Launched in 1984, the Transformers toyline by Takara Tomy and Hasbro was promoted through both a comic book by Marvel Comics and an animated series produced by Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions with Toei Animation. Although the comic outlived the animated series by a number of years, the animated series is more widely recognised. With the original show's conclusion in 1987, original series exclusive to Japan were created which ran until 1990, and the franchise was later re-imagined with the fully CGI Beast Wars in the late 1990s. The 21st century saw a total reboot of the Transformers universe (first being Takara's produced Car Robots, imported and retitled for Western release as Transformers: Robots in Disguise), as Hasbro collaborated with Japanese Transformers producers Takara to create a new storyline with Transformers: Armada and its sequels, produced in Japan and then dubbed for English-speaking audience. In 2008, Transformers Animated saw Hasbro take control of the franchise once more through collaboration with Cartoon Network, bringing writing duties back to America, with animation being handled by Japanese studios. Hasbro also reacquired the distribution rights to the original series from Sunbow finally giving them the complete rights to the series based on their Generation 1 toy-line.

Overview No. Title Episodes Originally released GoBots 1 Challenge of the GoBots 65 September 8, 1984December 13, 1985 Movie GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords March 21, 1986 Transformers: Generation 1 2 The Transformers 98 September 17, 1984November 11, 1987Movie The Transformers: The Movie August 8, 1986 3 Transformers: The Headmasters 35 July 3, 1987March 25, 1988 4 Transformers: Super-God Masterforce 42 April 12, 1988March 7, 1989 5 Transformers: Victory 44 March 14, 1989December 19, 1989OVA Transformers: Zone – July 21, 1990 6 Transformers: Generation 2 52 August 20, 1993September 23, 1993 Beast Era 7 Beast Wars: Transformers 52 September 16, 1996May 7, 1999 8 Beast Wars II 43 April 1, 1998January 27, 1999Movie Beast Wars II: Lio Convoy's Close Call! – December 19, 1998 9 Beast Wars Neo 35 February 3, 1999September 29, 1999 10 Beast Machines 26 September 18, 1999November 18, 2000 11 Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2000) 39 April 5, 2000December 27, 2000 Unicron Trilogy 12 Transformers: Armada 52 August 23, 2002December 26, 2003 13 Transformers: Energon 51 January 9, 2004December 24, 2004 14 Transformers: Cybertron 52 January 8, 2005December 31, 2005 15 Transformers: Animated 42 December 26, 2007May 23, 2009 16 Transformers: Cyber Missions 13 January 21, 2010September 29, 2010 Aligned Continuity 17 Transformers: Prime 65 November 29, 2010July 26, 2013 18 Transformers: Rescue Bots 104 February 18, 2012October 22, 2016OVAs Transformers Go! 10 July 1, 2013April 1, 2014Movie Transformers Prime Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising – October 4, 2013 19 Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) 71 March 14, 2015November 11, 2017 20 Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy 104 January 5, 2019June 5, 2021 Mystery of Convoy 21 Q Transformers: Mystery of Convoy Returns 13 January 6, 2015March 31, 2015 22 Q Transformers: The Road to Additional Popularity 13July 6, 2015October 1, 2015 Prime Wars Trilogy 23 Transformers: Combiner Wars 8 August 2, 2016September 20, 2016 24 Transformers: Titans Return 10 November 14, 2017January 9, 2018 25 Transformers: Power of the Primes 10 May 1, 2018July 3, 2018 26 Transformers: Cyberverse 64 August 27, 2018December 22, 2021 27 War for Cybertron Trilogy 18 July 30, 2020July 29, 2021 28 Transformers: BotBots 10 March 25, 2022 29 Transformers: EarthSpark 46 November 11, 2022 December 5, 2025 30 Transformers: Wild King 17 March 26, 2025present 31 Transformers: Cyberworld 19 July 12, 2025presentTotal 1306 September 8, 1984present

Gobots

Although initially a separate and competing franchise in 1984, Tonka's Gobots became the intellectual property of Hasbro after their buyout of Tonka in 1991. Subsequently, the universe depicted in the animated series and its follow-up film was established as an alternate universe within the Transformers Multiverse.

Transformers: Generation 1 The term "Generation 1", or "G1", is a retronym, coined after the advent of 1992's Transformers: Generation 2. Although frequently used to simply refer to the original 1984–1991 Marvel comic series, 1984–1987 animated series, the term encompasses all Transformers fiction from 1984 to 1992. SeriesSeasonEpisodesFirst airedLast airedNetworkStatus The Transformers 1 16 Syndication Released 2 49 3 30 4 3 Transformers: The Headmasters 5 35 Nippon TV (Japan) Transformers: Super-God Masterforce 6 42 Transformers: Victory 7 38 Transformers: Zone SP 1 OVA

The Transformers

After the Federal Communications Commission did away with regulations that prohibited toy companies from broadcasting cartoons based on their products in 1985, The Transformers began with a three-episode miniseries that introduced audiences to Optimus Prime, Megatron and their armies, as they travelled from the metal world of Cybertron to Earth in search of new sources of energy. The final episode ended on an open note, should the series prove popular enough to continue, which it did. A standard season's worth of 13 more episodes was commissioned, expanding the Transformers universe in which the Dinobots, Constructicons and Jetfire (later called Skyfire) made their debut. With popularity rising, the second season soon followed in 1986 at a mammoth 49 episodes (in order to bring the total up to 65, for syndication). Dozens of new characters were introduced throughout the season, including the Triple Changers, the combining teams the Aerialbots, Stunticons, Combaticons and Protectobots, and more new Autobot cars and Decepticon planes, while many new ideas and concepts began to establish the history of the Transformers universe.

