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 tend not to keep much fictional reference material to hand internally.
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.
Reference material at Hasbro
In the mid-2000s, Hasbro licensees were provided with copies of Simon Furman's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide as reference—notably, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman regularly consulted the guide while writing Transformers. In a similar vein, IDW Publishing's reprints of Dreamwave Productions' More than Meets the Eye profile series were directly referenced for The Art of Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and have been used by other licensees such as Fun Publications and Space Ape Games.
The fan-publication "The Obscure Omnibus" was provided by superfan Matthew Karpowich to Hasbro, informing the creation of the Generations Deluxe Class Darkmount (Straxus) toy, which used a colour scheme from Straxus's depiction on the guide's cover.
The only known example of a high-level continuity document designed solely for internal use was the 2010 Binder of Revelation, designed to help new creatives in the franchise get up to speed with key characters, concepts, and settings, to bring the various stories they were producing at the time into alignment. This lore bible went on to inform vast swathes of modern Transformers storytelling, most notably the the Prime cartoon, which proved extremely influential in its own right.
Over the years, however, the Binder appears to have fallen by the wayside, with Hasbro happy to have different concurrent media diverge entirely so long as some key synergies remain—such as the Cyberverse cartoon being informed by the script for the 2018 Bumblebee movie—directing writers to the wiki for lore nitty-gritty. Cyberverse showrunner Randolph Heard cites this as one reason for the show's starring roles for many more obscure fan-favourite characters.[1] Similarly, Brian Ruckley—also new to the franchise—over the course of his 2019 Transformers ongoing with IDW Publishing has plucked a large number of obscure characters from the wiki, in particular a great many female Transformers. All of this is to say that the referencing of fan wikis is perfectly normal and can often be positive. It's also why the wiki should strive for completeness and accuracy when documenting the Transformers universe—as the following cautionary tales show...
Examples of circular reporting through the TFWiki
Absence of evidence
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.
Similarly, the online Transformers Collectors' Club profile for Flashdrive—based on the Japanese-exclusive Mini-Con Processor—refers to a teammate called "Trickshot", clearly intended to be his fellow Micron Booster toy Triac; the wiki failed to note this, and the 2015 Ask Vector Prime column would instead give Triac the localised identtiy of "Bingo".
Him Swoop have legs that go for miiiles.
Hasbro licensee The Loyal Subjects frequently, ah, took inspiration from the wiki's writeups for its various bio cards. Most memorably, this resulted in Swoop's motto being given as the image caption from his main picture.
(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 Leader Class 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, colorist 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—in particular, our scan of the artwork makes it appear to have a much warmer tone than it does in print, shifting the gray towards brown and the lilac towards pink. These tones influenced the coloring of Vortex's Fall of Cybertron concept art, 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 2013 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 a fan-colored character model previously uploaded to the wiki (see left), which had a reddish tint based on the poor DVD masters of The Transformers: The Movie available at the time. The actual color scheme is supposed to be more leafy-green. It should be noted that at the time of the toy's creation, the wiki had already switched to an updated character model; the older version was likely still cached by Google Images, or drawn from elsewhere on the web.
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 Leader Class toy of T-Wrecks has a colour scheme which is much more drab than the original Beast Machines Ultra Class iteration, 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.
Earth Wars Dile
In Transformers: Earth Wars, Dile was revealed as a forthcoming character in early September 2020, sporting an unusual gray and purple deco which doesn't match his toy's colors at all. Later the following month, Space Ape Games put out a new render, explaining that the original colors were based on the washed out scan of his card art seen at the at the top of his wiki page. The new render instead uses a more light-green and silvery hue based on a somewhat color-corrected version of the card art, rather than the much more pronounced green of the toy itself.
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, from Lost Light #19, 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 enban tsukai (円盤使い, meaning "disc user"). 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. Most glaringly, Breakdown winds up having purple and silver in place of the proper pink and gold.
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 Deluxe-sized 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, while eye dropping the colors from said screen captures, and then replacing the heads of the models with traced headshots also taken from episode screen captures. These fan-colorings regularly make rounds on the web since they are readily available on Pinterest and Fandom wikia pages, making it hard not to come across them through a simple Google Search.
On top of all of this, the models Transformers.kiev.ua would frequently use were also the ones published in The Ark series books as they were the only real source available for "Generation 1" animation models at the time. In the years since, better copies of animation models have surfaced through various eBay and Japanese auction sites, revealing that some of the models used in the books were actually out of date pre-final models that had been revised anywhere from once, to several times afterwards. The author of the books, Jim Sorenson has also stated in conversation with the wiki team that due to the condition of some of the models he had found or been given access to, Bill Forster had to sometimes trace, redraw and digitally mend models, such as the Junkions, to make them more presentable for publishing; this has also led to several inaccuracies with the original model sheets that have surfaced since.
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
- ↑ "I came to this, again, without a lot of Transformers knowledge, and I was directed to TFWiki, and I started reading TFWiki and I'm like, oh my god, I don't understand anything, is this a multiverse, or- why- why are there so many variations on things? I'm never gonna learn this thing or understand it. And fortunately my staff were very helpful in that regard. But I think that Cyberverse to me was like, because I came from the outside in a way, I looked at it as a big box of toys, and I could play with any of them. And you know, that's how kids are, right? They're not going to distinguish between a Marvel toy, a DC toy, and something else—if they're cool they'll make a battle between anything. And so to me I felt the freedom, like, yeah, I'll just pick stuff and no-one said no. In fact they seemed delighted that we were bringing back characters. [...] I researched lists of 'weirdest Transformers ever.' [...] I said I don't, you know, I confessed to Mikiel Houser, and he said that's fine, check out the TFWiki and that'll tell you everything you need to know, and I was kind of like- it told me too much, you know? It was overwhelming. And I love TFWiki—they have such great writers, they're hilarious."—Randolph Heard is too kind, from an interview with Keyan Carlile's Transformers Channel on YouTube, uploaded 20 November 2021
- ↑ Hasbro Q&A December 2009 at TFviews.com
- ↑ Post from Josh Perez on The Allspark Forums - Deadlink
