Hideaki Yoke

Yoke-san surrounded by fans at BotCon 2005

Hideaki Yoke (餘家英昭 Yoke Hideaki) is Takara's former lead designer on Transformers. He was a prominent designer on Microman and in particular pitched and oversaw the Micro Change subline that would prove pivotal to the original Decepticon roster. Yoke acted as Takara's liaison to Hasbro in the early years of Transformers' development. He worked on Transformers ever since and, according to Aaron Archer, has had more of a hand in the engineering of the toyline than any single other person in its history. Yoke retired from TakaraTomy in March 2017.

Known design projects

Generation 1

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers

• Megatron
• Soundwave
• Ravage
• Blaster
• Perceptor
• Reflector (Spectro, Spyglass, and Viewfinder)

Scramble City/2010

• Galvatron
• Hubcap
• Outback
• Pipes
• Swerve
• Tailgate

The Transformers

The Battlechargers were not released domestically by Takara:

• Runabout
• Runamuck

Armada

• Street Action Mini-Con Team/Perceptor
  • Grindor
  • High Wire
  • Sureshock

Animated

• Swoop

Convention appearances

• BotCon 2005
• BotCon 2010
• BotCon 2011
• Toy Fair 2011
• Toy Fair 2012
• Cybertron Con 2012
• HasCon 2017

Notes

• Yoke's favorite Generation 1 Transformer that he designed is Perceptor. His second favorite is Reflector.
• According to Aaron Archer at OTFCC 2004, he chose to name the Armada Mini-Con combiner robot "Perceptor" to honor the Takara employee who engineered the Street Action Team because that employee was also responsible for engineering the original Generation 1 Perceptor toy, ie Yoke, though Archer did not call him out by name.
• The Transformers Animated character Yoketron was named after him.
• Upon his retirement in 2017, Hasbro and TakaraTomy presented Yoke with a sealed original 1985 toy and small statue of Perceptor; looking in the microscope lens on the statue reveals the words "Thank you". Awwww.
• He never stops smiling.

External links

• Hall of Fame video on Hasbro's official Transformers YouTube channel
• Translation of a March 2012 interview with Yoke at TFW2005
• Steve-o Stonebraker's BotCon 2005 report
• Hideaki Yoke's Instagram account