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alt.toys.transformers FAQ v4.1

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Steve R. Stonebraker

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Nov 12, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/12/96

The Fantastical
Alt.Toys.Transformers FAQ

written by Steve Stonebraker

srst...@cc.owu.edu
bc...@freenet.carleton.ca

http://www.owu.edu/~srstoneb

Version 4.1
Updated: 9/1/96

== Introduction =======================

This is the FAQ file for the alt.toys.transformers discussion group. A
FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Different FAQ's are used for
different purposes -- some aren't even organized by 'questions', but are
straight information. This FAQ has a few main goals:
A) to provide quick answers to various questions which come up
frequently on the newsgroup. This makes things easier for the person asking
the question, as well as less annoying to people reading the newsgroup.
B) to serve as a useful reference for all TransFans. There are
questions in this FAQ which have not been frequently asked on the newsgroup,
and probably some which have never been asked, but they are questions that may
be on people's minds regardless, or questions which, although you might not
have thought of them, you are glad to know the answer to.
C) to simply be entertaining to read.
If there is something discussed in the FAQ which you have a question
about, or have some new ideas to contribute, by all means do post a message
about it or send email to me. This is merely a reference guide, and is not
supposed to give the impression of having the last word on any issue. The FAQ
represents, for the most part, the collected opinions of the people who post
to att. Consequently, even though the FAQ is not God, if you disagree with or
disobey it, the people whose opinions it reflects might not be happy with you.
Additional posts on some topics are likely to be met with cries of "Read the
FAQ!", and in some cases much worse. :)
Also, if there is something which you would like to see included in the
FAQ which I have passed over, send me email about it and best bet is that your
suggestion will be in the next version. Revisions of this FAQ are irregular,
meaning that I normally revise when I have enough new info to make it worth
the effort and have the time to make the changes.
Lastly, if I have included your email or web address, and it is
incorrect or changes, _please_ be sure to alert me to this so I don't continue
to list an out of date address.

== Changes From Previous Version ======

- updated some MUSH info
- realized a Fanzine list already existed
- removed a reference to Kendrick (gasp!)
- extra Battlestars and Zone info
- BotCon '97 announcement
- more web sites, fewer typos

== FAQ Availability ===================

The Transformers FAQ is posted every other monday to a.t.t., and in time will
hopefully be seen on alt.answers and news.answers. I also have a distribution
list for the FAQ and related documents, but I only send to the list when I
finish a new version. Everyone is welcome to join the list, and need only
send me an email about it to be included.

The newest version will also always be available through the means listed
below. The FAQ is included in more places than shown here, but to prevent
this section from getting unnecessarily long I have limited this list to our
remaining ftp site and two WWW pages (mine and Iggy's). I hope this isn't
taken as an insult by any other WWW maintainers who I have not mentioned. :)

ftp://vela.acs.oakland.edu/pub/jjhoxsey/
http://www.owu.edu/~srstoneb
http://www.canit.se/~optimus/tf.html

Email: srst...@cc.owu.edu OR bc...@freenet.carleton.ca

== Finding TF Information ===============

Aside from the FAQ, I also keep up the Complete Transformers Resource
Guide, the TF Information Locator, and the TF Book List. The first is a
straight list of every TF-related bit of information on the net and off that
is listed in the FAQ, and that I am aware of. The Info Locator is a much
shorter quick-reference sheet for the major topics discussed in the FAQ. The
Book List is self-explanatory. :) I post the Info Locator every monday,
accompany it in alternating weeks with the FAQ and Resource Guide. All four
documents can be found on my web page.
At this point there isn't much Transformers information on my WWW page,
even though it's been there for some time. I'm waiting for more disk space.
For now I'm going to go out on a limb and "endorse" Iggy Drougge's WWW page.
He's got basically every text file I might mention there, so referring you to
him now makes things much simpler. Even if I don't specifically say that he's
got it, it's a good bet that it's there anyway. The URL for his page is
"http://www.canit.se/~optimus/tf.html".

== Terms and Abbreviations ============

There are several terms, abbreviations, and acronyms that I may be using
in this FAQ, and that you may run across in the newsgroup and elsewhere on the
net as well. Here is an incomplete list of them...

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions, or the list thereof
a.t.t., att - alt.toys.transformers
bot - Autobot
BW - Beast Wars
BWADL - Beast Wars Anti-Defamation League
con, decep - Decepticon
G2 - Generation 2, or Transformers: Generation 2
gestalt - a robot made up of a combination of several smaller robots
TF - Transformer(s)
TRU - Toys 'R Us
TFTM - Transformers: The Movie
HasKen - the Hasbro / Kenner conglomerate which now makes TFs
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion.
Megs, Meggy - Megatron, Decepticon leader.
MTMTE - "More Than Meets The Eye", the first three-episode story
Op, OP - Optimus Prime, Autobot leader.
OTOH - On The Other Hand.
Quints - Quintessons, aliens introduced in the TF movie who played a large
part in the plot of post-movie eps
regulars - att's frequent and more well-known posters
retcon - "retroactive continuity", when a character or story has a blank area
of its past filled in, or an old area replaced, to make the present
story make more sense
seekers - the 6 'con jets with the same design (like Starscream and Thrust)
spam - to post long, pointless messages, or to send a message to many
newsgroups where it doesn't apply, or the pointless message itself
tech specs - the little cards from TF boxes which showed the abilities and
stats of the TF
TransFan - a Transformers Fan (whoa...)
TRoOP - "The Return of Optimus Prime", a 2 part post-movie story
Shackwave - the Radio Shack Shockwave ripoff, it was grey and called something
like "Astro Man"
*Masters, *M - AM=ActionMaster, HM=HeadMaster, TM=TargetMaster,
PM=PowerMaster, MM=MicroMaster

== Contents ===========================

I. General questions relating to the newsgroup
1. Why don't you guys go and get a life?
2. What's the range of ages for people in this group?
3. What is FIRRIB?
4. What's the TF-MUSH?
5. What's the TF Purity Test?
6. Where do I go to sell old TFs I don't want anymore?
7. I want Jetfire! Someone sell him to me! Whaaahhh!
8. I'd like to buy any old TFs I can find. What are the best places
to look?
9. I have some TFs but I don't know their names... can anyone help me?
10. Is it okay to post binaries on this group?
11. What should I not ask about on a.t.t.?
II. Getting info and stuff
1. Are there any TF WWW or ftp sites?
2. Where can I get a list of all the TFs that were made?
3. Where can I get a list of all the TF tech specs?
4. Where can I get a list of all the TF fan fiction?
5. Where can I get a list of all the TF cartoon episodes?
6. Where can I get a list of TF quotes?
7. How about a TF encyclopedia or something?
III. General TF questions
1. When did the TFs first come out?
2. Are there any TF conventions?
3. Are there any TF clubs?
4. What's happening with the current TF line?
IV. TF related products
1. Are there any TF video games?
2. Is there a TF role-playing game?
3. What were those TF trading cards like?
4. What TF books are available?
V. Continuity Issues
1. Why doesn't anything agree with anything else?
2. What's the basic origin from the comics?
3. What's the basic origin from the TV show?
4. So where did Unicron come from in the cartoon?
5. Which origin for the Constructicons is right?
VI. General TF story questions
1. Does Cybertron have an atmosphere?
2. What's up with the female TFs?
3. But WHY do they have them at all?
4. How do TFs reproduce?
5. How did the Great War start?
6. Why do they transform? Why not just be big robots?
7. Where does Prime's trailer go when he transforms?
8. Are they immortal?
9. Is there a Transformers history anywhere?
VII. Toys
1. What were the TFs based on?
2. What's the deal with red/yellow Bumblebee/Cliffjumper?
3. Why is Jetfire just like a Robotech Veritech fighter?
4. Was there a Skyfire toy?
5. I've got these weird tiny TFs. What are they?
6. What are those switches on the back of the Jumpstarters' heads for?
7. How many combiners did they make?
8. How many tapes did they make?
9. Did they ever make a Unicron toy?
10. Why have all the TF toys since [pick a time] sucked?
11. What's with Go-Bot Transformers?
12. What are the G2 Powermasters?
13. Why Beast Wars?
VIII. Cartoon
1. What's the deal with Rumble and Frenzy? Which is which?
2. Can Autobots fly or not?
3. Why'd they call Jetfire "Skyfire" and draw him different?
4. How'd they do Soundwave's voice?
5. Where can I find episodes of the show on tape?
6. What was "Five Faces of Darkness" about?
7. People have mentioned "Call of the Primitives". What was that
episode about?
8. What happened in "Dark Awakening" and "The Return of Optimus Prime"?
9. What was "Rebirth"?
10. Is there a list of the voice actors from the show?
IX. Comics
1. Who published it, and when was it in production?
2. Who wrote the comic?
3. Who drew it?
4. The whole story arc with Unicron was different in the comic, so where
did Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Scourge come from in it? And where was
Rodimus Prime?
5. What about issue 43, "The Big Broadcast of 2006"?
6. Wasn't Spiderman in one issue? Does that mean the TFs are in the
normal Marvel Universe with the X-Men?
7. What about G.I. Joe?
8. I never got to read the G2 comics... what happened in them?
X. TF:The Movie
1. What happened in it?
2. Why weren't more characters featured?
3. Where was Snarl?
4. Why did the Insecticons keep showing up and dying?
5. Why would Astrotrain need to "jettison some weight" in space?
6. Who became Cyclonus, and why were there two of him?
7. Why'd they kill everyone?
8. Who did the voices?
9. What was the universal greeting they used?
10. Didn't they swear in it?
11. What changes were made between the theatrical and video releases?
12. Is there an uncut copy of the movie, which even has material that
was never seen in theaters?
13. Where can I get the movie on tape?
14. Where can I get the movie on laserdisc?
15. Where can I get the movie soundtrack?
16. What else is there to know about Stan Bush and Vince DiCola?
XI. TFs outside the United States
1. Where else have TFs appeared?
2. What were the Japan-only toys like?
3. What other toys were never released in the US?
4. What were the Japanese TF cartoons like?
5. Wow! How can I get copies of the anime?
6. What's Transformers: Hero?
7. What's different between the American and British comics?
XII. Miscellaneous Questions
1. What were those Cybertronian units of time?
2. Unicron vs. the Death Star: who would win?
3. How do you write out the transforming sound?
4. Which TFs died in the movie/comic/tv show?
XIII. Closing Comments and Information
Fanzines and clubs
A note on translations
Behavior pointers:for people new to the net, or new to att
for established att regulars
XIV. Silly Random Questions
XV. Revision History and Plans for the Future
XVI. About the Author
XVII. Legalese and Special Thanks

== I. General Questions Relating to the Newsgroup

1. Why don't you guys go and get a life?

Contrary to appearances, many, and indeed most, of the regular posters
to alt.toys.transformers DO lead healthy and (somewhat) full lives. It
is true that we are holding on to our childhoods, but that's something
that most people would consider to be a good thing. :)

When it comes down to it, the main reason that most of us read and post
to alt.toys.transformers is that we simply think transforming robots are
a pretty cool idea. There's nothing wrong with adults liking toys. :P
Most TransFans also find a great deal of enjoyment in the background
story and mythos associated with TFs. There are so many interesting and
well-developed characters in the Transformer universe that many people
find it impossible not to get caught up in the legend.

Many a.t.t readers also read related newsgroups (such as rec.games.
mecha, and rec.arts.anime), and you may also want to check out a few of
those groups if you have not already done so.

2. What's the range of ages for people in this group?

In July '96 Joseph Neo did a statistical analisys of the TransFan ages
on att. His results fell into a typical bell curve with a mean of 20,
ranging from 11 to 34. Generally, it's the people who were the right
age to appreciate Transformers when they were really popular, from
around 1984 to 89 or 90. This question is *almost* on the "don't ask"
list, but unless we continue to get people asking about it with a fair
regularity, even though it's in the FAQ, I'll leave it off.

3. What is FIRRIB?

FIRRIB is an acronym for "Frenzy Is Red Rumble Is Blue". It's a topic
that has historically caused quite a stir on a.t.t. Please do not
mention this topic. It's more trouble than it's worth, and no good will
come of its discussion.

FIRRIB/FIBRIR is a matter of dispute because of inconsistent coloring
between the toys and the cartoon show. If you go by the toys, Rumble is
red and black, while Frenzy is two shades of blue. On the TV show,
however, Rumble was purplish and blue, and Frenzy, who was almost never
featured, was red and black.

To make things even more confusing, sometimes they were both shown as
blue, or both as red. The comic book, near the beginning, often had
inconsistent coloring as well, and in fact both Frenzy and Rumble
sometimes looked sort of blackish. Also, the G2 Go-Bot version of
Frenzy is actually purple, perhaps in an effort to solve the red/blue
controversy? ;)

What it really comes down to is whether you consider the show or the
toys to be canon. For most people this depends on which they saw first.
One thing you will learn about TFs, though, is that there really is no
canon.

4. What's the TF-MUSH?

A MUSH is an online game which many people can play at once. The
letters stand for Multi-User Shared Hallucination. MUSHes are very
similar to MUDs, in that people connect to it and control characters
which interact with other players and the environment. However, while
the focus on MUDs is generally on fighting, MUSHes tend to be much more
plot-oriented and focus on role-playing.

There are currently five Transformer MUSHes. The first one, generally
called TFMUSH or TF1, takes place before the events of the movie. The
second MUSH, known as TF2005, or TF2K5, takes place very shortly after
the movie. The third MUSH is Cybertronian Wars - The Transformers Saga
(CWTS). It takes place just before the time of the movie. The fourth
MUSH is Transformers: The Dream (or just the Dream), based on the
cartoon continuity. The newest is TF2, based on the cartoon continuity
and taking place between 1984 and 1991. Each MUSH has its own timeline
and continuity, and need not agree with the others on all points.

As on other MUSHes, the heart of the TF MUSHes is role-playing and plot:
not fighting. If you are looking for hack and slash, try a MUD. The
experience of playing on a TF MUSH is a lot like being inside an episode
of the cartoon. There are planned events called "tinyplots" (TP's), but
for the most part the players are the ones who initiate events.

Also, the admin of the various MUSHes wish to point out that they are
not in competition with each other. On the contrary, many of the admin
play all of the MUSHes, and some even have admin duties on more than one
of them.

Although the terminology for them varies from site to site, on each
MUSH, you may choose either an existing TF character or create one of
your own. The pre-existing characters are understandably limited and in
high demand. Before choosing an existing character, make sure that you
are choosing one which you will be able to role-play well. For example,
don't choose to play Prowl and then act like a war-crazed maniac. When
creating new characters you may choose your own name, appearance, modes,
abilities, and tech specs. However, there are limits placed on original
characters' power; this is so there aren't twenty people running around
with all 10's ruining the game for everyone else. Generally, the MUSHes
assume that the characters featured in the cartoon, toys, comic, etc.,
were the "cream of the crop". There are other limits placed on original
characters, but to learn more about those you should ask someone on the
MUSH itself or email one of the Wizards. Players are generally
permitted to have one pre-existing character and two or three originals.

It's best to visit a MUSH before getting a character so that you can get
a feel for the place. Telnet to the MUSH of your choice, and at the
login screen, type "login guest guest", or "connect guest guest", or
whatever it says to type. You will then be placed into a welcome room,
which will probably have a few people in it talking Out Of Character
(OOC, as opposed to In Character, IC). Type "help" to get some of the
basic commands, and then ask someone in the room to help you out.

If you decide to get a character and start playing on the MUSHes you
might want to get a copy of the MUSH Manual so that you can get
accustomed to the commands, and that way not be totally lost when you
first get on to play. You can get the manual by anonymous ftp at the
site "caisr2.caisr.cwru.edu" in the directory /pub/mush. The file is
called MUSHMAN or something obvious of that nature.

The current addresses for the MUSHes are:
TFMUSH: dead, maybe forever
TF2K5: aptlabta.wpi.edu 5555
CWTS: dead, maybe forever
Dream: odysseus.uncg.edu 1995
TF2: down temporarily (ask Mike Sosa, "ms...@ace.cs.ohiou.
edu" for current info)

The TFMUSH gods are Chip and Ravage, the plot wizard is Silverbolt, and
the character staff head is Starscream:
Chip: lud...@softfarm.com
Ravage: da...@vt.edu
Silverbolt: sl...@castaway.cc.uwf.edu
Starscream: kend...@io.com
Homepage: http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~erich/tfmush.html

The TF2005 Character Staff head is Vector Sigma, and the god is
Cyclonus:
Vector Sigma: sdw...@mailhost.ecn.uoknor.edu
Cyclonus: sha...@brown.edu
Homepage: http://aptlabta.wpi.edu/~tf2005

The CWTS Head Director is Metroplex, the demigod is Alpha Trion, Newbie
Staff Head is Ultra Magnus, and the Theme Staff head is Shockwave:
Metroplex: dav...@oldcolo.com
Alpha-Trion: foe...@itchy.ee.cua.edu
Ultra Magnus: bra...@cwis.unomaha.edu
Shockwave: bent...@oldcolo.com

The Dream's staff is headed by Motormaster, Longwing, and a few others:
Motormaster: pri...@odysseus.uncg.edu
Longwing: long...@wcnet.org

At TF2, Alpha Trion is the director, Air Raid runs the TP staff, and
Swindle is the Help Staff head.
Alpha Trion: chu...@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu
Air Raid: tab...@execpc.com
Swindle: pol...@bbs.expressways.com

5. What's the TF Purity Test?

After reading through several "You know you're obsessed with TFs
when..." posts, Diana Calder (az...@freenet.carleton.ca) put together
put together a fan purity test in the style of the Animaniacs
newsgroup's purity test which was in the style of the normal purity
test. Basically, it's a long list of questions, some of which are quite
silly, and you count your number of "yes" answers to get your score.
You can pick it up off of Iggy Drougge's web page, or if you can't get a
hold of it that way, Diana will email it to you.

The TF Fan Purity Test goes through revisions, just like many other
internet documents. Some of the highest scores on the current and
previous versions have been achieved by Kendrick, Jameel, the Nixtr, and
Kevin Byrnes. I've scored respectably on them, but I think being the
FAQ Keeper should earn me large numbers of bonus points. ;P If you
have a particularly impressive score, let me know and I might list you
in later versions of the FAQ.

