Public service announcement
Public service announcements (or "PSAs") are short clips shown at the end of many television cartoon shows from the 1980s that are unrelated to the content of the rest of the episode, and feature some of the show's main characters teaching a real-life lesson to kids. For the second season of the Generation 1 cartoon, a series of PSAs were produced, but were ultimately never aired on TV.
History of public service announcements
The first cartoon series to feature public service announcements was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (produced by Filmation), which started in 1983. According to an interview with the show's staff, this was a conscious decision to balance out the inherently violent nature of the show. Subsequently, other productions companies copied the concept for their own shows, such as Sunbow for G.I. Joe, DIC for Inspector Gadget and M.A.S.K., Ruby-Spears for Mister T, and Filmation themselves for their Ghostbusters cartoon (not to be confused with DIC's The Real Ghostbusters, which didn't feature PSAs). PSAs largely went out of fashion by the late 1980s, and only briefly reemerged in the mid-1990s, only to disappear altogether soon afterwards.
Transformers public service announcements
For the Transformers cartoon, a series of five public service announcements was produced for the second season, each with a different lesson to be learned. For reasons unknown, these PSAs were not aired on television and went unseen by the public for over a decade.
The animation for these shorts was handled by Toei, while the scripts were almost exact duplicates of the PSAs used for the G.I. Joe cartoon, only replacing the G.I. Joe characters with Transformers characters. As a matter of fact, each PSA ended with one of the troubled kids spouting "Now I know!" The featured Transformer would then follow it up with the infamous catch-phrase, "And knowing is half the battle!"
The same scripts used for the G.I. Joe and Transformers PSAs were also recycled for another Hasbro/Sunbow cartoon, Jem and the Holograms, albeit the catch-phrase was changed to, "Doing the right thing makes you a superstar!"
List of Transformers PSAs
- "Don't steal cars" featuring Tracks (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Shipwreck).
- "Don't bike at night without reflectors" featuring Red Alert (based on G.I. Joe version featuring Dusty).
- "Don't boat without a lifejacket" featuring Seaspray (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Deep Six).
- "Don't jump to conclusions about people/Don't be sexist" featuring Powerglide, ironically enough (based on a G.I. Joe version featuring Gung-Ho).
Availability
- The Kid Rhino Generation 1 Season 3 part 1 DVD set (first ever public release).
- Melbourne House Transformers PlayStation 2 game (bonus content).
- Madman Entertainment's Generation 1 part 6 DVD box set.
- Shout! Factory Generation 1 DVD sets (broken up and scattered across multiple releases).
