This special three-disc package is where it all started, 25 years ago. It includes all of the episodes remastered so it takes you back to when the original series aired on your old analog television. It includes some bonus features that explain how the animated series came to be. Each of the episodes is packed with the heroism and underdog-wins plot lines we have come to expect from Transformers (about which I wrote here).The intriguing part about this new set is the special features disc. It includes the following featurettes:
- Triple Changer: From Toy to Comic To Screen - The Origins of Transformers
- A Printable Script
- Rare PSA
- Archival Hasbro Toy Commercials
If you have been around the Transformers franchise for any of its many reinventions you know that it can all be very confusing. Sometimes characters will have a different shape from toy, to comic, to cartoon. There was a movie version I rented once that I call teenie-Transformers, because it featured the music of Queen and the little toys cussed. There just doesn’t seem to be a flow or rationale that brings the whole franchise together.
The featurette Triple Changer really explains a great deal as to why. In the beginning, Hasbro found a Japanese toy manufacturer that made a toyline where cars, guns, airplanes, animals all turned into robots. (Sound familiar?) They decided there was something to these little puzzles, but they needed a storyline: good vs. evil, that sort of thing. They quickly, and admittedly, haphazardly put the franchise together. They were creating a storyline while all at once reinventing the toys, creating comic books, and producing an animated television series. This created the disparities within the franchise, because each of the teams did not have enough time to coordinate and communicate with the other.
The beautiful thing within this special feature, though, is the creative process each of the people interviewed enjoyed. God is creative. We only have to enjoy a sunrise or sunset, a flower, or snow to realize it. Every single one of the people who were interviewed had a wonderful time creating this franchise, because each and every one of them is made in God’s image. It is especially intriguing to hear the man who created the mythology around Transformers mention how nobody could criticize him or stop his imaginary juices from flowing because he got to start from scratch.
I often wonder if that is a reflection (albeit no reflection is complete) of how God must have felt after he created our world and universe. I wonder if that’s what he meant every time he said, “It is good.”