6. Where do I go to sell old TFs I don't want anymore?

Simply post an auction message on a.t.t. The group traffic has
increased lately, but is still relatively low (around 100-200) new
messages a day), so there won't be a lot of complaints (if any) from
auctions being held. Make up a list of what TFs you want to sell, give
some clue as to their condition, whether they are originals or G2, etc.,
etc.. Anything that your buyers might want to know. There's almost
always at least one auction going on, so you can find a current auction
message and sort of follow its format if you're totally clueless.

In an effort to make the auctions held a little more consistent, Burt
Ward (bea...@cris.com) has written up some guidelines for determining
the conditions of TFs. This way people can know more specifically what
they're getting without worrying what the seller's definition of "fair
condition" is. To get a copy of these guidelines, email Burt or check
out his WWW page: http://www.cris.com/~beavis/tf.html

Also, an important point about auctions is that if you are making bids,
_please_ be sure you send your bid over email to the person holding the
auction. Do _NOT_ post bids to the newsgroup. It annoys other readers
and probably won't get your bid recognized by the auctioneer either.

7. I want Jetfire! Someone sell him to me! Whaaahhh!

In general, posting messages which say "I want x, if you have x please
sell it to me" are not very successful and aren't always welcome in non-
".marketplace" newsgroups. This is due to the fact that if there's
anyone out there that wants to sell their x, they'll have already posted
saying "I am selling x" and someone will have bought it. Everyone wants
Jetfire. If everyone who wanted Jetfire posted messages saying so, we'd
more than double the traffic of att overnight. If you want a genuine,
real-thing Jetfire, keep an eye on the auctions and make bids. If you'd
be content with a lookalike Jetfire, read on:

There is a company on the net called Macross Exchange which sells newer,
albeit cheaper, Valkyrie toys. These Valkyries are not an exact match
for Jetfire (they have a different head, and no Super Valkyrie armor),
and are made with less metal and more plastic of slightly lower quality
than in the original Jetfire, but are still good toys. Other than the
change in material and head, they are identical to the original Bandai
Valkyrie toys, being made from the same mold. These are often referred
to as Korean knockoff Valkyries because, simply, they're made in Korea
and aren't actually licensed Macross toys. But regardless, they are
pretty nice and are available in four colors: red/white like Jetfire,
green, red, and blue. They sell for $30 US. If you are interested,
send email to "hin...@ix.netcom.com" or check out the Macross Exchange
WWW page, "http://fantoma.usfca.edu/~khyron/robotech".

There is also another company called Puzzle Zoo which sells the
knockoffs, but for only $25 + shipping (I don't know if the $30 MacX
price includes shipping or not). They accept credit card, and their
address is 1413 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica CA, 90401, or phone
1-800-627-8523.

On the other hand, I don't mean to imply that all posts of this sort are
useless. Sometimes they can bear fruit. "I am looking for x" posts are
not among the forbidden topics of the group, so if all your other
resources have been exhausted, by all means feel free to ask for what
you want. There are some items which people aren't often looking for
that you might be able to find by posting about them. Basically the
only reason hearing "I want Jetfire" is so irritating is that we hear it
so often. If you want a left Trailbreaker fist, it's unlikely that
anyone will mind you asking if anyone will sell one.

8. I'd like to buy any old TFs I can find. What are the best
places to look?

Of course the easiest thing to do is to look through the auctions being
held on att. If no one is selling what you're looking for, or if you're
just in a general buying mood and aren't trying to find any specific
toy, there are a few options.

Toy shows, and of course BotCon, are good places to look for old TFs.
Many of the Transformers you'll find at toy shows and conventions will
be in their box, possibly unopened, and also highly priced. They're
good places to find toys, though, and you can even get TFs that were
never released in the US at conventions. (Not familiar with any of the
non-US toys? Check out section XI.)

A frequent goldmine for TransFans is the flea market, and sometimes even
garage sales. Often at flea markets there will be tables piled with
random toys, and often with a little searching you can find
Transformers. Their condition will vary of course, but you'll be able
to buy them cheap. Even if you're lucky enough to come across some
foreign TFs (which has happened) the dealer will likely have no idea
what they're worth. The important thing to remember at a flea market is
to never let on how much you want something, even a complete Fortress
Maximus. :) Act cool and slightly disinterested to get the best price.

Another method which has proven successful for me personally is to buy
Transformer collections from friends who no longer want them. I
purchased a few sackfuls of TFs from a friend of my roommate and nearly
doubled the size of my collection for under $100. Ask around. See if
your friends or their friends have Transformers sitting around
somewhere. If they aren't particularly attached to them, they'll be
happy enough to get _any_ money for them and you can make a deal which
will work out for the best for both of you.

9. I've got some TFs but I don't know their names... can anyone help me?

Certainly. Many of the regular att posters (and I'm sure a lot of the
lurkers) can identify your TFs without even having to look them up.
Simply make a post with the subject "ID this/these TF" or something
similar, and you should get emails or follow-up posts about it before
too long. Even if the toys aren't _real_ TFs, be they ripoffs like
Shackwave, or GoBots, or MASK, or whatever, go ahead and ask; just make
sure you say that they aren't (or might not be) Transformers so people
know what to think about.

10. Is it okay to post binaries on this group?

Well, it's not really forbidden, but doing so is not looked favorably
upon. There are specific areas which were created for binary posts (the
alt.binaries.* hierarchy, go figure) in order to keep binary posts out
of normal newsgroups. The reason for this is to save computing
resources. Also, many people who use commercial internet providers have
to pay, one way or another, for the Usenet posts they read. Even if
it's as simple as having to download message packets for reading
offline, binary posts are _very_ long and take a lot of phone time,
which can mean bigger long distance bills. There is also the concern
that if a newsgroup gets a lot of binary posts, some net service
providers might stop offering the group altogether because of all the
disk space a group full of binaries uses up.

Because of this lot of people don't have access to the alt. binaries.*
groups themselves since providers don't want to use all that space to
store them unless they are in very high demand. For these reasons, if
you have a file you'd like to post, it might be better to just upload it
to one of the FTP sites or send it to a WWW page maintainer and post a
message stating that you have done so.

11. What should I not ask about on a.t.t.?

There are a few main topics that are good to avoid. These are
questions, statements, etc., that have been discussed so thoroughly, or
are so incredibly pointless, that even one post about them is a waste of
bandwidth.

1) Unicron vs. ________. See XII, 2.
2) FIRRIB/FIBRIR. See I, 3.
3) Scenes cut from the movie. See X, 10-12.
4) How to spell Elita-1 / Alita-1. See VI, 2.

== II. Getting Info and Stuff =========

1. Are there any TF WWW or ftp sites?

Yes! There are _tons_ of Transformers sites on the net. There are
several ftp sites, although most of them are actually WWW pages with
lots of files available, but there is one "main" TF ftp site that has
been around for some time. The site also has a more user-friendly WWW
extension, if you prefer to connect that way. It is run by Jim Hoxsey,
"jjho...@saturn.acs.oakland.edu" and its address is:

vela.acs.oakland.edu /pub/jjhoxsey

There have been other TF ftp sites which have come and gone. Most
recently, the vtucs site at Virginia Tech disappeared. Here are some
smaller ftp sites that are now running:

ftp.netcom.com /pub/rj/rjung/Transformers
mixmaster.mit.edu /pub

If you don't know how to use anonymous ftp, ask whoever is in charge of
your computer system for help, or email me directly and I'll see if I
can clear it up for you. If you can help it, don't post to the
newsgroup with questions about how to use ftp. Vela has subdirectories
for text, pictures (both GIF and JPG format), and sounds. It's no
longer possible to upload files to vela because that privilege was
abused when it was still allowed. To get something on that site, you'll
have to contact Jim personally and ask about it.

The number of TF WWW sites is large and still growing. It's difficult,
if not impossible, for me to keep up with every new TF site that
appears. I do find a fair number of them on my own, but I haven't gone
looking just to make this list longer. However, I would like to include
as many TF WWW pages as possible, if not all of them. If you run or
know of a Transformers WWW page that I do not have listed, please email
me with the URL and I'll add it for the next revision of the FAQ.

The first page listed is the WWW extension of the vela FTP site. All
the others are TF related to varying degrees. Some are devoted TF
pages, others have small picture archives, are the homepages of major
att personalities, are maintained by Japanese toy distributors, etc.,
etc.. The Complete TF Resource Guide and HyperFAQ will list what these
pages actually are, but for the FAQ I felt that doubling the length of
this already long section would be poor, so I've simply listed the URLs.
Capital letters in the listed URL's imply a case-sensitive host; if you
try to connect without the caps, you will probably get an error. And
again, if you run a TF-related WWW page, or have links to a page I have
not mentioned, please let me know and I will add it to the list.

http://www.acs.oakland.edu/links/jjhoxsey/transformers.html

2. Where can I get a list of all the TFs that were made?

There is an extremely comprehensive toy list which is actually still
being compiled by Robert Jung (a different R. Jung than the one who
wrote ARJ). He can be contacted at "rj...@netcom.com". This lists all
toys from the US, Europe, and Japan, along with years they were released
and short descriptions.

Andrew Frankel (afra...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu) has managed to piece
together a checklist of sorts of the Japanese serial numbers of all the
TFs (that is, the C-XXX and D-XXX ID's from the Japanese toy boxes).
This list is on his WWW page, "http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~afrankel".

You might also want to look at M Sipher's (msi...@nando.net) "That Big
Transformers Variations List", which enumerates the many toy variations
which have been released.

3. Where can I get a list of all the TF tech specs?

David "Hex" Tashjian is the keeper of the "Official Unofficial
Transformers Tech Spec Listing". This file is updated regularly, and is
also posted to the newsgroup occasionally. For a copy of this, you can
check the newsgroup, but it's probably easier to email Hex and ask for a
copy or look for it on a Web page. He has several addresses, but the
preferred one is "tash...@ucunix.san.uc.edu". You can also pick it up
off the WWW from Iggy Drougge's page, or for an easier-to-read HTML
version, go to http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~cjs69930/stats.html.

During the last year or so Nick Morency (then...@acy.digex.net)
completed "The Definitive Tech Spec Reference" which he started many
years ago. When he announced that he was making a tech spec list, it
caused some controversy on att as Hex had been the established tech spec
authority for some time. Basically, it was a breach of netiquette to
post a claim that his new tech spec list was much better than the other
list available, but it's now been a while and no one seems to be holding
a grudge. His list is available on his WWW page, "http://www.acy.
digex.net/~thenixtr/nick0003.html".

Also, Lewis Brooks (broo...@bentley.edu) wrote a tech spec viewing
program called Tech Spec 2000. It's available at "http://users.aol.com/
autobot999/tf/tf.htm". Gabriel Quan (Gabrie...@eyenet.eybe.edu.on.
ca) has finished a Tech Spec database which allows reading as well as
searches, such as Autobots with STR > 8, or all TFs with plasma guns.
The database structure is complete, but still has many blank records.

4. Where can I get a list of all the TF fan fiction?

Currently, Suzanne M. Ferree is responsible for maintaining the fanfic
list. This list is posted bi-weekly to the newsgroup, usually on the
5th and 20th of the month, but you can also get it from her WWW page
(http://www.cyberspace.org/~suz/beta.html) or by sending her email. The
list is rather large, as a lot of TF fanfic has been written.

Suzanne asks (and this is important!) that when you post fanfic, if you
want it to get on her list, that you include the word "fanfic" in your
post subject. Like, "[FANFIC]Unicron vs. the Death Star". That makes
it easier for her, and for other readers as well.

If you are interested in reading any of the fanfic (a lot of it is very
good), nearly everything on the list is available somewhere on the net.

Suzanne's email addresses are:
winter/spring: "sfe...@s-cwis.unomaha.edu"
summer: "s...@grex.cyberspace.org"

There are two "missing" fanfics, so if anyone out there has a copy of
them, *please* send a copy to Suzanne. One of them is the original "Dr.
Grimlock, M.D." by Stanley Lui (not the one with the line "Transform and
roll up"). It was a parody of "Doogie Howser, M.D." He has lost his
only copy. The other one is called "Starsong", and Suzanne has no idea
who wrote it. All she remembers is reading a reply to it on the group
where someone told the author that they should have put "fanfic" in
their subject line. (Let this be a lesson to all authors!)

5. Where can I get a list of all the TF cartoon episodes?

Marek Kozubal (progrmer) has a fairly complete list on his WWW page
(http://staff.feldberg.brandeis.edu/~progrmer/transformers/
transformers.html). This list has all titles, and additional info for
some. He's working on getting plot summaries for them.

Aaron Marsh (abm...@vaxb.isc.rit.edu) has an episode list which is in
order (at least as in order as any ep list will ever be), with summaries
for most. He posts it to the group, will also send it to people over
email, and has it on his homepage at http://www.cs.rit.edu/~abm4111.

For more thorough reviews, you can read Kendrick's (kend...@io.com)
"Transformers Weekday" reports. TF Weekday posts are generally several
screens long, with commentary on story, animation, and character
development. They're generally pretty entertaining as well. :) Having
reviewed all US episodes, Kendrick has now begun work on his collection
of Japanese TF cartoons. Depending on how crazy he is, he might also
review the coming Beast Wars series. He has placed all the TF Weekdays
on his web page, http://www.io.com/~kendrick.

6. Where can I get a list of TF quotes?

Naomi Novik (The Lady of Shalott, at "sha...@brown.edu") compiled a
list of favorite TF quotes a while ago, and although it hasn't been
updated for a while, she is willing to email it to people who want it.
Just contact her.

At the time of the last FAQ, Matt Karpowich (hype...@kuentos.guam.net)
had volunteered to carry the mantle of quote list maintainer. He then
seemed to sit on the project (much as I sat on this version of the FAQ)
until Robert Powers, "repo...@artsci.wustl.edu" took the initiative and
reorganized the list himself. Robert says he would be happy to be known
as the Quote Guy, but doesn't have regular net.access, and might not be
able to post it regularly.

7. How about a TF encyclopedia or something?

Such a project is currently being undertaken by Stanley Lui
(ss...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca). It's largely just a shell right now,
but he's trying to put together a TF Encyclopedia on the WWW. The URL
is listed at the end of this section.

Major articles in the encyclopedia will be on specific characters,
events, and places, from all TF fiction continuities. Currently only
the American comic and cartoons are listed, but Stanley hopes to
eventually include the UK Comic and Japanese cartoon episodes. For each
item listed there will be a history for each continuity. For example,
the "Optimus Prime" article will probably have two sections, each
reading like Op's life history from either the cartoon or US comic
continuity.

There will also eventually be hypertext links within articles, so that,
for example, when the section on the Matrix mentions Alpha Trion, there
will be a direct link to the article on Alpha so the reader can get more
information on him.

The TF Encyc is provided mainly as a reference tool for people who need
background information for FanFic writing, and for other TF fans who are
just trying to remember the name of a place or what a certain gun did.

Anyone who is willing to write articles for the TF Encyc should contact
Stanley to see what articles are currently blank, or connect to the page
directly to see what needs to be done. All contributions to the TF
Encyc will be properly recognized and acknowledged.

The TF Encyclopedia is located at:
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~sslui/tf-ency.html

Also, on a similar note, Aaron Marsh (abm...@vaxb.isc.rit.edu) has a
painstakingly compiled list of _every_ TF appearance in the American
comics and Sarai Feria (10313...@compuserve.com) has done the same
for the American cartoons. They are organized by character, and list
every issue / episode in which each character appeared.

Lastly, "chi...@aol.com" is trying to compile a sort of ultimate TF
guide, a physical, paper-bound book which will have pictures and info on
every TF toy ever produced. If you are willing to help him with this
(things like sending pictures of your toys, whatever) let him know you'd
like to be of assistance, and ask him what he needs.

== III. General TF Questions ==========

1. When did the TFs first come out?

The very first appearance of the Transformers was an animated TV
commercial for the Marvel comic book. This first aired in summer of
1984. The first issue of the comic itself was dated as September 1984.
However, at this point Marvel is dating their comics about 2 months
ahead of when they hit the shelves, so it's likely that issue one was
actually released in July '84. The first batch of toys were released in
fall '84, and the original three episodes of the show aired at about the
same time. The cartoon then went weekly (on sunday mornings in most
places) a little before Christmas of 1984 and daily in fall 1985.

2. Are there any TF conventions?

Since 1994 there has been an annual BotCon (the name is derived from the
words AutoBOT and DeceptiCON, placing the obligatory "con" at the end of
the name) held every summer. The first BotCon was held by Jon and Karl
Hartman in Ft. Wayne IN. The Hartmans own the copyright to the name
"BotCon", and have final approval over who will run the con each year.
In 1995, att's Raksha organized the second BotCon in Dayton OH, and
BotCon '96 was run by Men-In-Black Collectibles in Chicago. BotCon '97
will be run by the Hartmans in Rochester, NY on July 18-20.

Through the three years of its life, BotCon has swung through three
different themes. And, each year's focus was a direct result of the
con's organizer(s). The Hartman's are die-hard TF collectors, and thus
their convention was mainly focused on the collectible toy aspect of
TFs. Raksha is one of att's most vocal TransFans; her convention was
meant to celebrate Transformers fandom in all its forms. Men-In-Black
is a company that sells collectibles, including TF toys. Their
convention was largely a place to buy and sell toys.

As you might guess, most TransFans pick Raksha's 1995 effort as the best
of the three so far.

BotCon traditions include dealer tables for toys, comics, fanzines and
art, showings of US and Japanese cartoons and the movie, panel
discussions about things like TF fanfic, toy repair lessons, art and
trivia contests, and a limited-edition TF figure available only to
people at the convention. In other words, BotCon is great. :)

For info about BotCon '97, you can contact Jon Hartman through email at
"jhar...@noblecan.org" and go to his homepage, "http://www.noblecan.
org/~jhartman".

A second TF convention for 1997, unaffiliated with BotCon or the
Hartmans, is being organized by Men-In-Black. They are calling it
TransCon, and holding it in Chicago over July 4th weekend. Ask Denis
Barger, "bar...@emuvax.emich.edu", if you want info on this.

3. Are there any TF clubs?

There are two major TF clubs that are still active today. One of the
clubs is TransMasters, which is run by Tony Buchanan. For information
on this club you can contact the officer nearest you.

Tony Buchanan Tony Klepack Andy Dornan
1215 S Andrews Rd 9637 76th Ave. 9 Cuckoo Lane
Yorktown IN 47396 Edmonton Alberta Stubbington Fareham, Hants
USA TGC OK4 Canada PO14 3PJ England

TransMasters UK has a WWW page at the following URL:

http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~mavai/tf.html

Another club called The Survivors is a branch club of TransMasters. For
information contact:

Liane Elliot
6202 34th St. NW
Gig Harbor WA 98335-7205.
te...@eskimo.com

In addition, there are several continuing TF fanzines and fan-made comic
books besides the ones published directly by these clubs. For a little
more info on them, please read section XIII.