These 65 episodes were exported to Japan in the same year, where their airing order was rearranged and the series was broadcast under the title of Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers. An OVA exclusive to Japan entitled Scramble City was released which cast focus on the combining teams and introduced Ultra Magnus, Metroplex, Ratbat, Trypticon, and Blaster's cassettes. This video does not perfectly fit into the continuity of the American series due to its different origin story for Trypticon (known as Dinosaurer in the Japanese version).

1986 marked a huge change for The Transformers with the summer screening of The Transformers: The Movie, which jumped the action forward in time twenty years to the then-future of 2005 and pitted both the Autobots and Decepticons against the menace of the planet-eating robot Unicron. Optimus Prime is killed by Megatron, with Ultra Magnus briefly replacing him as a leader before being succeeded by Rodimus Prime. Megatron himself is recreated by Unicron as Galvatron. Many more of the old guard Transformers were killed, coinciding with their toys leaving store shelves to make room for a new cast of characters created for the film.

1986 also saw the start of the third season of the animated series, which took its cue from the film. The season picking up precisely where it had left off with Rodimus in command and the Decepticons in exile with Galvatron missing. The season opened with a five-part miniseries entitled Five Faces of Darkness which saw Galvatron return and brought to prominence the Quintessons, multi-faced aliens introduced in the film who are revealed to be the creators of the Transformer race, and became a recurring third factor as the season continued through its setting of 2006. The addition of Flint Dille as story editor gave a strong sci-fi aspect to the season as the Transformers' battles spanned many alien planets, while continuity between episode was tighter than ever before as plot concepts were revisited and expanded to flesh out the show's history. Running to 30 episodes, the third season ended with the two-part The Return of Optimus Prime, bringing the legendary Autobot leader back to life. Broadcast in Japan once again, the series was retitled Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: 2010 (or Transformers: 2010 for short), advancing its setting to the eponymous year.

1987 marked the end of the original American series, mirroring its beginning with a three-part miniseries entitled The Rebirth. Penned by regular series writer David Wise (who had previously written several of the series' mythology-building episodes), this finale story introduced the Headmasters and Targetmasters, as well as several other characters. Concluding with the restoration of Cybertron's Golden Age, the Decepticons stole the final scene of the series to prove that their threat still lingered. It is unknown the exact reason the American series ended after the film, though it is assumed that Sunbow had lost its contract to keep its cartoons running by 1987 (the final Transformers episode "The Rebirth" coincided with the final G.I. Joe episode G.I. Joe: The Movie).

Additionally, a fifth season of sorts was aired in 1988, serving as a kind of "best of" collection of the series. The most notable feature of this twenty-episode run was the new intro and concluding segments added to the episodes, which consisted of Powermaster Optimus Prime (rendered in a mixture of puppetry and stop motion animation) relating the events of the episodes to a human boy named Tommy Kennedy. The opening sequence comprised animation taken from contemporary toy adverts, and Prime occasionally referred to new toy characters like Cloudburst. Apparently never re-run after its original airing, the series aired More Than Meets the Eye Parts 1-3, Five Faces of Darkness Parts 1-5, Dark Awakening, the out-of-place Surprise Party, The Return of Optimus Prime Parts 1-2, The Rebirth Parts 1-3, and most notably, The Transformers: The Movie, split up and aired in five segments, with Stan Bush's music video for "The Touch" included in the final part.

Transformers: The Headmasters

Rather than import The Rebirth as a conclusion, Takara, the Japanese producers of the Transformers toyline, opted instead to continue the Generation 1 universe by creating the full-length 35-episode series, Transformers: The Headmasters (two additional clips episodes were produced after the fact for direct-to-video release). Supplanting The Rebirths position in Japanese continuity, The Headmasters occurred one year after The Return of Optimus Prime, introducing the title characters to the Transformers universe in a different way. Whereas in western fiction, the Headmasters result from the merging of a Transformer with an organic alien being from the planet Nebulos, the Headmasters of the Japanese series are a group of small Cybertronians who departed the planet millions of years ago and crash landed on the inhospitable planet Master. To survive its harsh climate, a select few of the most-highly trained constructed larger bodies called "Transtectors," to which they connected as heads.

When a group of rebellious Headmasters led by Zarak join with Galvatron's Decepticons in an attack on Cybertron, the Autobot Headmasters, led by Fortress return to their home planet to aid in its defense. Vector Sigma, the mega-computer at the planet's heart, begins destabilizing, resulting in Optimus Prime sacrificing himself to save Cybertron. However, a bomb attack instigated by Zarak turns Cybertron into a burnt-out, inhospitable husk. Rodimus Prime departs to search for a new planet for the Transformers to live on, leaving Fortress in command, operating from the planet Athenia. Meanwhile, Zarak replaces Galvatron - who had vanished in the explosion - as Decepticon leader, constructing a personal Transtector so that he can battle Fortress's own giant form, Fortress Maximus, and redubbing himself Scorponok.