Interview with Darren Jamieson – Writer of The Beast Within!

by wadapan

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the most infamous Transformers comic of all time. In anticipation, I sat down for a conversation with Darren Jamieson—the mastermind behind The Beast Within.

Dream(wave) Interpretations: A Retrospective

by Prime Radiant & TFWiki Discord Comic Book Club

For the past three months, members of the TFWiki Discord have been revisiting Dreamwave’s comics, hoping to answer the question: is there any reason to read this infamous publisher’s stories, two decades on?

IDW… 2! The Review

by wadapan

With the recent release of Fate of Cybertron, the concluding one-shot for the 2019-2022 Transformers ongoing, I thought I’d take the time to revisit my old, old review of Transformers #1 and see how things shook out.

Piecing Shattered Glass Together

by wadapan

With the recent release of the new Shattered Glass toyline from Hasbro Pulse, and the accompanying comic series from IDW, the franchise has overnight gone from convoluted obscurity to being basically as accessible as any other Transformers series. We’re a long way from having evil doppelgangers for every single G1 character evaaaarr, but it’s now surprisingly viable to piece together the main cast for the old Fun Publications stories solely using mass-market toys! So here’s everything you didn’t think you needed to know about the Transformers mirrorverse.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Problems in Disguise: The Weird History of Licensed (and Unlicensed) Cars in Transformers

by Fear or Courage

This is a Volkswagon Beetle. Even if you’re not a car person (and I’m certainly not), you probably know it, because it’s one of the most recognizable cars ever.

Re:Generations, Part 4: Ultimate Universe

by wadapan

Looking at the development of Transformers over the course of the 2000s, it’s easy to imagine an alternate universe where the franchise had continued to iterate on the cast of the Unicron trilogy, rather than becoming mired in “Generation 1” nostalgia. After the release of the first live-action Transformers movie in 2007, however, this evolutionary pathway was closed off forever…

War for Cybertron Trilogy SPOILER PACK Unboxing 3: The Crystal Skull of Kingdom

Hi! I’m Gherkin, this is another unboxing, and in regards to both of those things, you know the dill by now. With my foot firmly jammed in the door of legitimacy, I’ve once again coerced the TFWiki Community into letting me write up the lowdown on the latest War for Cybertron Trilogy “Spoiler Pack”. For your entertainment this evening, I introduce you to articles one and two; feel free to make yourselves familiar.

Things are slightly different this time around: firstly, Hasbro has remembered that they have a market in the UK (or Britain at least, sorry Northern Ireland!), meaning that, not only has this set arrived chez Gherkin when it actually came out, we’re also in advance of the corresponding cartoon debuting on Netflix! Secondly, I’m told that the toys inside spoil the show more than the previous two spoiler packs did, so it’s not just the coded Cybertronian messages you need to worry about. So beware of SPOILERS AHEAD for the War for Cybertron Trilogy: Kingdom cartoon as we take a look at a Leader Unboxing toy for the third and maybe final (or should that be vine-al?) time. Roar!

Re:Generations, Part 3: Redundancy

by wadapan

Last time, we looked at Hasbro’s attempts to smuggle nostalgia into many of their mass-retail mainlines. Although Classics was the first serious attempt at a direct “reboot” of the so-called Generation 1 series for that market, similar efforts were made around the same time in a variety of lines aimed directly at collectors. Easily the most well-known of these is Takara’s Masterpiece series, which continues to this day, but contemporary lines like Alternators and Titanium Series played a huge part in the collecting landscape at the time…

Re:Generations, Part 2: Things That Aren’t G1

by wadapan

In this age of perpetual reboots, it’s often entertaining to see news outlets cover Hasbro’s new toylines by declaring that Transformers has “finally” returned—as if it ever really went anywhere. The truth is that nostalgia has played a huge part in the franchise since its earliest years, before the-line-that-we-now-call-Generation-1 was even over, reaching fever pitch during the experimental phase that was the Beast Era, and ultimately (for many fans) finding long-term satisfaction in the form of Generations. We’ve already laid the foundations with two of the biggest benchmarks—Armada and Classics—but the years between the first animated movie and the first live-action movie played host to dozens of toylines, each with their own callbacks…

Re:Generations, Part 1: Modern Classics

by wadapan

This year, Hasbro’s longest-running Transformers toyline turns fifteen years old. Kind of. Over the course of several monthly articles, I’m going to be delving back into the history of Generations through a modern lens, exploring the line’s influence on fiction (and vice versa), the shifts in its design philosophy, and the little connections across the various lines. This time, we’ll be looking at the series that started it all: Classics.