4. What's happening with the current TF line?

As should be rather easy to see, the main force of TF toys is now the
"Beast Wars" line. The Autobots and Decepticons are called Maximals and
Predacons, and they all transform into animals. Some names from old TF
lines are being reused (Optimus Primal, Megatron, Scorponok), just as
with Generation 2. A computer animated BW television show is now being
produced (the graphics and story are both good) to be shown twice a
week, and computer games and comic books are in the works. According to
the BC '96 Kenner representative, BW is the country's 3rd top selling
toyline, with only Power Rangers and Star Wars ahead of it.

Plans for BW's future include 30-45 new toys for 1997, of which only 4
will be recolors of other toys, and which will include a few *female*
characters. The new figures will have even more posability than the
first year's BWs.

Within the next year or two, Kenner plans to return to more traditional,
vehicular mode, Transformers. It is unclear whether these will also be
called Generation 2, or if Kenner's marketing department will come up
with a new name for them. This line will include old characters in new
forms which will not necessarily be the same as their old ones, but
Kenner assures fans that every old TF that gets redone will always have
a recognizable face, and their personality will remain largely
unchanged. This series of TFs will also have extraordinary posability
and it's own TV show, separate from BW.

For those interested in contacting Hasbro or Kenner, their phone number
is 1-800-255-5516.

== IV. TF related products ============

1. Are there any TF video games?

Although there have not been any Transformers video games made for a
long time, a BW game for the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation is now in
the works. It will use the same character models as on the TV show,
which means that aside from having to lower the detail level quite a
bit, the game characters will look and move exactly like on TV.

Some time ago there was a TF game made for the Japanese FamiCom (their
equivalent of our original Nintendo Entertainment System). The player
controlled Ultra Magnus and had to take out droves of Decepticon jets
and tanks in a Metroid-ish platform game manner.

To go further back than that: There were 2 different games released for
the Commodore 64. The original, merely called "The Transformers", was a
basic platform game. When I played it for the first time last year I
found it to be extremely difficult. The graphics were neat, but it was
too easy to die by flying into walls, and I was clueless as to the point
of the game. According to various sources, however, your mission in
this game was to find 4 energon cubes which were scattered throughout
the level and bring them back to your home base. When you got the
energon cubes back to your base, they would turn into parts of an
Autobot symbol, and the object was to complete that symbol. There were
several different Autobots available to control, and they all had cool
transformation animations. Also, all the Autobots flew... (See VIII 2.)

The second game was called "The Battle for Cybertron" and, like some of
the TF books (IV, 4), had an ambiguous setting, as both Hot Rod _and_
Rodimus Prime were available to control. Your mission in this game was
to stop the Decepticons from taking over various places on Earth, and to
stop them from building their ultimate weapon. There was a map screen
with about 15 different places on it, and you could send about 8
different Autobots to any of them, depending on where the Decepticons
were attacking (they usually went to the same locations, though, and
some areas were never used at all). Once your Autobot was there, it
would switch to a first-person view, and you had to move a crosshair to
shoot at the nearly endless Decep jets that flew onto the screen. You
could be hit by their missiles, and if you got hit too much your screen
would "crack up" and you'd have to bring another bot in. There was also
a nearly impossible part where you had to stop a tyrannosaurs rex from
stepping on the space shuttle.

For people interested in playing the above Commodore 64 games, one of
them and C64 emulators for most platforms to play it with are available
by ftp. The emulator is at "frodo.hiof.no" in /pub/c64/emulator, and
the game at "arnold.hiof.no" in /games/t. The other game is available
on Iggy Drougge's WWW page under the name "Transformers.lha" in his
tfpics directory, as well as a link to the emulator site in his
readme.html file. The hiof sites seem to be a little moody, so if you
have trouble connecting, just try again some other time.

Also, Andrew Southam recently completed some Transformers themed .WAD
files for Doom and Doom 2. He has a sound patch for both games (mainly
digitized movie sounds) and a graphics patch that changes some of the
enemies, and the player graphic in multiplayer games. He's working on
making these more complete. The patches are available on the web at
"http://www.voicenet.com/~orac".

Another TF Doom WAD option comes from "pdil...@aol.com". This patch
works for Doom 1 or Ultimate Doom. Send email to him with questions or
a request for the WAD file.

Lastly, PaliXade (Gabrie...@eyenet.eybe.edu.on.ca) and a group of
other TransFans are working on projects including a TF Dark Forces
level, a Bumblebee platform game, a street fighter, and a Jeopardy-type
trivia game. These projects are in various stages of completion. He is
looking for people willing to help out with programming and sprite-
drawing chores. Anyone interested in helping, or in playing, should
contact him. He has completed a Pac-Man game starring Kremzeek.

2. Is there a TF role-playing game?

In a manner of speaking, yes. There are extensions to existing rpg's
that make Transformers workable characters.

Dave Van Domelen has written a robot-oriented role-playing system called
RoboMACs which can be easily applied to Transformers. His email address
is "dva...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu". To order a printed copy of the
rules for $11 plus shipping, email your request to "pl...@io.com".

The game itself is more concerned with role-playing than rolling dice,
and the mechanics of play are simple. Character creation is trait-based
instead of stat-based and can accommodate anything from normal humans to
planet-sized mecha using a sliding scale. The game uses ten-sided dice,
with 2d10 used for task resolution. While best-suited for humanoid
robot combat, it can easily be extended to other themes such as
paranormal humans and cyborgs. There is currently no magic system, but
a later supplement may fix that. To be added to a reflector-style
mailing list set up to discuss and playtest RoboMACs, email to
"pl...@io.com". The rules and sample campaign are posted to the list
periodically, along with various updates.

Mark Chase (mch...@cdc.net) has written a Mekton Z+ supplement to cover
the transformers which provides a conversion section telling you how to
change tech specs directly to Mekton stats. This game is more stat-
based than RoboMACs. Information about this can be obtained from Mark's
web page, "http://www.cdc.net/~mchase/mearth.html".

There is also a fan-created TF collectable card game (similar to Magic:
The Gathering) which was designed by Richard Garner and JuQuan Williams
(Nightrun and DeceptiQuan). Details on this game are available at
either of their WWW pages, "http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/2021"
or "http://www-personal.umich.edu/~juquanw/TFcards.html".

3. What were those TF trading cards like?

At the time of the TF's big popularity, Milton Bradley released a set of
Transformers Action Cards. There were 8 cards and a sticker in each
pack. Overall there were 192 cards and 24 stickers. Some cards
featured the tech specs and profiles of TFs on the text side and the
picture from that toy's box on the other, and the other cards had stills
from the 1st season of TF cartoons with text describing the action.
There were also two checklists, cards 96 and 192.

There were slight variations on many of the cards. Most of these
variations were differently colored backgrounds on the profile cards,
although there were also some flipped and miscolored cartoon cards.

There are several people on att attempting to complete their sets. Two
that I know of are Sujay Madyastha and Steve Nahra, at "sujaym@seas.
upenn.edu" and "rsn...@vax1.acs.jmu.edu", respectively. Raksha (jkink@
magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) is also willing to trade away her doubles and
is interested in finding more color variations that she might not have.
She doesn't have a lot of extras, but you might want to contact her as
well. Posting a message on the group to the effect that you'd like to
sell, trade, or buy cards will probably get you a response or two.

4. What TF books are available?

There are a great deal of Transformers books out there; far more than I
was previously aware. In fact, this section (in only two revisions)
grew so uncontrollably that I felt the need to remove the book
information to a separate listing. Briefly, however, I will list the
main groups of books that I know of:

"Find Your Fate Jr", a choose-your-own-adventure series, 9 titles
"Young Corgi", a choose-your-own-adventure series, 6 titles
coloring and activity books by Marvel Books
coloring and activity books by Budget Books and Grand Dreams
G2 coloring and activity books by Honey Bear Books
sticker books, Figurine Panini
"Big Looker" TF storybooks from Marvel, 6 titles
other Marvel storybooks, 6 titles
"Ladybird" storybooks, 11 titles
"Kid Stuff" tape / book packages

There are a few other stand-alone items which I have not listed. If you
want to see the book information file, send me email (srst...@cc.owu.
edu) or visit my page (http://www.owu.edu/~srstoneb/transformers.html).

== V. Continuity Issues ===============

1. Why doesn't anything agree with anything else?

As many readers will be aware, there are serious story discrepancies
between the TF cartoon and comic book, and sometimes even between the
cartoon and itself (and more rarely, the comic and itself). Many fans
enjoy finding ways to explain these discrepancies within the cartoon to
make everything still fit together, and for the most part they are
successful.

The important thing to remember when comparing the comic book and
cartoon series is that they have NOTHING to do with each other, except
for having mostly the same characters and a theme of transforming robots
from Cybertron. The two clearly take place along alternate timelines,
and IMHO, any attempt to reconcile the two separate stories is futile.
Not only do totally different events occur in both, but the origin of
Transformer life is completely different as well.

2. What's the basic origin from the comics?

Way way back at the beginning of time, there was a god of chaos called
Unicron. He had an insatiable hunger, and a hatred of all of existence.
As there was no power in the universe to oppose him, he managed to
consume everything that was, except for one tiny microscopic dot. This
dot exploded (a la Big Bang) into the universe we know today. Unicron
was enraged and immediately began to eat again, but this time another
god named Primus fought him. Their powers were of equal measure, so
they fought for ages, with neither gaining the upper hand, but as they
fought they wreaked havoc on the universe around them. Primus saw this,
and in a desperate attempt to trick Unicron, he plunged himself into a
metallic asteroid. Thinking that Primus was indeed up to something,
Unicron also dove into a metallic asteroid so that Primus would not have
an advantage. However, Unicron soon discovered that he was trapped in
his asteroid, as Primus was also trapped within his.

As the millennia passed, Primus realized that he could alter the shape
of his prison, and so began to form his asteroid into a planet, and the
planet into a race of beings which he hoped would one day be able to
stand against Unicron, should he ever escape from his asteroid. These
beings were the Transformers. The Creation Matrix which allows
Transformers to make more of their kind contains a bit of the essence of
Primus' spirit.

Primus and Unicron possessed a mental link, so Primus knew that Unicron
had also learned to shape his prison. While Primus had created an army
to fight for him, Unicron had turned his entire asteroid into a new
body, a giant replica of his old form. He could change his shape from
this to one which more resembled the original asteroid as well. So that
Unicron would be unable to find him and his children until enough time
had passed that they would be able to fight against Unicron, Primus fell
into a deep sleep. Thus the Transformers were created on their planet
Cybertron, with almost no memory of their origin other than myth.

3. What's the basic origin from the TV show?

Millennia ago, the Quintessons were the heads of a huge galactic
corporation. They built the planet of Cybertron as a huge factory in
which to build robotic slaves. There were two basic models: household
and entertainment robots, and warrior / gladiator robots. Whenever one
of their slaves began to show signs of true intelligence, the
Quintessons had it immediately smelted down to be used as raw materials
for the next line of robots.

Eventually, however, more and more of the robots began to gain
sentience, and they started a revolt against the Quintessons which ended
in the Quints fleeing Cybertron for their lives, and the Transformers
taking the planet over. It was sometime after this that the first
hostilities arose between Autobot and Deception.

4. So where did Unicron come from in the cartoon?

Unicron's origin was not discussed in the TF Movie, although that was
when he first appeared. His origin was not revealed until the post-
movie ep, "Call of the Primitives".

In the cartoon storyline, Unicron was built by an alien named Primacron.
He built Unicron to destroy worlds and leave the universe as a blank
slate for his use. Unfortunately, Unicron revolted against his control
and started to eat various planets for his own amusement. In the TV
show, there was no special bond between Unicron and the Matrix of
Leadership as there was between the comic Unicron and the Creation
Matrix. The Matrix of Leadership just happened to be the most powerful
object in the universe, the only thing which could stop him, and he knew
it. That is why he wanted it destroyed.

5. Which origin for the Constructicons is right?

This is the ultimate example of the cartoon's tendency toward continuity
flubs. Through the course of the American cartoon, the Constructicons
are featured in three contradictory origin plots.

Their first appearance was in "Heavy Metal Wars". In this episode,
Megatron says something to the effect of "they were worth the effort it
took to build them here in these caves". This implies that they were
built on Earth by the Decepticons.

In "The Secret of Omega Supreme" Omega relates a story to Optimus Prime
concerning his old life on Cybertron as a Guardian Robot. He had at one
point been friends with the Constructicons, but when Megatron released a
device called the Robo-Smasher, it caught them and made them become
evil. They then destroyed the city which Omega was sworn to protect,
and he became one of their worst enemies. This implies that they were
on Cybertron long ago, and Megatron turned them into Decepticons.

While Rodimus Prime journeys through the Matrix in "Five Faces of
Darkness", one of the flashbacks he sees is the moment of Megatron's
"birth". He is seen being put together by the Constructicons. This
implies that they were on Cybertron long, LONG ago, and built Megatron
themselves.

There have been attempts to reconcile this huge mess, but they were not
very convincing.

== VI. General TF Story Questions =====

1. Does Cybertron have an atmosphere?

Undoubtedly. It is obvious that there is an atmosphere there after
Spike travels to Cybertron and breathes without a space suit, but some
people maintain that it did not have an atmosphere until the TV episode
"The Ultimate Doom". In that episode (actually a three-part story)
Megatron drew Cybertron into orbit around the Earth. They claim that at
that time it picked up some of Earth's atmosphere. However, there is
more evidence to show that it has always had its own air.

Firstly, there is apparently sound on Cybertron, and you can't have
sound without an atmosphere of some sort. Secondly, even in the first
episode of the show, the Decepticon "triangle" jets were clearly shaped
aerodynamically, which implies an atmosphere. Thirdly, according to the
TV origin of the TFs, Cybertron was originally a factory planet run by
the Quintessons, who are (more or less) organic. Therefore, Cybertron
must have had an atmosphere or the Quints would not have been able to
survive there. Fourth (fourthly?), oxygen is needed for any combustion
which might have taken place on any planet. Although it could be argued
that the Autobots ran on energon until coming to Earth (when they had to
resort to using our primitive fossil fuels), jet engines for the 'con
seekers and rockets for spaceships would need oxygen to operate.

2. What's up with the female TFs?

In the episode "The Search for Alpha Trion", a band of female Autobots
was featured on Cybertron. In that episode, Prime and several other
Autobots went to Cybertron to save the females from Shockwave, who had
captured the female leader, Elita-1. Elita was an obvious love interest
for Optimus Prime. The other female Autobots also seemed to be paired
up with their respective "guys".

Also in this episode, Elita is almost killed, but Alpha Trion informs
Prime that he alone possesses the correct interface to save her, and so
Prime "interfaces" with Elita and transfers energy though a cable which
oddly goes from the area of his lower torso to the area of hers. ;)
When Alpha informs Prime that only his power module will properly
interface with hers, Prime is shocked, stating that "only my creator
could know that".

The other episode that had Elita-1 was called "War Dawn", in which the
Aerialbots go back in time to the golden age of Cybertron and meet a
robot named Orion Pax. At the end of the episode, Alpha Trion turns Pax
into Optimus Prime, and turns Pax's girlfriend-bot into Elita-1.

There was also an episode entitled "Enter the Nightbird" in which a
human scientist invented a ninja-like robot with clear female curves to
it, named Nightbird. This robot had no personality, although it was
rather dangerous. Megatron captured and took control of Nightbird, but
in the end she was recaptured by the Autobots and deactivated.

In TF:The Movie, and in the post-movie eps, there was another female
Autobot named Arcee. She was pink, had a tiny waist, and transformed
into a futuristic convertible. In the movie, she seemed to be
interested (mutually) in Hot Rod, but in all the post-movie eps, she and
Springer were an obvious item. There was also a female in "Forever is a
Long Time Coming" named Beta, a mint-green colored copy of Arcee in
"Fight of Flee", and a companion-bot for Wreck-Gar in "The Big Broadcast
of 2006".

Arcee was featured in the UK comics, although she was built specifically
for the purpose of improving relations between TFs and humans and did
not represent the existence of either male or female TFs on Cybertron.
In addition, the Japanese HeadMaster Minerva was characterized as a
female both in the Masterforce cartoon _and_ in her toy incarnation
(this toy was released with a sex change under the name of Nightbeat in
the US). Also, one of the two engines for the GodMaster Overlord was
female, and possibly a Japanese MicroMaster as well.

So far, (but this is soon to chance) the only female TF toy released in
the United States was fan created. Her name is Nightracer, and she was
the BotCon '95 exclusive toy. This toy's tech spec card was written by
the Con's organizer, Raksha.

Incidentally, there is disagreement over how to spell the name Elita-1.
Some people prefer "Alita-1". As with the other pointless debates on
a.t.t., both sides have their evidence. I would like it to be noted
that I have favored the "E" spelling, simply because I like to have the
word "elite" in her name. If you really want to know more about this,
send email to two of the group leaders: Kendrick (kend...@io.com) on
the E side, and Nick Morency (then...@acy.digex.net) on the "A" side.
They both have their dissertations on this topic saved, and will send
them to anyone who asks.

3. But WHY do they have them at all?

Personally, I think it's a little bit silly to force genders upon
robots. I did like Arcee (the only female TF to really get any
character development in America), and I admit that to be socially
responsible, it was probably important for Hasbro / Marvel / Sunbow to
introduce female characters. Technically, however, I still think it's
silly. :)

All of the non-obviously-female TFs were quite clearly modeled after
males, and I feel that this makes a certain amount of sense. Since the
TFs are all fighting a war, it follows that they would be built big and
strong. When we look at them we see big, wide frames, and broad
shoulders: characteristics which we identify as "male". To me, TFs
don't really have gender at all. We simply identify them as male
because to us they look more like males than females.

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with TFs having traditionally
"female" personality traits like compassion, mercy, forgiveness, certain
parental instincts, etc.. These are wonderful traits that would be
useful to have in any society.

4. How do TFs reproduce?

There has been a lot of discussion on this question. There are several
different answers provided by "official" sources, and there is also a
lot of speculation by fans.

In the original comic book series, Transformers could only reproduce by
building new TF bodies and infusing them with life via the Creation
Matrix. In the Generation 2 comics, an alternative method of "budding"
was introduced which is explained in detail in IX, 8.

