Transformers

Picture the scene. A school assembly circa 1986. One sentence is whispered across the hall.

“Megatron is dead.”

No.

You are joking.

But how? He’s too powerful! It CAN’T be true.

But it was true. Megatron, evil leader of the Decepticons, had finally been defeated by his nemesis Optimus Prime.*

In the world of Transformers, this was like JR getting shot, Dirty Den divorcing Angie or Simon Groom leaving Blue Peter. In other words, it was MASSIVE.

Remember the boardroom scene in Big when Tom Hanks comes up with the idea of a robot that turns into a giant bug? Somewhere, sometime in the Eighties, in some Hasbro office in California, that happened for real. Some genius came up with an idea so devastatingly simple, it changed toys forever:

Kids like robots. Kids like cars. SO WHAT ABOUT A ROBOT THAT IS ALSO A CAR?

It’s probably the best idea of all time. Better than the egg cup, better than chocolate covered pretzels and much better than boring rubbish like Action Man (not a robot, couldn’t change into a car) and Star Wars figures. (Some robots, no cars).

And so in 1984 Transformers were born. Plastic cars that with a flick of the thumb would become robotic warriors from the planet Cybertron. What kid wouldn’t want to play with that? Okay, so while the vehicles looked alright, you’d usually end up with a slightly dodgy looking robot with a tyre for a head and a hubcab for an arm. That didn’t matter though. The sheer concept of a robot that was also a car was so brilliant that it was hard to believe such a thing could really exist.

But now they did exist and you could buy them for less than a tenner.

While Megatron had by far the best name of all the Transformers, he had the worst transformation. He transformed into a gun. Bear in mind that Megatron could fire lasers out of his hands when in robot form, but he still chose to bizarrely transform into a gigantic Walther P38 pistol. (In the cartoon, the gun would magically shrink so one of the other transformers (who could also shoot lasers anyway!!!) could hold it.)

So basically Megatron was completely useless, but that didn’t matter cos as well as cars and robots, kids also liked playing with toy guns.

The Autobots had leader Optimus Prime, a big red truck, and his buddy Bumblebee, a little yellow Beetle. The Decepticons had Megatron of course, and others like StarScream (a jet) and Soundwave (a cassette tape (below). YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT - A CASSETTE TAPE. He wasn’t so fun to play with as the big gun). However, showing the popularity of the show still to this day, a few years ago Hasbro reissued Soundwave in an updated Mp3 player version!

The idea was that they could wage their war in secret by disguising themselves as ‘earth vehicles’. Except they were transforming pretty much all the time into giant massive robots and beating the crap out of each other.

Once the cartoon spin-off started on telly, Transformers was all anyone ever talked about ever. It was the only TV show ever where the opening titles seemed longer than the actual cartoon itself. In it, the robots constantly shot lasers at each other for a good two minutes while a scary robot sings the theme tune. It’s like a horrible Haribo-induced nightmare and must have terrified parents across the country.

Of course now, 25 odd years later, we have the big budget live action films that have already grossed 27 billion dollars, and a new load of Transformer toys.

It just goes to prove that good ideas last.

*Don’t panic robot fans – it turned out Megatron didn’t actually die, he was merely ‘upgraded’ into the equally evil Galvatron by the all-powerful Unicorn. Phew!

HE-MAN

He-Man was the perfect man – big muscles, tall and healthy with lovely long blond hair. That’s what every 80s schoolboy looked for in their heroes right? Oh, no sorry, that was Hitler.

(There’s an urban myth that He-Man started life as a toy-range spun off from the then forthcoming Conan the Barbarian film. When Conan turned out to be a violent 18 certificate, Mattel re-jigged the concept into kid friendly He-Man. With the toy moulds already cast, they simply changed the lead figure’s brown hair to blond. This at least goes someway in explaining He-Man’s revolting golden mullet.)

Masters of the Universe was basically a half hour commercial for the Mattel toy-line - rubbish animation and repetitive plots designed to trick kids into buying the plastic dolls like Ram-Man (whose special power was head butting things), MekaNeck (special power – extra long neck) and best of all Buzz-Off (special power – he was a bee).

Every episode began with Prince Adam, (AKA He-Man), explaining the premise of the show: Basically, he had been gifted magical powers by a woman dressed as a bird in order to defend a big castle that looked like a skeleton for his arch-enemy, Skeletor. (Why does He-Man’s house looked exactly like his worst enemy? If I was Skeletor, I’d take one look at Castle Grayskull and think I had a pretty good claim to it.)

He-Man made even less effort to hide his secret identity than Superman. I’m amazed no one on Eternia ever figured it out. Here are three tell-tale signs that He-Man is really cowardly Prince Adam.

1.Prince Adam looks exactly the same as He Man. At least Clark Kent had the decency to take his glasses off, Adam just whips off his shirt. Lazy.

(NOTE THE MOST CUNNING PART OF PRINCE ADAM'S DISGUISE HERE - HIS PENCHANT FOR PASTEL COLOURS - FURRY LILAC PANTS WITH A NATTY PINK WAISTCOAT - NO ONE WOULD SUSPECT HE-MAN OF EVER WEARING THESE CLOTHES)

2.Price Adam has a massive yellow and green striped pet tiger. He-Man has a massive yellow and green striped tiger. Just how many massive green and yellow striped tigers are there on Eternia? I never saw anyone else with one. At least when Cringer changed into Battlecat he bothered to put on a mask.

3.As explained in the intro, Adam has entrusted his true identity to just a few selected people – first, his mystical guide the Sorceress, then his trustworthy best friend Man-At-Arms. But why stop there? Why not let it slip to Orko, a bungling idiot-wizard from the planet Trolla? He sounds like the type to keep a secret. Good thinking He-Man.

Never the less, Skeletor remained clueless as to He-Man’s true identity. Maybe that was because Skeletor DIDN’T HAVE ANY EYES. Or really even a proper face for that matter.

One of the scariest children’s cartoon characters ever created (followed by Mumm-Ra the Ever Living and the gay skeleton out of SuperTed), Skeletor’s hooded skull-face was genuinely terrifying. Like He-Man, he surrounded himself with various hench-men such as the vaguely rude sounding Fisto, Stinkor and Fakor, and his horrifying face didn’t stop him having a girlfriend either – the glamorous Evil-Lyn. (He'd just broken up with Slightly-naughty-Janet).

Almost every single episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe featured Skeletor trying to capture Castle Grayskull and/or He-Man’s Power Sword. Then, at the end of every show, He-Man would pop up again to share a moral completely unrelated to the story, such as ‘don’t eat too many sweets’ or ‘be nice to your mum’. This was hard to take from a man in red furry pants who’d just spent the previous 25 minutes beating up a man with a terrible wasting disease.

He-Man was sadly cancelled after two series, and over the years various re-imaginings, including a live-action movie starring Dolph Lundgren in 1987, failed to capture the magic of the original.

But perhaps Masters of the Universe’s greatest legacy was the phenomenal rise of televised wrestling that followed its demise in the late 80s. He Man’s young audience found slightly more realistic successors in the equally muscle bound stars of WWF and Wrestlemania. And after all, if you shaved off a certain 80's wrestler's moustache at his peak, doesn’t he sort of remind you of someone…?