Transformers

The Transformers 

In the mid 80s Transformers came about. The series, which still today is alive and popular, emerged a franchise that revolves around the lives of two gangs of metalic aliens from planet Cybertron. These are the Autobots and Decepticons, who happen to be in the middle of a war waged for long, and because of that, the two groups find themselves in an everlasting search for resources, basically energon, their sustenance, which Transformers can obtain by processing diverse sources of energy. This forage of theirs ends up taking them to planet Earth. At least that's what the story line says.

Most of the Transformers are humanised characters, though some of them, like the Decepticons Laserbeak and Ravage, have the forms of animals.

All of the Transformers are able to shift shape into something else, and though the greater part of Autobots and Decepticons become vehicles, some of them turn to every day objects, such as cassette recorders, lamposts or microscopes. Yet, whatever they change to, the key thing about these natives of Cybertron is they all do change. There, their name Transformers. 

The initial Transformers TV show, then known as The Transformers, now also known as the First Generation, has spun off into countless movies and TV productions, which have taken the old and new characters alike, not just to Earth, but through time and space, as in the Cyberverse and Multiverse series.

Originally a Hasbro-Takara franchise, Transformers was part of the licensed properties boom that changed the way in which TV animation was delivered to consumers before the mid 80s. The show followed the release of GoBots, a Tonka licensed property franchise about two warring parties of metal based ETs that transformed into vehicles, which launched on September 8th 1984, by just a few days. Transformers launched on September 17th to earn the world's favour. The GoBots popularity would decline.

Transformers was an instant hit, it had greater acceptance than its forerunner GoBots. But that, of licensed properties, of Transformers becoming more popular than its predecessor and of Hasbro buying Tonka in 1991, that is another story.