In the cartoon, on the other hand, it sometimes seemed enough to simply
build new robots. The Dinobots, Technobots, and Trypticon are examples
of this. When Starscream built the Combaticons in "Starscream's
Brigade", he actually only built bodies and downloaded the personalities
of Cybertronian criminals which were on file somewhere into those
bodies. However, when the Aerialbots were created they had to be given
life by Vector Sigma, a supercomputer at the heart of cybertron.

5. How did the Great War start?

This depends on which story you are following.

In the comics, the war began simply and realistically because some of
the Transformers were power hungry and hostile. They formed a group
called the Decepticons, and began to make strikes against Cybertron's
cities in order to take it over. Transformers who opposed this formed
another band called the Autobots and fought against the Decepticons.
This idea is explored in more detail in a UK annual text story called
"State Games".

In the cartoon, the war began soon after the Quintessons were driven
from the planet. The warrior robots were in general more hostile, and
wanted to control the planet. They began to call themselves
Decepticons. The household robots, who called themselves Autobots,
tried to resist this takeover.

6. Why do they transform? Why not just be big robots?

Following the comic book timeline, Primus incorporated the ability to
transform in his children to mimic the shape-changing method which
Unicron used.

On the TV show there are a few slightly conflicting answers given. In
MTMTE Spike asked Trailbreaker about transformation and gets the
following answer: "Disguise! Besides, it sure beats walking." Another
answer, put forth during FFoD, is that transforming was a technological
innovation which the Autobots "discovered" as a secret weapon to use
against the Decepticons, who had superior firepower. It's that "robots
in disguise" thing. This advantage was quickly turned against them,
however, when the Decepticons also began to use this technology. Of
course, in this same episode when the very first Autobots were shown,
even before they knew how to transform they had wheels on their
shoulders... :)

7. Where does Prime's trailer go when he transforms?

Although it wasn't ever explained in the TV show, the generally accepted
(or invented, rather) theory among TransFans is that each Transformer
has their own "compartment" in subspace. The TF can teleport anything
to or from subspace at will for storage purposes. Each Transformer is
"frequency locked" to a certain pocket of subspace, so there isn't any
possibility of a transformer stealing weapons that were placed into
subspace by another transformer. Subspace storage is the "official"
explanation used on the TF MUSHes.

Subspace can also be applied to size changes which accompany the mode
changes of several Transformers, such as Soundwave and Megatron. The
mass which they lose when shrinking can be stored in subspace, and drawn
out again upon transformation. Although Megatron can clearly choose
between a normal and giant size when in gun mode, we never see Soundwave
as a 12 foot tall tape deck, or either of them as a one foot robot.
Options of size in various modes therefore seem predetermined, probably
at their time of creation (or in some TF's cases, the time of their
redesign at the hands of the Ark). Also, a Transformer has never been
shown walking around in any in-between size, so it would seem that the
mass transfer with subspace is all or nothing.

The subspace theory seems to be consistent with the cartoon, and is even
supported by a scene in "Demon's Swamp", when Kickback's gun suddenly
materializes in his hand in plain sight for no apparent reason, as well
as one of the post-movie commercial bumpers in which Blurr transforms
and his weapon appears in his hand. In the UK comic story "Dinobot
Hunt", Jazz opens a hidden compartment in his hip from which he removes
a small version of his gun that grows to its full size for use. In this
case, although the gun is stored in the real world, there is still a
size change to contend with, and the subspace theory can explain it.

Of course, sometimes in the UK comic Prime's trailer didn't go away. It
was often treated as a separate unit which had its own things to do
while Prime was busy walking around acting noble.

8. Are they immortal?

Barring injuries and being killed in battle, there is no reason to
believe that, with proper maintenance, a Transformer could not live
indefinitely. So, in short, they pretty much are.

To confuse matters a bit, there was an issue of the UK comic which
showed a Rodimus Prime from the future who appeared aged; he was frail,
bearded, and generally geezer-like. According to later issues, however,
Rodimus appeared this way due to the polluting effects of Unicron's
essence within the matrix, and not because of being old.

9. Is there a Transformers history anywhere?

There is a Transformers Chronology file which was written, and is
available at the (lengthy) WWW at the address below. This chronology
follows the TV show's Quint theory, so you may or may not like it. :)
I think it at least used to be available on the vela ftp site, but I'm
really not sure if it's still there.

http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jhpace1/WWW/Files/
Transformer_Chronology

== VII. Toys ==========================

1. What were the TFs based on?

All of the original Transformers were re-released and often recolored
versions of older Japanese toys. This is the reason behind the double
copyright date on most early TF toys; they were originally copyrighted
when first released in Japan, and then again in the US when Hasbro
released them. Most of the toys came from one of two lines produced by
Takara: Microman and Diaclone.

The Minibots and the cassettes were part of the Microman line, which had
the distinction of needing few or no accessories (no missile launchers
to lose, no guns to misplace). The Gun-Robo line which Megatron is from
was a subset of Microman. Each Microman mold came in a wide array of
colors, which partially explains the proliferation of red Bumblebees and
yellow Cliffjumpers. On most of the minicars you can easily locate a
"M" in the plastic which represented the brand name in Japan. To be
more accurate, the TFs were from "New Microman", a sequel to the
original Microman line which was imported to the US under the name
"Micronauts".

The Diaclone series contained toys which we now recognize as the Autobot
cars and Decepticon jets. The Diaclone story was one of humans piloting
mecha to fight against evil alien invaders. The toys came with little
human figures with magnetic feet which were interchangeable among all
the Diaclone toys. This is the reason behind the mysterious "seats"
found on so many TFs (including the Insecticons and Dinobots). Optimus
Prime was also a Diaclone toy. The generic Diaclone semi truck was
called Convoy, and several different trailers were available, including
the box container (for OP) and the car-carrier (Ultra Magnus).

Some of the other toys came from companies other than Takara. For
example, the Deluxe Insecticons and Predacons were originally Bandai
designs. Also made by Bandai was the Jetfire toy, which was originally
a Macross design, and Roadbuster and Whirl which were from a Japanese
Mecha show called "Armored Trooper Dorvack".

With a few exceptions (such as Jetfire), all of the toy robots purchased
by Hasbro for their Transformers line were without a well-established
background story, cartoon, or comic book. (Diaclone, for example, did
have a story to it, but there was no real 'mythos' associated with
them.) Working together with some of the people at Takara, Hasbro and
Marvel developed a backstory for the Transformers involving two factions
of warring robots. John Romita, of Spiderman fame, headed a team of
artists who took the toys designs and altered them drastically for
portrayal on television. He is responsible for the more human-looking
Ironhide and Ratchet that we've become accustomed to, as well as putting
actual faces on all the robots rather than visors and faceplates.

2. What's the deal with red/yellow Bumblebee/Cliffjumper?

They were both originally from the Microman toyline. In that line, the
toys all came in a wide range of colors, including the ones we know as
Bumblebee and Cliffjumper. When Hasbro bought the rights to the toys,
they bought some backstock which included both colors. About 1 in every
20 Bumblebee toys sold during the first year was red (and, presumably,
the same goes for the yellow CJ). They are, as one would expect, more
valuable than the "correct" versions. At BotCon '96, the dealers were
trying to sell red BBees for anywhere between $20 and $120.

I have both the red and yellow Bumblebees, and call the red one Hornet,
saying he's Bumblebee's long-lost brother. :)

Aside from Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, there was another similar minibot
named "Hubcap" who was released at the same time as the other minibot
recolors (eg. Outback, Swerve, Tailgate,...). He was, or at least was
supposed to be, yellow. There was another, fourth, TF in this "family"
which was sometimes mistakenly packaged as both Bumblebee and
Cliffjumper in both colors. Without any real name, this toy is usually
referred to as Bumblejumper, or just Bumper.

This is just one example of the many variations on TF toys. Another
well-known variation is the metal feet / plastic feet Hot Rod. (I have
both of them, too. Hee hee.) For a list of all variations, try out M
Sipher's (msi...@nando.net) "That Big Transformers Variations List".

3. Why is Jetfire just like a Robotech Veritech fighter?

Technically, it's a Macross Valkyrie, as the Robotech show was a
derivative of three separate Anime series: Macross, Southern Cross, and
Mospeada. Hasbro felt that the Autobots were too short on air power,
and their search for a cool airplane toy came up with Bandai's Valkyrie.
To leave a lot of legal technicalities out, Hasbro and Harmony Gold (who
released Robotech in America), as well as a few other companies (like
FASA, the makers of Battletech) bought the rights to use that "shape" of
robot, and Jetfire was born.

4. Was there a Skyfire toy?

Despite the occasional rumors that may pop up, neither Hasbro nor Takara
ever made a Skyfire figure. However, at BotCon '95 there were several
origami TFs on display designed and created by Hirofumi Omichi, which
included both Skyfire and Arcee, and they both transformed. Now, these
toys weren't completely made out of paper -- Omichi used a real Jetfire
to build his Skyfire around, and Arcee used parts from several toys,
including a Gundam robot. For Skyfire he even made a box, complete with
artwork on the front.

5. I've got these weird tiny TFs. What are they?

Unless they're micromasters, which you could hopefully identify, you've
got either Minispies or Decoys. Both were limited-time offers, and were
packaged with other TFs.

Minispies came first, and were about an inch long. They were the first
TFs to have the black rub symbols on them, the point here being that
since they were spies, you had to check which side they were really on.
Later the rub symbols were put on all TFs to show that they were "real"
Transformers and not rip-off ones.

Transformer decoys were made later, and were nothing but small rubber
statues of various TFs in their robot modes. The Autobot decoys were
red, and the Decepticon ones were purple (although there were a few red
'Con decoys, which are worth about 2.5 times more than normal ones). To
see Dave Van Domelan's wonderful painted decoys, visit his www page,
"http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dvandom".

6. What are those switches on the back of the Jumpstarters' heads for?

This switch was actually mentioned in the Jumpstarter instruction books,
but as many people never read the instructions, the switch has caused a
lot of confusion for some people.

For those of you who don't know about Jumpstarters, they were two
Autobots with a very simplistic transformation (their legs fold up and
they turn into something that's supposed to look like a tank / spaceship
kind of thing). However, the cool thing about them is that they had
pull-back motors inside them, and when you let them go they would roll
for a few feet, and then their spring-loaded legs would suddenly flip
back to their robot mode position, and the momentum of this flip would
cause the TF to jump off the ground and land standing up in robot mode.

The switch in question is a small triangular piece of plastic on the
back of their heads (marked with an A and a B) that could be shifted
slightly from side to side. The purpose of the switch is to act as a
counterweight during the jumping part of their transformation. If your
Jumpstarter always falls over to one side when he tries to transform,
then you can move the switch over a bit and he'll suddenly grow out of
his awkward adolescence and land on his feet every time.

As a bonus for those of you that wonder: Yes, the pictures on the tech
spec cards for the Jumpstarters were messed up. Topspin is the pontoon
boat, and Twin Twist is the drill tank. End of story.

7. How many combiners did they make?

The combiner or gestalt Transformers were among the most popular of the
toys. The first combiner was Devastator. Also, Devastator and
Predaking were the only ones made up of characters who were all
approximately the same size (with the possible exception of
Monstructor). For all the others, the main body of the gestalt (who was
also always the team leader) was significantly larger than the other
team members. Predaking was made up of only 5 animals, but because that
team was so well designed (Predaking is IMHO the best of the combiners
and, incidentally, was made by Bandai) they were all the same size.

One of the reasons for this is that, excluding the two I've just
mentioned, all of the G1 gestalt teams were part of a Japanese set
called "Scramble City". The point of the Scramble City toys is that any
group of robots from any teams can be put together. Every "limb" piece
works equally well as an arm or a leg for any of the "body" robots.

For information about the origins (according to the TV show timeline) of
some of the combiner teams, contact Dairenn Lombard (piero@cyberverse.
com). He has a fairly long write up of the Combaticons' origin
prepared, and is interested in getting the origins of the other teams as
well. Also, many readers may be totally unfamiliar with the Monster
Pretenders (the American version of the 'con DinoForce from TF:
Victory). If you want to see who they were, they were featured in issue
67 of the US comic (see IX, 5).

There were also a large number of other combiner teams which were
released in Japan but not in the US. See XI, 2 for a little more info
on them.

Here is a list of the gestalts, in the approximate order that they were
released (note: the word "Piranha" is misspelled in the name
"Piranacon"):

Devastator - 6 Constructicons
- Hook, Long Haul, Bonecrusher, Scavenger, Mixmaster,
Scrapper

Superion - 5 Aerialbots
- Silverbolt, Slingshot, Air Raid, Skydive, Fireflight
- Stunticon counterpart

Menasor - 5 Stunticons
- Motormaster, Dragstrip, Dead End, Breakdown, Wildrider
- Aerialbot counterpart

Defensor - 5 Protectobots
- Hot Spot, First Aid, Groove, Blades, Streetwise
- Combaticon counterpart

Bruticus - 5 Combaticons
- Onslaught, Blast Off, Swindle, Brawl, Vortex
- Protectobot counterpart

Predaking - 5 Predacons
- Razorclaw, Rampage, Tantrum, Divebomb, Headstrong
- extremely cool

Computron - 5 Technobots
- Scattershot, Strafe, Lightspeed, Nosecone, Afterburner
- Terrorcon counterpart

Abominus - 5 Terrorcons
- Hun-Gurr, Sinnertwin, Blot, Cutthroat, Rippersnapper
- Technobot counterpart

Piranacon - 6 Seacons
- Snaptrap, Seawing, Overbite, Nautilator, Tentakil, Skalor
- after making 4 limbs, Piranacon uses the last TF as his gun

Monstructor - 6 Monster Pretenders
- Birdbrain, Bristleback, Icepick, Scowl, Slog, Wildfly
- about the height of Hot Rod and very chunky

8. How many tapes did they make?

Overall, there were six Autobot tapes and ten Decep ones released in the
US. A list of them follows, deceps first:

Buzzsaw - gold condor, came w / Soundwave
Laserbeak - red condor
Ratbat - purplish bat
Ravage - black panther
Slugfest - green stegosaurus
Overkill - grey / silver tyrannosaur
Beastbox - pinkish ape, combines to form Squalkbox
Squalktalk - green condor, combines to form Squalkbox
Frenzy - blue robot (red in cartoon :P )
Rumble - red robot (blue in cartoon)

Grandslam - red tank, combines to form Slamdance
Raindance - blue plane, combines to form Slamdance
Steeljaw - yellow lion
Ramhorn - rust-colored rhino
Eject - blue robot
Rewind - black robot

9. Did they ever make a Unicron toy?

Although there was never a released Unicron toy, Takara did make two
prototypes for consideration. The first prototype was small, and when
Hasbro USA saw it they did not like it, so Takara made a larger
prototype which is a little shorter than Fortress Maximus. The big
Unicron also had some sort of a recording of Orson Welles so that it
could say 10 phrases in his voice.

The larger Uni prototype was on display at BotCon '96. It wasn't a very
good-looking toy; in fact, it was pretty ugly, and probably wouldn't
have had any play value at all. The voice chip was not functioning at
the convention (it may have simply needed batteries). The toy's colors
are bland (although apparently this is common for prototypes, and
doesn't have a lot to do with the colors of the final toy), his legs are
spindly, his body is completely spherical, and his arms are poorly
shaped (they become the planet's ring in robot mode -- ack).
Presumably, the small prototype looks the same as the large one aside
from size. IMHO, making a non-transforming robot mode Unicron would
have been a better idea; then at least it could look good.

10. Why have all the TF toys since [pick a time] sucked?

It isn't universally agreed upon, but most people tend to think that the
TFs decreased in quality in the last few years of G1 production, and
never (until recently, and the near future) came out of the slump.

First of all, Hasbro switched to making them out of cheap plastic rather
than good plastic and metal. Second, the *Master themes got out of
control. Every new toy had to have some new gimmick; it wasn't enough
to make cars that turned into robots anymore. Part of the TF charm was
that they LOOKED like toy cars or toy planes or a real tape player, but
also turned into robots. Later toys no longer looked like real things.
They had to be futuristic cars, or cars that had people who turned into
their head or their gun or their engine.

The ActionMasters also took a lot of flak, but deserve to be defended.
Yes, they are Transformers that don't transform, and yes, that is kind
of stupid. But on the other hand, they actually are pretty nice action
figures that added a new dimension to the TF universe.

When G2 came around, most of the re-releases were made with bad plastic
in ugly colors, but there were a lot of good new toys as well
(particularly the Cyberjets). The biggest problem with G2 was the tech
spec cards; basically all of the personality write-ups and mottos were
awful. TF personalities and characterization have always been a strong
point of the line, and then they started making characters with mottos
like "Want to race?" It's sad, so in response a lot of att'ers took to
rewriting G2 tech specs to make them bearable for fanfic purposes.

For those who are curious, the reason G2 Megatron is a tank rather than
a Walther P-38 pistol is probably that it's no longer PC (or maybe even
legal) to sell realistic looking toy guns.

The same defenses can be given for Beast Wars. See VII, 13.

11. What's with Go-Bot Transformers?

One of the early G2 Autobots belonging to the water-squirting group was
suspiciously named "Gobots". This name is quite ironic, because during
the TF's first run, their major competitors were Tonka's GoBots. After
the G2 Gobots was released, one of the next major Autobot groups was
announced, and they were called: Go-Bots. These TFs are the size of
Matchbox cars so that you can use them on Matchbox / Hot Wheels tracks.

Kendrick (kend...@io.com) managed to clear up some of the commotion on
this matter, however. Apparently Hasbro had bought out Tonka since the
last time they went head-to-head with the transforming robots idea, and
in a slightly unnecessary effort to prevent other companies from
reviving GoBots as a competing line, Hasbro intentionally used the name
in the TF line to assert their ownership of the concept, and possibly to
gloat a bit on their victory.

To prevent confusion on the newsgroup, Tonka GoBots are usually referred
to specifically as Tonka GoBots, but also get called various derogatory
names. There are a few readers of the group (myself included) that not
only don't hate Tonka GoBots, but think they were okay, but we are few.
Prepare to be flamed (as much as anyone on ATT flames) for standing up
for them; Super GoBots excluded. :)

12. What are the G2 Powermasters?

In the European G2 line there was a group of four TF's called
Powermasters. These had _nothing_ to do with G1 powermasters. They had
pullback motors in them, sort of like the Throttlebots. Their packaging
listed Hasbro's US headquarters, rather than the UK HQ which most
foreign-only toys mentioned, so it seems that they were originally
intended to be released in the US, but never quite made it.

