasters and Targetmasters were this season's sole focus.
(New characters only)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others |
|---|---|---|
Others |
Headmasters
Targetmasters
Clones Others
|
Autobot Headmaster Nebulons Autobot Targetmaster Nebulons
Decepticon Headmaster Nebulons
Decepticon Targetmaster Nebulons
|
Season 5
The final season of The Transformers was simply made up of edited reruns of the previous four seasons and The Transformers: The Movie, with a "new" title sequence and live-action commercial bumpers and bookending segments, featuring Tommy Kennedy and an animatronic/stop-motion puppet of Powermaster Optimus Prime. Along with Powermaster Optimus Prime, several other 1988 characters featured in the toyline are only seen in the title sequence, via clips taken from commercials or name-dropped by either of the live-action characters during the bookending segments.
(New characters only)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Others |
|---|---|---|
|
Targetmasters Others |
Powermasters |
Humans
Autobot Targetmaster Nebulons |
Notes
- A lot of characters went unnamed during production and generally had reference names used for the animators and writers to go by when creating the episodes. Some of these names became public knowledge through old scripts and storyboards, while others were sometimes credited using those names for any dialogue they may have had.
- Over the subsequent years, many writers of comics and books had taken to using some of the unnamed characters in their stories while retroactively giving them proper names and even in some cases, personalities, far beyond what was shown on screen. Among the unnamed characters, there were some that were given fan-names and even subgroups like the Rainmakers, that had these fan-names later become canon through Hasbro/Takara, Ask Vector Prime and media produced through BotCon and the Transformers Collectors' Club.
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 Denotes a character who previously went unnamed during the show's original run but was later named in other forms of fiction established by publishers such as; Fun Publications, IDW Publishing, Ask Vector Prime or various forms of media released in the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Denotes a character whose voice actor had changed due to the switch over between the movie and season 3.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 Denotes a character who only appeared in the title sequence.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Denotes a character whose name is mentioned by Optimus and/or Tommy during the bookending segments.