13. Why Beast Wars?

When HasKen realized that the G2 line was going nowhere, and that they'd
handled it poorly, the new TF team at Kenner decided that they wanted to
get as far away from G2 as possible, and go in an entirely new direction
to try to get people interested. Thus the Beast Wars line was born.

Unlike G1, and possibly unlike G2, all the BW toys are being designed by
Americans at Kenner's HQ in Ohio. All of the G1 toys were old Japanese
designs, and even with G2, Takara was probably responsible for the
planning of the new molds. Both BW and the upcoming vehicle TFs are
being designed by Kenner with posability and playability as their top
concern. Takara is still producing the TFs, but no longer designs them.

The change in the line originally caused a lot of anti-MMPR messages to
pop up, but these changes really aren't that much like MMPR. Yes, they
are dinosaurs and animals, but the Beast Warriors don't use martial arts
and they aren't controlled by "teenagers with attitudes".

Most att'ers have found that after getting past the initial shock, they
can appreciate BW as a good toy line. At BotCon '96 the Kenner
representative disclosed that BW is the number three toy in America,
being beaten only by MMPR and Star Wars. Although some BW robot modes
suffer from "animal on my back" syndrome, most of them have relatively
nice transforms, and the designs are often innovative. The BW TV show
is a lot better than I personally expected it to be, and has a lot of
potential to be interesting and exciting.

Dave Van Domelan (dva...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) even went as far as
to establish the Beast Wars Anti-Defamation League (BWADL). BWADL
members take it upon themselves to defend BW from unjustified slander
and petty insults.

Of course, not everyone has warmed up to BW. Some att'ers say that,
although they can appreciate BW as nice toys, they can't accept them as
TFs because they just don't "feel" like TFs to them. There are also
vocal critics of BW (the "BW SUCKS!" thread took *forever* to die) who
consider it an insult to the TF mythos and fandom. Whatever your
initial opinion may be, allow yourself to give BW a chance. Buy a toy
or two, watch the show, and then decide to support it or not. :)

For more BW information, visit Ben Yee's homepage, http://pages.nyu.edu/
~yeebe. There you can find the BW FAQ.

== VIII. Cartoon ======================

1. What's the deal with Rumble and Frenzy? Which is which?

For the answer to this, read "What is FIRRIB?", question 3 in section I,
"General Questions Relating to the Newsgroup." Also refer yourself to
I, 11: "What not to ask..."

2. Can Autobots fly or not?

In general, they can't. If you are willing to put the inconsistencies
away as merely that, the basic rule is: Decepticons fly, Autobots don't.

However, to go further into those inconsistencies: in the first few
episodes of the show most of the Autobots WERE shown flying at one point
or another. This also happened a few other times through the run of the
show, like "Forever Is a Long Time Coming". Technically, it should only
be Gears with his compressed air jets, Wheeljack with the solid fuel
rockets in his arms, and Sideswipe with his rocket backpack that should
be able to fly unaided. At one point in "More Than Meets The Eye",
Prime even borrows that rocket backpack from Sideswipe to attempt to
chase the Decepticon ship.

After the first batch of TFs, there were of course exceptions. A lot of
Autobots could CLEARLY fly, like the Aerialbots and Skyfire. It also
seemed as if the Dinobots could all fly, making them another exception.

3. Why'd they call Jetfire "Skyfire" and draw him different?

Bandai, the maker of the original Jetfire toy, is a major competitor of
Takara, the company which designed most of the Transformers. When the
cartoon was being planned, due to the fact that it was to be shown in
Japan as well, Takara did not want a Bandai design appearing in the
cartoon. However, because Jetfire was such a popular toy, the decision
to modify him for the small screen was made. The only time that Jetfire
has been seen in animation is the initial TV commercial which advertised
both him and Shockwave. A similar thought process was probably behind
Marvel's decision to draw Skyfire and name him Jetfire in the comic
book. The anti-Bandai sentiment also explains the absence of a few
other characters (like the Deluxe Insecticons) from the cartoon series.

4. How'd they do Soundwave's voice?

Thanks to Kendrick for this one; the quoted statements are his. :)

All of the voices on the show were altered to make them sound more
robotic and less human. The process they used is called flanging, which
means that a stereo recording was made of the voice actors, and then one
channel of the sound was slightly delayed in a random fashion to
produce, as Kendrick says, the "swooshing" sound in all their voices.

For Soundwave in particular, the voice recording was also sent through
an analog synthesizer to remove "all the tonality but none of the
enunciation or cacophonous sounds." The removed tones were then
replaced artificially by someone on the voice processing team to produce
the cool-sounding voice we all know and love.

There is a public domain program called "Cool Edit" which has a flanging
feature that can be used to make robot voices. It is available by ftp
at "ftp.ep.se/cool/cool151.zip" and "oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/win3/sound/
cool151.zip".

When performing Soundwave, Frank Welker "simply uses his deep growling
bad guy voice". The same voice can be heard as Dr. Klaw on "Inspector
Gadget". Sometimes the editing team on the TF show would mess up, and
bits of Welker's unaltered voice ended up in the cartoon. One of these
times was in "Roll For It". When Ravage brings Chip and some vital info
to Soundwave, he says "Excellent, Ravage" in a Dr. Klaw voice. This
also occurred in "Webworld", when Soundwave reports that Ratbat has
found something on a nearby asteroid. In addition, I've been told that
in "Fight or Flee" Soundwave ended up speaking with Shrapnel's
characteristic repetition of his last word. Confirmation of this would
be appreciated.

5. Where can I find episodes of the show on tape?

All of the "unnamed" episodes from season 1 were released on VHS. Also
put on tape were the movie, "Five Faces of Darkness", "The Return of
Optimus Prime", and a first season three pack which included the episode
"War Dawn". In addition, the first few seasons of the Japanese cartoon
were released on laserdisc. Unfortunately, these have all been
discontinued. The tapes that are still in stock in various warehouses
can sometimes be ordered at stores that specialize in movies. You may
want to check video rental places for old TF tapes and ask if you can
buy them, as they most likely aren't rented out very often (this is how
I got my copy of the movie).

The Science Fiction Channel often shows G1 TF cartoons on weekday
mornings at 8:30 as part of their "Animation Station" block.
Occasionally they will "cycle out" the TF show and play "The New
Adventures of Gigantor", but TF always cycles back in before long.
When showing TF, they rotate through many (but not all) of the really
good and really bad eps. Unfortunately, because the allowed advertising
time during children's shows has increased since TF was originally made,
SciFi has made small edits to the episodes they show, sometimes making
transitions bad and eliminating some good scenes. "Call of the
Primitives", "Rebirth", and "Carnage in C-Minor" are all included in
their lineup.

Sarai Feria at "10313...@compuserve.com" has all the US episodes with
commercials edited out, although some eps are G2 or SciFi versions.
Kendrick (kend...@io.com) has every G2 and SciFi episode and will trade
tapes for toys, or sell for money. Random (sgu...@bgnet.bgsu.edu) has
a complete, first-run set of G1 cartoons from their original airing.

6. What was "Five Faces of Darkness" about?

FFOD is one of the most maligned TF cartoon story arcs. It was a five-
part story which immediately followed the movie, and attempted to tie up
various loose ends such as where Galvatron went when Rodimus Prime threw
him out of Unicron, and what the deal was with the Quintessons. The
animation for FFOD was pretty crappy. There were a lot of editing
mistakes, and it just in general looks bad.

The basic story revolves around the TF origin (see V, 3) and the Quints
trying to take back Cybertron. A lot of elements from the movie turn
up, such as the Junkions repairing fallen Autobots, shuttles separating
and blowing up, the Quints putting people on trial, etc., etc..

7. People have mentioned "Call of the Primitives". What was
that episode about?

This episode takes place after the movie. In it, Primacron, in the wake
of Unicron's failure, sends out his other creation, Tornatron. Unicron
was a creature of matter, but Tornatron is a creature of energy. He
goes about sucking stars dry and such, trying to empty the universe for
Primacron. Before Tornatron attacks, Primacron's "Assistant", calls all
the primitive TFs (like the Dinobots and Predacons) away. The
Assistant, which looks exactly like the Matrix of Leadership, sends the
primitives to fight Tornatron. In the end, Grimlock gets into
Primacron's lab and destroys the control device for Tornatron, saving
the universe.

The main reason that people would be talking about "Call of the
Primitives" is that it has about the best TF animation ever other than
the movie itself (excluding the Anime). It was produced by a different
animation studio than most of the other eps (most of which were done by
Toei) and it really shows in the artwork. All the TFs are highly
stylized and look practically like traditional Anime mecha.

8. What happened in "Dark Awakening" and "The Return of Optimus
Prime"?

In "Dark Awakening" we have the familiar scene of the Autobots
detonating three quarters of their shuttle to escape Decepticon pursuit.
Our heroes soon find themselves drifting near a giant Autobot cemetery
barge. Against their best superstition, they dock with it to make
repairs. Once there, they are surprised to find Optimus Prime walking
around. Eventually, it is revealed that he was revived and reprogrammed
by the Quints in an attempt to capture the Matrix. But in the end
Prime's personality overcomes the Quint reprogramming and he sacrifices
himself to save the other Autobots.

Or does he? In "The Return of Optimus Prime", a two part episode, we
open with some humans, a man and a woman, who are testing a new metal
alloy by flying a ship made of it near to a star. They encounter a
shuttle with Prime aboard, flying towards the star. The two humans
rescue him, but he is already dead.

They return Prime's body to Earth, where the woman's father wishes to
melt him down due to a deep-grained hatred of all Transformers.
However, at the last minute he decides to instead use Prime's body to do
all the TFs in. When the humans' ship was near the star, it picked up
the traces of a fungus of some sort which infects living things and
causes them to hate everyone around them and want to kill and destroy.
The woman's father laces Prime's body with this, and then calls the
Autobots to pick up their leader's body which he "salvaged". TF after
TF becomes infected with the Hate Plague, which spreads to not just
humans, but the entire galaxy. Sky Lynx manages to fetch a Quint and
bring him back to Prime's body. The Quint agrees to revive Optimus to
help stop the plague which threatens Quintessa as well. Prime then
coats himself with the new metal from the shuttle, making himself
impervious to the plague, and is able to get the Matrix from the
infected Rodimus Prime and uses it to stop the plague (apparently, there
can be more than one darkest hour).

The art in "Return of Optimus Prime" is high-grade. It contains many of
the animation flubs common to post-movie eps, and of course the frames-
per-second isn't impressive, but the actual drawings were nicely done.
Excluding "Call of the Primitives", TRoOP is IMHO some of the best
American TF animation around, although the story is a little silly.

Jeff Bogumil (nc50...@nccvax.wvnet.edu) mentioned to me that he seemed
to remember a news broadcast stating that a letter writing campaign in
the UK was what brought about Prime's cartoon resurrection. If anyone
else has any input on that topic, please let me know.

9. What was "Rebirth"?

"Rebirth" was a three-part story, and the last three episodes of the TF
cartoon. It followed TRoOP and introduced Head and TargetMasters. Most
att'ers were not very impressed by it, so don't be upset if you missed
it. The animation is typical of post-movie cartoons (eg. not so hot),
and there are several story elements which were handled poorly. In
fact, the later Japanese continuity ignored Rebirth completely.

10. Is there a list of voice actors for the show?

The responsibility of maintaining the voice list has been passed on to
Cris "Jinx" Haaser (cri...@owlnet.rice.edu). This frees up several
screens of space in the FAQ, and makes things easier for me. :) She
posts the list once a month, and will also send it by email request. In
addition, it's available on her web page at the location "http://www.
owlnet.rice.edu/~crispy/textfiles/voices.txt"

Currently, the voice list has been reduced to only TF-related credits,
but Cris has all the info on other parts played by TF voice actors that
was in the FAQ previously, as well as all the info which was emailed to
me since v2.2. If you have more voice info that is not on the list,
tell her, not me. :)

Scatman Cruthers, the voice of Jazz, is deceased. Bill Ness at
"bil...@aol.com" came across a biography of Scatman, and pulled out
several sections about the Transformers cartoon and the impact that
working on TF had on Scatman's life and career. However, Bill has since
disappeared. :( The Scatman bio is now on my web page, "http://www.
owu.edu/~srstoneb/transformers.html".

== IX. Comics =========================

1. Who published it, and when was it in production?

_The Transformers_ was first released as a four issue limited series
from Marvel Comics. The first issue is dated September 1984, and the
last time I checked, a good condition copy cost about $8-10. The
limited series was published bi-monthly, and then at the end of issue 4
it was announced that the book was to become a monthly, continuing
title. The first issue of the monthly book was dated June of 1985.
_The Transformers_ remained a monthly title until its cancellation at
#80, July 1991.

Contained within the seven year run of the TF comic there were several
related books released. Marvel published a four issue TF / G.I. Joe
crossover, a four issue Headmasters limited series (which then merged
with the regular TF comic), a four issue "Transformers Universe"
following the "Marvel Universe" format, and a three issue adaption of
the movie. From independent publishers, there was a "How To Draw
Transformers" book, as well as a short-lived TF in 3-D comic, which was
rudely and with no warning canceled right at the beginning of a
promising multi-issue story.

November 1993 marked the beginning of Transformers: Generation 2. This
comic, also by Marvel, ran for 12 issues and was then stopped.
Preceding it was a short introduction / crossover in issues 138-142 of
G.I. Joe. TF:G2 was not a limited series, although the writer
intentionally planned the first story arc to last for 12 issues in the
event that the book would not be continued, so that it could end with a
sense of closure. Unfortunately, it was a good thing that such
foresight was taken.

Following is a list of all TF titles ever published, including the
publishing company and number of issues printed:

Transformers Marvel 1-80
Transformers: Generation 2 Marvel 1-12
Transformers: The Movie Marvel 1-3
Transformers Universe Marvel 1-4
Headmasters Marvel 1-4
Transformers vs. GI Joe Marvel 1-4
Transformers in 3-D Blackthorne 1-3
How to Draw Transformers Blackthorne 1-4
UK Transformers Marvel UK 1-332
UK Transformers Annual Marvel UK 1-7
UK Transformers: Generation 2 Fleetway 1-5
UK Transformers: G2 Annual Grandreams 1
Collected Comics Marvel UK 1-19+

Raksha and Martin McVay provided me with more information on some UK
comics. For that, see XI 6, the section on UK TF comics.

There were also 11 "Transformers Digest" books printed in the US, each
of which reprinted two issues of the comic and included several TF
Universe entries. In addition, there were a few trade paperbacks (TPB)
and one-shots released:

TF vs. G.I.Joe, 1993, new cover by Wildman and Baskerville
TF Universe, 1987, two page intro by Jim Salicrup
TF:G2 Halloween Special Edition, 1993, reprints the Furman / Senior
story "Ghosts" from TF:G2 #2
Transformers Universe Vol. 1, Marvel UK, US Universe 1-4
Transformers: The Movie, Marvel UK, US Movie 1-3
The Complete Works Volume 1, 1986, Marvel UK, two issues, UK annual
style hardback, reprints US 1-8
Plague of the Insecticons, Marvel UK, reprint of story by that name from
UK Annual 1

2. Who wrote the comic?

After the first four issues which were penned by Ralph Macchio, all but
about three TF comics were written by either Bob Budiansky or Simon
Furman. Budiansky was on the book until issue 56, at which point
Furman, who had been the writer of the British TF comic for a long time,
took over. At this point the quality of stories took a major upturn.
He stayed on the book until its cancellation, and wrote the entire run
of G2 as well. After Furman showed us how good a TF comic could be,
many people started to resent Budiansky's predominantly juvenile plots.
Budiansky wrote a comic book about giant robots. Furman wrote an epic
adventure rich with mythical archetypes, religious conflict, and tragic
heroes. It should be clear which was better.

3. Who drew it?

The TF comic did not have just one or two major artists, although it did
change less than many other books. There were probably a dozen or so
people that drew TF over it's 80 issue run, but the main names to notice
are Jose Delbo, Andy Wildman, and Geoff Senior. Jose Delbo is of note
because of the long period of time that he stayed on the book, working
with both writers.

Geoff Senior and Andy Wildman are the two main artists from the end of
the comic's run. Both came over from the British book with Simon
Furman, and both were incredible. Geoff's art was blocky and low in
detail, but his shapes were well-defined and visually appealing. He
also had the ability to draw pictures which excellently depicted the
mass and inertia of TF bodies in motion. Many of his fight sequences
truly give the impression of giant robots throwing each other around.

Andy Wildman drew extremely detailed illustrations for the book. It was
Wildman who, IMHO at least, changed TF from a comic with pictures to a
comic with art. He gave the TFs smooth and extremely human facial
features (sometimes even teeth and eyeballs), which annoyed a lot of
readers (these are robots, after all), but it also allowed the pictures
to much better convey the emotions of the characters. Wildman had a lot
of nice little touches to his art, such as battle damage on the
characters which stayed with them from issue to issue (Scorponok's
broken antenna comes to mind).

The G2 book was drawn mainly by Derek Yaniger and Manny Galan. The
artistic style of this series was MUCH different than the G1 books.
Manny Galan's art to many seemed a poor imitation of Yaniger's dark,
spooky TFs. In the last couple of issues, as a welcome change, we got
Geoff Senior back. Unfortunately, the book was canceled soon after.

5. The whole story arc with Unicron was different in the comic, so where did
Galvatron, Cyclonus, and Scourge come from in it? And where was Rodimus
Prime?

As far as the US comic is concerned, Cyclonus and Scourge was just
regular, everyday Decepticons who were introduced during the Headmasters
limited series, which took place parallel to issues 30-36 of the
Transformers comic. However, in Si Furman's UK future, Cyclonus and
Scourge were accidentally thrown back in time where they came to be
under Scorponok's command. They later disappeared from US continuity
due to their travel back to the future in the UK "Time Wars".

Galvatron was brought to the comic book continuity from outside its
timeline by the comic Unicron. In issue 67, Unicron sent three of his
servants, Hook, Line, and Sinker, to an alternate dimension (which was
SIMILAR to the cartoon reality, but not the same as it, and was also
different from the normal UK future) where Galvatron had beaten the
Autobots almost completely, and killed Rodimus Prime. Hook, Line, and
Sinker appeared in that reality, took Galvatron, and brought him back to
the comic book's normal reality. For those of you that asked and
wondered, no, this Hook has nothing to do with the Constructicon of the
same name. :)

This all caused understandable confusion for Galvy when he met the
comic's Megatron, who, although he had died several times, was still
Megatron and not Galvatron.

6. What about issue 43, "The Big Broadcast of 2006"?

This issue, as well as the two-part "Man of Iron" story from issues 33
and 34 take place out of the normal comic continuity. "Man of Iron" was
a short storyline from the UK Transformers comic. "Big Broadcast" was
simply an episode of the cartoon which was transferred to the comic for
some reason, although in the UK version of this issue, it is stated to
be no more than a story being told by Wreck-Gar during his captivity at
the hands of the Quints.

7. Wasn't Spiderman in one issue? Does that mean the TFs are in the regular
Marvel Universe with the X-Men?

As was once said in response to a letter in Transmissions (the TF letter
column): "Please, please don't mention issue 3." Yes, Spiderman was in
issue three of the original limited series. However, he was ONLY in one
issue and that was the only issue in which any Marvel Universe character
appeared in the book (a few other MU folks got about one panel each in
#4). There was also a mention of Dazzler in another part of the
original 4-issue run, but after the series became ongoing and changed
writers, Marvel Universe characters stayed out of the book. These
appearances can sort of be considered story flubs, and ones that you
shouldn't pay much attention to. Spiderman also showed up in an issue
of "Ren and Stimpy", but no one claims that they're part of the Marvel
Universe. :)

The TF comics also included the Marvel Universe's "Savage Land" in
issues 7 and 8 or so, and Circuit Breaker appeared in issue 3 of the
"Secret Wars II" miniseries/crossover. However, I would assume that
these both go under the same "don't ask" category as the Spiderman
cameo.

8. What about G.I. Joe?

Yes, the TFs are in the same universe as G.I. Joe. There were two
crossovers with G.I. Joe. One was the "Transformers vs. G.I. Joe"
limited series which ran during TF issues 24-27. The other was a brief
crossover which took place mainly in G.I. Joe in order to introduce the
TF:G2 comic.

Interestingly, "TF vs. GIJoe" is the only US comic story omitted from UK
continuity. There, Bumblebee's death and reconstruction as Goldbug are
accomplished by Death's Head and Wreck-Gar, respectively. However,
after leaving out the original G.I. Joe crossover, the UK comic later
created its own Action Force (Europe's name for the Joes) crossover
entitled "Ancient Relics".

On the cartoon side, TFs and G.I. Joe didn't seem to be in the same
universe, because if they had, they'd certainly have encountered each
other. However, in the post-movie ep "Only Human", an old and decrepit
Cobra Commander turns Rodimus, Springer, Magnus, and Arcee into humans.
No other G.I. Joe characters show up in the ep, however.

9. I never got to read the G2 comics... what happened in them?

Basically, the G2 comic picked up where G1 #80 left off. I'm going to
leave out a lot of events and give a broad outline of the main story.
Unicron has just been destroyed and Cybertron has been lost. During the
G.I.Joe lead-in, Megatron falls out of the sky on Earth and is rebuilt
by Cobra into his tank form. Also early on in the story a new group of
Decepticons (a second generation, get it?) shows up, wreaking havoc on
various planets and expanding their empire. They are led by a 'con
named Jhiaxus. Most of the new Decepticons seem like mindless minions,
and they all have a similar "look" and color scheme.

There is an inevitable first encounter between these new Decepticons and
the Autobots, and Optimus Prime's forces suffer heavy losses. In an
effort to understand who these new enemies are, Prime takes a trip into
the Matrix to learn what to do from Primus. He doesn't get what he
expects, that being a history lesson. It starts with the birth of the
first Transformer, and then shows him something he had never seen
before: budding.

The way the budding story goes is that in their early days, TFs
reproduced through a process similar to cellular division. New
Transformers sort of grew out of old ones in a rather painful process.
Once Primus felt that the population of TFs was great enough, he
produced a race-wide memory wipe and erased the knowledge of this
process from all TF minds. At this point the Matrix took over as the
only way of creating new Transformer life. However, Primus' plan had
not worked entirely, and eventually a group of Transformers rediscovered
budding, and used it extensively to swell their ranks. This is where
the droves of blue and white G2 cons under Jhiaxus' command came from.

Unfortunately, because it does not involve the Matrix (and hence Primus'
life force), budding tends to create less "pure" Transformers, and after
several generations of budding the other Transformers lost their most
basic sense of morality. In addition, budding is always accompanied by
an energy discharge. At first, this discharge appeared merely
electrical, but in time it became evident that there was more to it than
that. Later budding produced dark energies which floated off and
amassed into a lifeforce called the Swarm. Because it had been created
from the Primus-deprived G2 transformers, the Swarm lacked purpose, and
sought the Transformers out, leaving a swath of destruction and death
behind it.

When the Swarm finally reached Earth, where the Autobots, the
Decepticons, and the G2 'cons were in the middle of a full-scale war,
Prime allowed himself to be devoured. When the containment vessel of
the Creation Matrix was breached, the Matrix energy spewed out and
filled the emptiness in the Swarm's soul. Having found purpose and
happiness, the Swarm reconstructed Prime, returned him to Earth, and
flew off into the proverbial sunset.

The last issue of TF:G2 ended with a cliffhanger ending in which the
Liege Maximo, a sort of ultimate evil force from the UK comics, made
some menacing statements, said that Jhiaxus' forces had been under his
command, and implied that the war was far from over.

10. Where can I buy old TF comics?

Really the best thing to do is check the backstock at any comic book
store you might run into. Most stores will probably have a few issues,
and if you look at enough stores, you'll probably be able to put
together a decent collection.

The people at Dave's Comics, a large seller which frequently advertises
their backstock in comic books today, contacted me to let me know of
their website, "http://www.davescomics.com". They have a lot of TF
comics available, although only from certain periods of its run.

== X. The Movie =======================

1. What happened in it?

The basic plot of the movie goes as follows:

It is the year 2005, and the Decepticons have fully conquered Cybertron.
The Autobots have bases on Cybertron's two moons, as well as "Autobot
City" on Earth (which is NOT Metroplex or Fortress Maximus). The movie
opens with Unicron, a giant planet, eating the world of Lithone and
killing all but one of its inhabitants who escapes in a spaceship.

To counter a coming Autobot offensive, the Decepticons attack Autobot
City, and a huge battle occurs which ends with the defeat of both
Optimus Prime and Megatron. Prime passes the Autobot Matrix of
Leadership on to Ultra Magnus. Megatron is revived by Unicron and
turned into Galvatron, and Unicron sends him to destroy the Matrix.

Galvatron goes to Autobot city to kill Magnus and get the Matrix, but
the Autobots escape and are split up. The Dinobots, Kup, and Hot Rod
crash on Quintessa. Kup and Hot Rod are captured and put on trial, but
the Dinobots and their new found friend Wheelie rescue them. The Deceps
follow Magnus and co. to the planet of Junk. Galvatron attacks and
takes the matrix, and then the Autobots fight with the Junkions and
Wreck-Gar. Soon Hot Rod and the Dinos show up, placate the Junkions,
and everyone goes off to fight Unicron, who has spent his time eating
Cybertron's two moons and the Autobots on them while everyone else was
running around.

The Autobots attack Unicron, who is eating Cybertron, and after most of
them are swallowed by him, Daniel rescues his dad Spike and the other
Autobots who were eaten, and Hot Rod gets the Matrix back from Galvatron
and uses it, turning into Rodimus Prime and destroying Unicron.

2. Why weren't more characters featured?

The movie took about two years to make, being released on August 8,
1986, so when the movie was written, they only had the first set or two
of TF characters to work with, which didn't include most of the gestalts
like Superion and Menasor. So, Devastator was the only gestalt in
existence when the movie was written, which explains Kup's fear of him
when he first forms. :)

3. Where was Snarl?

Snarl was mysteriously absent from all the Dinobot scenes in the movie.
There is only one place where he shows up: for about one second during
Galvatron's attack on Autobot city, you see Snarl with the other Dino's,
but afterwards he's gone again.

4. Why did the Insecticons keep showing up and dying?

As was shown in a few pre-movie episodes of the cartoon, the Insecticons
had the ability to make almost unlimited clones of themselves. It is
therefore likely that the insecticons thrown out of the shuttle and
turned into Sweeps were only clones, thus allowing Shrapnel to harass
Daniel on Junkion later in the movie, and for the Insecticons to show up
again in later cartoon eps. Also, when Kup and Hotrod run over the
Insecticons on their way into Autobot City, we must assume that their
wounds weren't fatal, for we know they were the _real_ Insecticons
because they called Shrapnel by name when eating the door.

5. Why would Astrotrain need to "jettison some weight" in space?

While it's true that there is no "weight" in space, there is mass. The
more mass on board, the more fuel is required to accelerate and
decelerate. It is possible that Astrotrain didn't have enough fuel to
(a) accelerate enough to get to Cybertron within a reasonable amount of
time, or (b) decelerate enough once they get to Cybertron to actually
stop and land there. Once the extra scrap metal was thrown overboard,
however, there was little enough mass on board for him to get home
quickly and land.

6. Who became Cyclonus, and why were there two of him?

Most people would like to think that Skywarp became Cyclonus, as he was
generally a very cool but underused character and it would seem only
fitting for Unicron to turn him into a major leaguer. Unfortunately,
due to the fact that this scene is shown without color, and the fact
that there were at least temporarily TWO Cycloni, it's very hard to tell
for sure which jet became what. With a little care, however, it can be
ascertained with a fair amount of certainty that it was indeed
Thundercracker who became Scourge, which means Skywarp must be one of
the two Cycloni.

Here's a little more detail. When the Deceps are discussing how to
lighten their burden, the wounded 'cons are clearly shown to consist of
exactly six members: Skywarp, Thundercracker, Megatron, and the three
Insecticons (or one clone of each of them). These six characters are
then thrown overboard. Thundercracker is changed into Scourge, and
Shrapnel and Kickback become two Sweeps. Bombshell and Skywarp are both
turned into robots that look like Cyclonus. Bombshell is in the
foreground when this occurs, and Unicron announces them as "Cyclonus,
the warrior, and his armada," with no clear indication of which is
Cyclonus. It would make sense for Cyc to be the one in the foreground,
but to a TransFan who wants it to be Skywarp and not Bombshell, it seems
reasonable to say that it could indeed have been Cyclonus in the back.

Unicron's statement about the "armada" has prompted some TransFans to
treat the second Cyclonus as a character of the name Armada who then
wasn't shown again in the movie, and is sometimes presumed dead.
Apparently, during part five of FFOD, there are two, and even three
Cycloni shown simultaneously with no explanation. I would tend to
dismiss this as FFOD silliness, but others out there might not. Reports
of other appearances of the Armada, or even confirmation of this one,
would be appreciated. My theory is that there might have been an early
intention to place a legion of twins under Cyclonus' command, just as
Scourge had the Sweeps. After all, if exactly two Sweeps can multiply
to countless drones in the time of a flight to Earth, why couldn't a
single ship of the "armada" turn into at least a few of itself? :)

Also, in a continuity flub typical of TF animation, during Starscream's
coronation Thundercracker (who had been turned into Scourge not 20
minutes earlier) can be seen among the Decepticons jumping out of the
way when Galvatron flies in.

7. Why'd they kill everyone?

The movie was intended to introduce a new batch of characters, which it
did, and to make "room" for them it's understandable that they might
need to take other people out of the way. Also, the deaths of so many
major characters added to the drama of the movie. Someone also
suggested that the deaths of many original Autobots was intended to make
the Deceps seem more evil than could be shown on a daily "kid" cartoon.

8. Who did the voices?

The starring roles include:

Eric Idle -- Wreck-Gar
Frank Welker -- Megatron
John Moschitta (the Micro Machine guy) -- Blurr
Judd Nelson -- Hot Rod / Rodimus Prime
Leonard Nimoy -- Galvatron
Lionel Stander -- Kup
Neil Ross -- Springer
Orson Welles -- Unicron
Peter Cullen -- Optimus Prime
Robert Stack -- Ultra Magnus
Susan Blu -- Arcee
Victor Caroli -- narrator (as always)

As many people know, Orson Welles passed away before work on the movie
was completed, and although he had recorded most of his lines, some
areas near the end of the movie were left unfinished. If you listen
carefully, you will hear two distinct voices for Unicron. The previous
FAQ writer decided to settle this once and for all and sampled some
clips with an audio digitizer and sped them up. The other voice was
none other than Leonard Nimoy.

9. What was the universal greeting they used?

Spelling on this varies, but following the lead of the comic adaption:
"bah weep graaagnah wheep, ni ni bong".

10. Didn't they swear in it?

There were two cases of swearing in the theatrical release, and one of
those was stricken from the video version. In the scene in which
Bumblebee and Spike are sucked into Unicron, in the theater version
Spike said "Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?" This was edited for
video to just "What are we gonna do now?" with a silent space just long
enough for "shit" to fit in. The other scene was on Junkion, where
Magnus tries to open the Matrix to save the Autobots from the Decepticon
attack. In both versions, he says "Open! Damnit, open!"

11. What changes were made between the theatrical and video releases?

Aside from the wide-screen to pan-and-scan format change that almost all
movies suffer, the only difference is the omission of "oh shit". There
have been claims of several other edits as well, but the main sample of
posters on att has not supported them.

One of the ideas that pops up more frequently is alternate versions of
Prime's death. At one time there were two or three people on the
newsgroup claiming that when Prime died in the theater, his body turned
to dust and blew away, but that this was changed for video where the
scene ends with Daniel crying on Prime's hand. However, most people
distinctly remember the scene ending with a fade-out of Daniel and the
hand in the theater as well (it's much more dramatic, IMHO). It's
possible that memories of Starscream crumbling at his death are getting
mixed up with Prime's death scene.

The other main edit-claim relates to Magnus' death at the hands of the
Sweeps on Junkion. Some people seem to remember Magnus being quartered
(the Sweeps attach tractor beams to his limbs and fly off in different
directions, tearing him apart). This IS the way it happens in the comic
book version of the movie, and so possibly was in the original script.
In the video version he simply gets perforated by several laser blasts.
If you watch closely you can see that the four Sweeps who attack him
each shoot a continuous, straight beam before the angle switches to
Magnus getting shot, at which point the lasers become short and rapid.
Hmmm. Fishy, but as with Prime's death, most people remember it
happening in the theater the way it does on the video.

Other possible edits include changing the order of some scenes and
removing other footage altogether (anything from one-second shots of
things to entire short scenes). All in all, it has been claimed that
some 20 minutes of footage are missing from the video version, but I
stress again that most readers of att disagree, and it is still the
"official" position of the group and this FAQ that "oh shit" was the
only change.

For the most part, making a post that there was more than one edit for
the video release will not earn you any respect on att. This doesn't
mean that if you really _do_ remember something being changed, that we
wouldn't want to know, but think long and hard about how sure you are
before making a post about it. Basically, every time someone claims
that a scene has been altered, it is followed up by 10 to 15 posts from
other readers saying "No, you're remembering it wrong," in tones ranging
from polite to flame. To put it simply: if there were edits besides "oh
shit", you probably wouldn't be the only one to remember it. In fact,
at least one person will have already remembered it, told us, and we
would have all said "ohhh yeah!" and changed the FAQ to indicate our
epiphany.

Clearly, this has not happened.

12. Is there an uncut copy of the movie, which even has material that was
never seen in theaters?

As with all movies, there was footage prepared and filmed for TF:TM that
never made it through the final cut before the initial theatrical
release. Some of these clips are shown in the Japanese preview /
trailer for the movie, which can be found on a few different tapes. One
of them, called "Transformers: Hero", was available at BotCon '95. At
BotCon '96 there was another tape for sale with BW eps 1 and 2, the
American and Japanese movie trailers, and the movie itself.

The missing footage on the tapes, some of it rather spectacular,
includes more fighting scenes and extended transformations for Autobot
City and Unicron. There are also alternate versions of some scenes that
were in the movie, implying that these were probably very early
animation tests, and were not necessarily EVER intended to be in the
actual film. Nowhere on these tapes does Optimus crumble to dust. It
is conceivable that such footage does exist, was cut before the film's
release, and for some reason is not among the other cut scenes, but it
seems extremely unlikely. I have been told that copies of TF:Hero can
be ordered from Anime Kaiser, a large-ish anime club, but I have not yet
confirmed this. If you're interested, the club's president is Brian
Jelinek. He lives at 3918 Bunnel Dr., Jacksonville FA 32246-6487, and
his phone number is (904) 646-9792.

During early 1996 the newsgroup went through another round of debate on
movie edits when Adam McCormick (adam.mc...@sheridanc.on.ca) made a
series of posts describing the events by which he found an original film
reel of the movie at a film rental place (he had to then return it)
which was completely uncut, and contained a significant number of
previously unseen scenes. The FAQ is maintaining a position of
skeptical optimism. The whole idea seems unlikely, but I have no reason
to mistrust Adam. I'm waiting to see some real evidence.

13. Where can I get the movie on tape?

As with the soundtrack, there are several so-so ways to try finding the
movie, and one sure fire bet. The movie is currently on a "moratorium",
which is a sort of video-industry limbo where movies go and hope to be
printed again, although no one really knows if they ever will.

One reasonably reliable way to find it is to look in long-established
video rental places in your town, and see if they have it. Newer rental
places probably won't have it, but stores that were around when it came
out on tape almost certainly do, unless they've already sold it to some
other TransFan. :) There's a good chance that they don't rent it out
very often and you could buy it cheap. Also, some people have been able
to order it from Blockbuster Video. Look for it under the "Animation"
section or even the "Children's" section.

The movie is a production of Marvel/Sunbow, and was distributed by DEG.
The original video release was done by FHE. There was another release
of the movie in 1991 which was recorded in SLP (6-hour) mode, probably
to save on material costs (less tape would be needed in slow mode).
This version was released by Live Home Video and Avid Home
Entertainment.

To make the search simple, however, just call 1-800-99-SCI-FI. This is
the number for Super Collector, a small company which makes high-quality
dubs of the movie for $19.95. They used to have a copy of the Japanese
laserdisc (X, 14, below) which they used for this purpose, but it seems
that recently they have switched to copying the FHE videotape release.
They also sell the soundtrack on CD, but for the same price as the
movie, so you're better off buying that from CD Connection (see X 15,
below). One warning, as the Super Collector movie is a copy, it is not
in any way an "official" copy of the film. It used to come on a plain
tape in a plain box, but Super Collector now decorates the box with the
art from the official release.

14. Where can I get the movie on laserdisc?

Doug Vander Hoek (dvh_...@iastate.edu) provided me with almost all of
the following information:

The disc is only available as in import from Japan. It is put out by
HillCrane. It is cat #: HCL-7001. The disc says it is made and
distributed by SOHBI KIKAKU Corporation. The digital tracks have the
English dialogue version, and the analog tracks have the Japanese
dialogue version. "Oh shit" is not in the english dialogue, although it
may be on the Japanese track. Suggested retail is 6000 yen ($60-75).
The laserdisc is CLV. It is NOT letterboxed. The opening credits are
presented differently than the VHS / film version as well as having a
Star Wars-like scrolling intro. It has been out of print since 1990,
and was recently due for a re-release, but was canceled due to lack of
interest. The movie's trailer is also on the disc. The first time each
character appears, their name (in Japanese kana) appears at the bottom
of the screen. There is a rumor that it may be re-released again.

15. Where can I get the movie soundtrack?

It's not extremely hard to find. It was released by Scotti Bros.
Records, and isn't still in production, but _is_ still available. You
can have some music stores order it on tape or CD, although a lot of
major distributors don't carry it.

If you have trouble finding it anyway, or want to save the trouble of
looking, you can get it over the net for as good a price as you'll find
anywhere else from CD Connection. Telnet to "cdconnection.com" or try
their WWW page, which is at (big surprise) "http://www.cdconnection.
com". It costs about 10-12 US dollars on CD.

The soundtrack has several good songs on it, including the two Stan Bush
tunes "The Touch" and "Dare". The (excellent) score was written by
Vince DiCola.

Ku Klux Flintstone (umki...@cc.umanitoba.ca) has mentioned the
possibility of an alternate soundtrack cover from Canada which lists the
group Spectre General as "Kick Axe", a Canadian band. Apparently Kick
Axe had some sort of legal problems in the US, and it's possible they
assumed the name Spectre General for work done in the States.

Also, for those interested, Robert Powers (repo...@artsci.wustl.edu)
has compiled a list of all background music played in the American
cartoon. For information about the TF Music List, contact him.

16. What else is there to know about Stan Bush and Vince DiCola?

Stan Bush came out with another album in 1992 called "Every Beat of My
Heart", and can be contacted through his friend John Vel Squez at
"fz...@aol.com" or "fz...@west.net". Also, Tigeriffic (tiger@telepath.
com) is putting together a Stan Bush homepage (http://www.telepath.com/
tiger/stan/stanbush.html) and welcomes communication about Mr. Bush.

Vince DiCola has scored several other movies, including "Rocky 2" (Sly
vs. Russia) and the disco hit "Saturday Night Fever" which shot John
Travolta to stardom. He has also released at least one album of his
own, a collection of piano tunes. Thanks to Christopher Rodkey, I have
some biographical info on him to spread around the net as well...

Vince DiCola grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and went to Lancaster
Catholic High School. He has returned to central Pennsylvania several
times to hold concerts at his old school and work with other schools in
the area. According to an article in the _Lancaster Sunday News_ from a
little while back, DiCola is still living off of the royalties to the
movies he has done. He now resides somewhere in California.

== XI. TFs Outside the United States ==

1. Where else have TFs appeared?

Transformer toys were available throughout much of the world during the
80's. The areas in which there was a specifically marketed TF line
(rather than importing toys from elsewhere) were the US, Japan, Europe,
and Brazil. I have basically no information on the Brazilian line,
except for a rumor that it only existed for one year. Anyone know about
this? :)

In Europe, there were a few 'extra' subgroups that were released during
the G1 period, and after the American G1 ended, Europe continued to get
new TFs for a few years. Many of the G2 transformers were actually
released in Europe several years before coming out in the US as G2.

Japan has, by far, the largest portion of exclusive TFs. After the end
of the American G1, Japan continued to make new animated TV shows, and
the toys to go with them. The groups of Japanese TFs that Americans
would be most unfamiliar with are those from the Victory and Return of
Convoy lines. Victory was the third Japan-only TF cartoon, and Return
of Convoy was accompanied by a comic-ish section called Battlestars that
ran for about a year in the Japanese "TV Magazine". Most of these
characters will be completely new to Americans, and most of the
characters from previous Japanese cartoons will be familiar.

2. What were the Japan-only toys like?

You'll probably get more complete information on this subject by reading
Robert Jung's toy list, but I will attempt to make a brief summary of
the non-US release toy groups. Be sure to read XI, 4, the section about
TF Anime, or a lot of this won't make much sense to you. :)

While G1 TFs were still being made in the US, the Japanese line followed
their Masterforce cartoon and contained different versions of several US
HeadMasters. They had different colors and personalities than the ones
Americans are used to. In Japan, PowerMasters were referred to as
GodMasters. There were also recolored versions of Fort Max and
Scorponok named Grand Maximus and Black Zarak.

To accompany TF:Victory, there were several groups of Japan-only toys.
The main groups here were BrainMasters, MultiForce, BreastForce (keep
your mind out of the gutter; these toys have chest components which
transform into weapons and animals), and DinoForce. These are all
gestalt teams. At this time, the US was knee-deep in Pretenders, Micro,
and Action Masters, many of which were never released in Japan.

Afterwards, probably alongside TF:Zone, droves of Micro Masters were
released, almost all as Cybertrons. Included among the Micros were
several Micro gestalts which were never seen elsewhere (many of the
micro gestalt names start with 'six', since they were made of six
pieces; hence, SixTrain, SixBuilder...).

Lastly, Battlestars: The Return of Convoy had a few toys released with
it. The major name from that group was Star Convoy.

Some specific Japanese TFs you're likely to see people talking about
are: the Trainbots (an Cybertron gestalt), the Destron BreastForce, and
Overlord (a Destron double GodMaster from the Masterforce series).

3. What other toys were never released in the US?

In Europe, after the demise of the American G1 line, new types of
ActionMasters were released, including AM Elites, which went against the
AM grain and actually transformed. Many of the classic TFs were also
re-released at this time. Later on, two missile-launching groups called
TurboMasters and Predators came out, followed by some recolored Japanese
TFs. Once G2 came out, Europe continued to get all the American toys
plus a few of their own exclusives.

4. What were the Japanese TF cartoons like?

Most of my information on this subject comes from "Track Attack" (Pema
Galang, at "pema.t.galang-1.@tc.umn.edu"), who was kind enough to send
me nice long emails about it. :) Extreme thanks go to her for her help
in this area. Also, please read the info on translations in sec. XIII.

There were actually several Japanese TF cartoons. The first series
consisted simply of dubbed versions of the american cartoons, called
"Transformers: Super Robot Life Form". In Japan, the Autobots are
called Cybertrons and the Deceps are called Destrons. Contrary to what
has been said in this FAQ and elsewhere in the past, the factions were
NOT from different planets. In fact, in order to prevent confusion over
this matter, they call the TFs' home planet Seibertron, so it doesn't
seem like the bots were from it, and the cons from a planet "Destron".

Between the last pre-movie eps and TF:TM (called "Matrix Forever") there
is a video called "Scramble City". For copyright reasons, this was
actually broadcast in Japan before the US series was, but plotwise it
goes here, before the movie. It was basically one long battle,
featuring several of the gestalt teams, as well as a few other
characters. Scramble City exists in two forms: first a cartoon format,
and second a stop-motion version using the actual toys with mostly the
same plot. The stop motion clips were later hacked up to make TF
commercials for the toys. The cartoon version starts with a recap of
MTMTE and then, using both new and old footage, goes through the battle.
It ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, but was never followed up upon.
The post-movie episodes came afterwards under the title TF:2010, ending
with TRoOP. "Rebirth" was ignored.

Following TRoOP came "HeadMasters", which included a few of the movie
characters, but focused mainly on the Head and TargetMaster TFs and
their origins. "Rebirth" is basically ignored by Japanese continuity.
Several big TFs die in this series (including Op and Ultra Magnus), and
Seibertron is destroyed. As the story goes, the HeadMasters and
TargetMasters left Seibertron long ago to find a new world because of
the war. They settled on a place called MasterStar, where they
developed the *Master technologies.

The next series was called "Masterforce" and centered mainly on the
"Junior HeadMasters" and PowerMasters (known as GodMasters in Japan).
This series also included the Seacons, Pretenders, and a giant Destron
GodMaster named Overlord who most American TF fans will have never heard
of. The main characters were the Junior HeadMasters -- Cybertron
HeadMasters with children for heads. They were Go-Shooter, Cab, and
Minerva (Siren, Hosehead, and Nightbeat to Americans). The Destrons
also had a Junior HeadMaster group. PowerMaster Optimus Prime was also
in this series, but he was called Super Ginrai, and had an extra second
trailer called Godbomber (which was not included in the American toy)
that transformed into a second exoskeleton and gave him wings.

The name of the next series is "Victory". The Cybertrons are led by a
BrainMaster (kind of like a PowerMaster) named Star Sabre. The other
BrainMasters are named Blacker, Laster, and Braver, and combine into
RoadCaesar. The Destrons have a team called BreastForce, composed of a
new type of binary bonded TFs with chest components that can transform
into weapons or animals. The leader of these is Deathsaurus, a double
BreastForce'er (the term "BreastMaster" was never actually used,
although if you use it people will still understand). The other six
members of BreastForce (LeoZack, Gaihawk, Hellbat, Killbison, Jargua,
and Drillhorn) can combine to form LioCaesar. The Destrons also have
DinoForce; its members have Dinosaur counterparts and combine to form
DinoKing (they're known as the Monster Pretenders / Monstructor in the
US). On the other side of the battlefield, the Cybertrons' Multiforce
has six members, and any two can combine to form a different robot.
Altogether they merge to form LandCross. Also in Victory, the
Masterforce TFs appear occasionally, and OP is reincarnated as a golden
robot named Victory Leo that transforms into a lion. He can combine
with Star Sabre to form Victory Sabre.

The last Japanese TF animation is called "Zone". It was intended to be
the first episode of a series, but this was never carried out and Zone
ended up as a one-shot OVA (original video animation, an animated
feature released directly to video). Mainly concerned with MicroMasters
(all of whom were portrayed as Cybertrons, even the ones we know as
'cons) and Destron gestalts (all of whom are carrying swords and wearing
capes(?)), this show also includes some of the Victory cast. The story
sort of centers on a matrix-like thingy that the Destrons are after.
It's main villain is named Violenjiger, who looks a bit like a three-
faced Quint. In some footage cut from Zone, these faces even seperate,
transform into insectoids, and merge into a gestalt. Woo woo!

Following this is a series of color spreads in "TV Magazine" titled
"BattleStars: The Return of Convoy". This story features Optimus Prime
and Megatron coming back from the dead one more time (Convoy is the
Japanese name for OP). These spreads were eight pages long and ran for
12 months. They were not manga as-such (Japanese comics are called
manga, and are drawn in a style very similar to anime). As far as story
goes, the MicroMaster bases SkyGarry and Grandus locate Prime's body and
reconstruct him as Star Convoy, with the ability to combine with them in
the form of a giant base or a large three part vehicle. The villain is
a giant space creature named Dark Nova. Although he acts a little like
Unicron did, and I previously said that he was a new form of Uni, Dark
Nova is not Uni, and actually looks nothing like him anyway. Dark Nova
apparently has relocated Galvatron, who has been missing since
HeadMasters, and turned him into Super Megatron. Star Convoy, SkyGarry,
and Grandus (the BattleStars) are too much for Super Megatron, but he is
rebuilt into Ultra Megatron, who is also beaten. Then Dark Nova
actually combines himself with Megs and becomes known as Star Giant. He
attacks, but is defeated again.

All the Japanese series were done in traditional Anime style, which
means they're very cool and exciting to watch. There are no officially
released copies of these cartoons in the US, although there are a lot of
people that have copies of them.

All the Japanese cartoons were dubbed into English in Singapore (and at
least some of them were put into Cantonese in Hong Kong). Although the
quality of the dubbing is rather poor -- the dialogue's translation
often leaves much to be desired and the voices chosen are sometimes
pretty bad -- for me at least, that only served to make them more
amusing. Not everyone is so easily entertained as me, though. :)
Singapore shares its video format with the UK, but that format, PAL, is
incompatible with American VHS. This means that dubbed copies are more
common with British fans (and Singaporeans, like good ol' Pema). A more
sophisticated translation project for TF:Victory is being undertaken by
Jaremy Pyle (pyle...@nova.gmi.edu). He is not doing the translations
himself, but has a friend who does it in his spare time. Feel free to
contact Jaremy about this project if you are interested.

5. Wow! How can I get copies of the anime?

This is where I list the people from the newsgroup who have told me that
they are willing to sell Japanese eps to other fans. :)

Sarai Feria (10313...@compuserve.com) has several dubbed Headmasters
eps available. Jaremy Pyle (pyle...@nova.gmi.edu) has the complete
Victory series in Japanese. Jean Vanlente (pla...@mailbox.neosoft.com)
has about 30 assorted dubbed episodes from the three series.

6. What's Transformers: Hero?

TF:Hero is a video that was released in 1988 in Japan. It includes an
overview of the first 5 seasons of Japanese TF cartoons (two years of
Super Robot Life Form, one year of 2010, and two of Headmasters) as well
as little snippets from Sramble City and Masterforce. There are clips
from the cartoons with narration explaining the action, and even
"commercial breaks" filled with ads for TF toys. The video also
contains the Japanese movie trailer, with footage never officially seen
in the US that wasn't included in the actual movie. (Read the various
questions about cut footage in section X.)

7. What's different between the American and British comics?

The British TF comic followed a different (and much more interesting)
continuity than its American counterpart. The UK book was weekly rather
than monthly, and lasted for another year or so after the American book
was canceled, making it up to issue 332. Each issue contained about
half a US comic's worth of TF story, and a usually non-TF backup strip.
It reprinted all the US stories, but when not doing so the Brits were
treated to original stories written by Simon Furman. As a direct
consequence of their writer, the UK stories were full of action,
intrigue, mythos, and extensive character development. They also
featured artwork from greats like Geoff Senior with filled color, rather
than the then-traditional dot coloring that Marvel US used.

The UK TF Annuals were hardback books with both comic and text stories,
and other features as well. The first Annual was also released in a
paperback version in 1986. The UK "Collected Comics" reprinted the best
stories from earlier issues. There were 19 of these plus a number of
reprint specials which were like CC, but were not numbered and most were
missing the stage-setting intro page that CC had. CC 1 and 2 were a
reprint of US 1-4.

The British continuity took most of the movie as cannon and from that
grew several future and time travel epics. Anyone familiar with
Furman's run on the US TF book will realize the great potential for this
type of story when flowing from Furman's pen.

Getting a hold of UK TF comics is pretty difficult, as most TF fans are
American, and the UK comics are so good that no one really wants to give
them up. If you're interested in getting some, post a message on the
newsgroup and there will probably be replies from people willing to
sell, although the cost may be high. Kev Briggs (kr...@leicester.ac.uk)
has written and posted a few summaries of some of the UK TF future epics
for the benefit of US fans. If you are interested in this contact him.
As another alternative, the head of The Survivors, Liane Elliot, has
written up a guide to the UK comics with a list of all issues, and
summaries of many storylines. This file is available from me (srstoneb@
cc.owu.edu) by email request or on her WWW page (www.eskimo.com/~tetra/
tf.html). Lastly, on Martin McVay's web page, "http://www.warwick.ac.
uk/~mavai/tf.html", there is a UK comic timeline. It is more complete
and correct, but less thorough than Liane's list about what it mentions.

A list of British TF comics can be found with the American comic list,
in IX, 1.

== XII. Miscellaneous Questions =======

1. What were those Cybertronian units of time?

Issues 17 and 18 of the comic book focused on events on Cybertron,
mainly with Blaster's efforts to free a neutral scientist named Spanner
from Decepticon captivity. In number 17, two units of Cybertronian time
were introduced, and occasionally popped up in dialogue in later issues.
Also, in issue 60 Thunderwing mentions another unit of time. The
conversions are as follows:

1 Breem = 8.3 Earth minutes
1 Vorn = 83 Earth years
1 Orn = 1 Cybertronian lunar day = ??? in Earth time

2. Unicron vs. the Death Star: who would win?

Hitler.

Seriously, though, this is a perfect example of a question that has been
beaten into the ground. Someone asked this sometime during the '94
school year and the discussion went on and on as more new people jumped
in expressing their opinions, which were, invariably, opinions that
others had already expressed. It degraded into the kind of discussion
you might see in a religious debate area where one person says "no,
don't you see? it's this way!" and the next person says "no, you're
wrong! it's THIS way!" and then someone else agrees with the first
person, and then the second, etc., etc..

The problem is that this is a fairly common first question for people to
post because they think (rightfully so) that it's an interesting
question to muse over for a little bit. Unfortunately, we've been put
through this all about three times now and it's worn awfully thin. IOW,
most of the att regulars will be extremely annoyed with you if you post
this question, or even something similar (Unicron vs. Galactus, Unicron
vs. the Zentradi war fleet, Unicron vs. M.Bison).

To actually answer the question... The side that favored Unicron gave
rationale such as his superior speed and mobility, and the toughness of
his hide (if an exploding moon didn't scratch him, what good will the
Planet Destroyer beam from the DS do?). They also noted that since the
Matrix was the only thing that could destroy him, what hope could the DS
possibly have? The Death Star side said that the DS actually had
superior mobility because of its hyperdrive, and that the Planet
Destroyer could basically blow up anything in the universe, even planets
with tough metal hides. The size question came up over and over again,
comparing Uni's size in the comic to Cybertron in the comic, Uni in the
movie to Cybertron in the cartoon, Uni's head to Uni's body to Cybertron
in "The Ultimate Doom", and every other comparison that can possibly be
made, in the hopes of figuring out which one was bigger. In the end
there was no consensus, just a bunch of people yelling at each other.

If you are a troll, this is an excellent way to throw the group into an
uproar. :)

3. How do you write out the transforming sound?

When this question came up, our resident technobabble god, Kendrick, had
his own special take on it:

"The Transform sound begins as an 8 hz pulse repeated five times for .7
seconds each repeat whose pitch can be represented by the absolute value
of a declining sine wave, with each zero-to-zero arc of the wave
representing one of five cycles of the repetition. The actual value of
the sine wave can be modified by factor N which is multiplied into the X
value but divided into the Y value, which means that although the actual
pitch is largely indefinite, in analog terms when the transform pitch is
higher the length of each pulse is shorter, and conversely when the
pitch is lower the length of each pulse is longer."

More traditional attempts were as follows:

RA Jung: "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh"
Kirt Israel: "CHHH-CHH-Chh-chhu-chu"
Iggy Drougge: "chreechroochroochroo"
Nick Morency: "Oh oh ah ah ee!"

4. Which TFs died in the movie/comic/tv show?

A fairly comprehensive "Transformers Book of the Dead" was written by
Liane Elliot (te...@eskimo.com), listing TF deaths in several different
continuities, complete with the circumstances of each death. This is
available from me (srst...@cc.owu.edu) by email request, or on her
homepage at "http://www.eskimo.com/~tetra/tf.html".

However, for you impatient types, here's a brief list of the movie
deaths in approximate order, sans causes. Keep in mind that the
Insecticons might have just been clones, and some people don't consider
the 'cons reformed by Unicron to be "dead": Brawn, Prowl, Ratchet,
Ironhide, Wheeljack, Windcharger, Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bombshell,
Shrapnel, Kickback, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Starscream.

5. What movie was it that had those TF cartoons in it?

"The Professional" is a movie about a hit man that takes in a little
girl whose family has been killed by mobsters. At several times
throughout the movie, the girl is shown watching TV, and she is always
watching Transformers cartoons. The first clip is from MTMTE Part 3.
Megatron says "Now it's my turn!", followed by Starscream pleading:
"Megatron! Megatron! Please don't shoot!". The second clip, from "War
of the Dinobots" has Prime say "Don't you recognize me?" and Grimlock
reply "Me Grimlock know you!" The third and final scene is also from
MTMTE 3. Hound says "But I mean a big one!" and Prowl asks "What did
you have in mind?"

== XIII. Closing Comments and Information

Fanzines and Fan Clubs:

At BotCon '96 I was exposed to a number of TF fanzines which I had been
previously unaware of. Although I knew that there were some out there,
I was surprised to see how many, and for the first time considered
subscribing to a few myself. Liane Elliot (te...@eskimo.com) has a
complete list of TF media which is available on her web page, "www.
eskimo.com/~tetra". Her list does not say anything about the media's
contents, however, so I will make a brief comment about each of the
currently in-print items on her list (this info from Liane herself).
For the addresses, etc., of the 'zines listed, please read her list!

AutoUpdate, TransMasters club newsletter
ConQuest, fanzine, focuses on the 'con view of the war
Children of Cybertron, comic using G2 comic as a basis w/ original chars
CyberCon, newsletter, mostly focusing on tfs toys and info.
Maelstrom, comic, Rodimus and Goldbug have been kidnapped by a alien
race
Matrix Master, comic, NC-17 rating, both serious and funny
Mechamorphs, comic, very good but confusing storyline
Overlord II, fanzine, stories, art, profiles, ads, other TF info
Roll Out, fanzine, stories, artwork, etc
Teletran, fanzine, well done with stories, artwork, info
Transformations, club newsletter, info, funny stuff, etc.
TransScrypt/B.O.P., fanzine, stories
Transspoof, fanzine/comic, from guy that writes Deformers fanfics
Transverse, fanfic newsletter
Transforum, club newsletter, TF info
TransMaster Newsletter, club newsletter, TF info
Continued G2, comic, continues after G2, new creative team each issue
TransMasters Universe, fanzine, club member created profiles
Informer G2, club newsletter, tfs info.
Transformers Earthforce, club fanfic?

A note on translations:

When changing names from Japanese to English there are two major
problems. The first is that some English letters sound the same in
Japanese, such as 'l' and 'r', and 'u' and 'a'. This can lead to
translations of names like "Thunderclucker". To remedy this it is
necessary to look at the word you've ended up with, and decide if it
makes sense. Thunderclucker, unfortunately, makes nearly as much sense
as Thundercracker. But in most cases, the choice is obvious. As an
example which Doug Dlin brought to my attention, the name "Raster" is
better translated as "Laster", because the name then suggests a
character of great endurance.

Second, there has to be a choice made between exact transliteration of
spelling versus pronunciation. For example, the word "caesar" is in a
few names of Masterforce and Victory characters. Caesar is the true
translation of the word, but in Japanese the word can be pronounced as
in English, or as "kaiser". (Kaiser is a german word for "king" which
came from the latin name Caesar. Its meaning in Japan is not "king",
but represents power or strength.) People generally spell the names
whichever way they prefer, because both are "correct". I have decided
to try to favor spelling over pronunciation, simply because I'm writing
them and that is the way the names are "written". The fact that they
can be said differently isn't my problem, but one of our language (like
the words through, though, and tough, all of which give a different
sound to the "ough"). The least confusing thing would be for me to
mention both every time, but that seems like a waste of space to me, and
that is why I've chosen one. Anyone who notices me being inconsistent
on this matter should mention it to me.

Lastly, concerning planet names... In Japanese, the suffix "-sei" means
literally "-star" but is also used to indicate a planet's name. For
example, in TF:Victory the Cybertron's live on "V-sei", which means
"Planet V". Hence, "Masutaa-sei" actually means "Planet Master".
However, since "MasterStar" sounds cool, isn't technically incorrect,
and is a bit of an established word in the TransFan community, I have
opted to call it that.

Behavior of newbies and regulars on att:

Although for the most part people on alt.toys.transformers treat each
other with respect, there have been at times criticisms made by both
regulars and by newbies about the behavior of the "other side". In an
effort to smooth things over and hopefully make the situation more
comfortable, I feel it may be helpful to offer a little advice.

For people new to the net, or new to att:

It's almost always a good idea to lurk on a newsgroup for a while before
starting to make posts. The time that you spend lurking could be
months, or only days. Many people simply lurk forever, and never make
any posts at all. On all newsgroups, it is important to get an idea of
what sort of things the group talks about, the manner in which they
communicate with each other, and what they consider worthwhile, before
making a potentially "rude" posting.

Do not quote large sections of text, especially if you are only going to
make one or two lines of commentary at the bottom. DO NOT WRITE IN ALL
CAPS OR MAKE BAD ENGLISH, OR SPELL BADLY, OR IGNORE PUNCTION IT MAKES
YOU'RE POST HARD TO READAND MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID. If you don't want to
bother with hitting the shift key, all little letters are much easier to
read than all big ones. That, and when you write in all caps it's
considered "shouting", which isn't very polite.

If you have something to say that you think some of us might like to
see, don't feel reluctant to make a post about it. Flaming on att is
minimal, and usually tame. If we don't care, we just won't read it. On
the other hand, don't waste bandwidth by making multiple pointless
posts. Just because you don't see a post you made appear on the list
right away doesn't mean that it didn't work. Don't resend it or you'll
just annoy other readers when they have to wade through 5 copies of the
same thing. Read the FAQ. :) If people don't like what you have to
say, and say so, it doesn't mean that they don't like you. They aren't
necessarily trying to be mean to you, even if it feels like they are.

Above all, be considerate of others. Don't annoy them, don't waste
space, and don't be afraid to speak up if you have something to say.

For established att regulars:

Every once in a while a relatively new att reader will mention the cold
welcome they received when first starting to post. When this happens,
he is often followed up by a few others saying that they experienced the
same thing. It's a sad thought that a group of people who have gathered
together to talk about something they love can exclude and intimidate
others with the same love. When somebody says something you think is
stupid, don't followup by calling them stupid. It's more likely that
they're just uninformed, and it's our duty as regulars to help them out.
Be courteous; don't belittle or mock new posters or even other regulars.

While its true that many us have established friendships and, to some
extent, even cliques on att, it's a terrible mistake to only listen to
the people we know, or to quickly dismiss what new posters tell us.
Rather than ignoring or flaming a clueless newbie, send them an email to
try to fill them in. Have them find a copy of the FAQ. Give them a
chance to show you that they have something to contribute.

Above all, be considerate of others. Listen to what newbies have to
say, help them out, treat them with respect, and make them feel welcome
to be a part of our community.

== XIV. Silly Random Questions ========

"Just how many times is my name in the FAQ?"
--Kendrick's first words to me when we met at BotCon 96

Not including this question, or repeated instances of the name in one area,
KKC (or his email address) is mentioned 11 times in this version of the FAQ.

== XV. Revision History and Plans for the Future

When I first got on the net, there was already a TF FAQ. It was
relatively short, and only partially informative, and had things in it that
were better left to other documents (like how to use ftp). It had been some
time since it was updated. Copies of this FAQ may still be floating around.
After someone started a message thread in late 1994 entitled "TF FAQ sucks!",
I thought it might be time for someone to actually take the initiative and
write up a new one. I didn't keep good track of revision dates at first, but
I plan to keep all the old versions from here on out. Hence, there are no
dates for the first few revisions.

v1.0 - everything new
v2.0 - more complete MUSH info
- quote list info
- info on RoboMACs, a TF-compatible rpg system
- now have complete and correct info on Japanese TF cartoon
- added more voice actor info
- list of gestalt components and list of tapes
- discussion of comic writing/art staff
- explanation of Soundwave's voice in the cartoon
- editing, grammar correction, etc.
v2.1 - transforming sound spelling
- misc. little changes
v2.2 - email address changes for a few people
- tiny revisions to voice list and Japanese cartoon section
- two or three new WWW pages listed
v3.0 - completed 2/6/96
- explanation of the switches on Jumpstarter's heads
- additional TF Movie laserdisc info
- email address corrections, WWW page additions, etc.
- rearranged order of some sections
- added an "About the Author" section for my own ego
- "can I post binaries here?" answered
- TF:The Dream added to MUSH list
- voice list responsibility transferred to Cris Haaser
- brief list of TF deaths in the movie
- list of starring voice roles in the movie
- figured out what the heck budding is!
- got info on foreign toys
- added a list of what not to post about (!)
v3.1 - completed 2/18/96
- a few random corrections and updates
- got the last Find Your Fate title
- added more toy list and UK comic information
v4.0 - completed 8/11/96
- a good number of minor corrections and additions
- books sent to separate file
- addition of non-US section
- news from BotCon '96
- tf battlecards
- increased number of columns to reduce number of lines
- rearranged, split, and combined some questions and sections
- Skyfire toy debunked
- Unicron toy described
- finally gave BW some respect :)
- more complete WWW page list
- added the "closing comments" section
- expanded movie edits / cuts to several more specific questions
- detailed info on "who is Cyclonus?"
v4.1 - completed 9/1/96
- updated some MUSH info
- realized a Fanzine list already existed
- removed a reference to Kendrick (gasp!)
- extra Battlestars and Zone info
- BotCon '97 announcement
- more web sites, fewer typos

== XVI. About the Author ==============

As mentioned at the top of this document, my name is Steve Stonebraker.
At the time of this version's completion, I am 20 years old, and just
ending the summer before my junior year as an astronomy and physics
major at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio. My birthday is the
first of April. I have a WWW page, but there isn't a lot on it yet.
Soon, I hope to have a fully HTML-ized version of the FAQ there. (My
tests with v3.1 were very promising.)

Aside from Transformers and physics, I also am interested in computers,
video games, dinosaurs, comic books, and Magic: The Gathering. I am
single and looking. ;) I listen to a wide variety of music, ranging
from Vivaldi to the Lords of Acid, but the Indigo Girls are my favorite.

The one book I would recommend to anyone on Earth is _Ishmael_ by Daniel
Quinn. Basically, it explains the mistakes that our civilization is
making, and why we are making them. Reading it will open your eyes, and
could change your life. I'm not kidding.

I can sometimes be found under the name Astos (the dark elf from the
original Final Fantasy, and an old D&D character of mine) on Foothills
or Resort, two EW-Too based Talkers at "toybox.infomagic.com 2010" and
"evans.denver.colorado.edu 2323" respectively.

== XVII. Legalese and Special Thanks ==

Initial thanks go to the previous FAQ author, who posted under the name
"Max Sterling". To my knowledge he no longer exists on the net, but I
thought it only proper to thank him anyway. Although this FAQ is my own
work, parts of his FAQ (questions, answers, ideas) have been included in
this one, and without some sort of previous reference I'm sure my job
would have been a lot harder.

Many sincere thanks go to (in alphabetical order):

Aaron Marsh (abm...@vaxb.isc.rit.edu)
Acroyear (acro...@bgbbs.com)
Adam Calderon (hi...@lmtonline.com)
Adam McCormick (adam.mc...@sheridanc.on.ca)
Adam Patyk (paty...@pilot.msu.edu)
Alf (a...@loom.com.au)
Andrew Frankel (afra...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu)
Andrew Southam (or...@voicenet.com)
Ben Thomas (bith...@eos.ncsu.edu)
Ben Yee (ye...@is2.nyu.edu)
Burt Ward (bea...@cris.com)
Chip (chi...@aol.com)
Chris Burris (bur...@lib.wfunet.wfu.edu)
Chris Meadows (chm...@nic.smsu.edu)
Christopher Rodkey (rod...@acad1.stvincent.edu)
C.J. Stankiewicz (cjs6...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu)
Clay Wooffinden (wo...@uniserve.com)
Craig Reid (crt...@cet.com)
Cris Haaser (cri...@owlnet.rice.edu)
Dairenn Lombard (pi...@hondo.cyberverse.com)
Daniel Chlebowczyk (fus...@bssc.edu.au)
Daniel P. Foerst (dde...@iglou.iglou.com)
Daniel Weber (djw...@mit.edu)
Darren "Dirge" Murphy (dj...@uow.edu.au)
Dave Van Domelen (dva...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
David Filip (grim...@u.washington.edu)
David Kok (jer...@alphalink.com.au)
David Mackay (david....@almac.co.uk)
Dawn M. Reeder (ast...@cris.com)
Diana Calder (dca...@mnsi.net)
Doug Dlin
Doug Muth (dm...@oasis.ot.com)
Doug Vanderhoek (dvh_...@iastate.edu)
Drogn (merr...@sover.net)
Earlwin (75557...@compuserve.com)
Eric Harding (ome...@oz.net)
Eric Holmes (er...@aisb.ed.ac.uk)
Galvatron (jm...@columbia.edu)
Greg Pallenik (gpa...@bgnet.bgsu.edu)
Hex (tash...@ucunix.san.uc.edu)
Iggy Drougge (opt...@canit.se)
Imperator Mammuthus (por...@ois.com.au)
Ivy Bohnlein (bohn...@acmelabs.uhc.asu.edu)
Jack Themack (jack.t...@juno.com)
Jameel al Khafiz (spe...@dhp.com)
James Mohr (jpm...@primenet.com)
Jan van Thiel (j...@stack.urc.tue.nl)
Jason Carl Flatowicz (0020...@bigred.unl.edu)
Jason Palmira (lpr...@aol.com)
Jason Winter (win...@uslink.net)
Jedi Knight (bloo...@bucknell.edu)
Jeff Bogumil (nc50...@nccvax.wvnet.edu)
Jeffery K Nichols (cuj...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu)
Jeremy Pace (jhp...@eos.ncsu.edu)
Jim Hoxsey (jjho...@oakland.edu)
Jon Hartman (jhar...@noblecan.org)
John Kierstead (jkier...@aol.com)
John Szymanski (szym...@ccmac.canisius.edu)
Jon A. Wolf (jnc...@ix10.ix.netcom.com)
Kendrick (kend...@io.com)
Kev Briggs (kr...@leicester.ac.uk)
Kevin Byrnes (theb...@ix.netcom.com)
Kirt Israel (kis...@diamond.tufts.edu)
Ku Klux Flintstone (umki...@cc.umanitoba.ca)
Koopman (koo...@wantree.com.au)
Larry Suchomski (t...@icx.net)
Liane Elliot (te...@eskimo.com)
Lou Calabrese (lo...@delphi.com)
Louis Brooks (broo...@bentley.edu)
M Sipher (msi...@nando.net)
Marek Kozubal (prog...@max.tiac.net)
Martin McVay (ma...@csv.warwick.ac.uk)
Matt Arndt (ar...@lclark.edu)
Matthew French (mnf8...@marauder.millersv.edu)
Matthew Karpowich (hype...@kuentos.guam.net)
Michael G Wagner (tfw...@prodigy.com)
Mike Sosa (ms...@ace.cs.ohiou.edu)
Mike Toole (sla...@student.umass.edu)
Mischa Gelman (megs...@pitt.edu)
Naomi Novik (sha...@brown.edu)
Nick Morency (then...@acy.digex.net)
PaliXade (Gabrie...@eyenet.eybe.edu.on.ca)
Pema Galang (pema.t....@tc.umn.edu)
Peter Looyenga
Phil Zeman (2ei5z...@vmsa.csd.mu.edu)
Raksha (jk...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
Ratbat (u96...@student.canberra.edu.au)
Robert Jung (rj...@netcom.com)
Robert Powers (repo...@artsci.wustl.edu)
Rodney Lambs (rla...@gl.umbc.edu)
Roger Wilcox (rog...@cisco.com)
Sarai Feria (10313...@compuserve.com)
Scott Neukam (sco...@viaduct.custom.net)
Sean Holshu (sp...@cannet.com)
Stanley Lui (ss...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
Starzeke (star...@aol.com)
Steve Nahra (rsn...@vax1.acs.jmu.edu)
Suzanne Ferree (ev...@cleveland.freenet.edu)
Thaddeus Cultt (tcu...@localnet.com)
Tigeriffic (ti...@telepath.com)
Tony Tran (tr...@owlnet.rice.edu)
Troy Ledgerwood (9948...@wsunix.wsu.edu)
Victor Desjardins (vde...@magmacom.com)
Walkertron (wil...@adsnet.com)
Warpticon (cmp...@ualr.edu)
Zachary Adams (zqa...@tamu.edu)
Zameer Baberhood (Zarina.F...@tc.umn.edu)
Zobovor (zobov...@aol.com)

All the wonderful staff members of the MUSHes :)

and all the readers of att!

The Transformers, Autobots, Decepticons, and most of the other names and
things are probably all registered trademarks of either Hasbro, Marvel,
Takara, or someone. This FAQ is simply a reference for Transformers
fans and is not intended to infringe upon any legal rights to the names
or ideas.

This FAQ, however, is my property. Anyone may distribute it to anyplace
they like or put it anywhere they like, in print or in electronic form,
provided that I retain all credit of authorship, that the contents are
not altered (except by my permission), and that no fee is charged except
to make up cost of duplication.

--
--Steve

-- Steve Stonebraker -- http://www.owu.edu/~srstoneb --
-- alt.toys.transformers FAQ Keeper --

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***alt.toys.transformers FAQ v4.1***

Steve R. Stonebraker

alt.toys.transformers FAQ v4.1