The Transformers franchise's unique history in animation and beyond

There's a new Transformers movie out this week — and it's something a little different. Transformers One is an animated adventure for the shape-changing robots and delves right back into their histories for a bit of an origin story, focusing on the relationship between younger versions of the heroic Optimus Prime and his nemesis Megatron.

But this is far from the only time that we've seen a slightly different corner of the knotty Transformers timeline. For as long as toy company Hasbro has been pitting Optimus and his Autobots against the villainous Decepticons, they have been a constant fixture on the big and small screens.

Of course, modern audiences will be most familiar with Transformers as a live-action cinema franchise, with six movies made since 2007, alongside a spin-off for Bumblebee. But Transformers One, directed by Toy Story 4 helmer Josh Cooley, goes back to the franchise's roots in animation.

These characters first arrived on our screens in 1984, with Hasbro once again working with Marvel — they'd collaborated on G.I. Joe previously — to promote their toy line with both a comic book series and a TV show. The show ran for four seasons over the next few years, introducing the Autobots and Decepticons to millions more potential toy buyers.

Read more: Transformers One: Subtle? No. Pure pop spectacle? You bet (The Telegraph)

In 1986, the characters made it to the big screen with The Transformers: The Movie — a formative film experience for many kids of the 80s. That movie paired regular Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen, who still voices Prime today, with a galaxy of big names. The cast included Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and none other than Citizen Kane filmmaker Orson Welles as the planet-sized bad guy Unicron.

This movie made the very bold decision to kill off Optimus Prime and other major heroes, for the decidedly un-bold reason that there was a whole new line of toys Hasbro wanted to flog. In cinematic terms, the movie was a disappointment at the box office and didn't exactly get critics excited. Now that its young fans have grown up, though, it has become something of a cult classic.

After retooling the original TV series to sell its "Generation 2" toys, Hasbro relaunched the Transformers in the middle of the 1990s with the fully-CGI Beast Wars series. With computer animation a hot topic following the release of Toy Story, this show was cutting-edge on a tech level.

But the real shot in the arm for Transformers was when Michael Bay's first live-action film arrived in 2007, turning these characters into bona fide blockbuster fodder. The film got decent reviews from critics but, more importantly, earned a colossal $710m (£543m) at the global box office.

Read more: Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for 'Transformers' spin-off 'Bumblebee' (Yahoo Entertainment)

Bay would go on to make four more Transformers movies, with two of them smashing the billion-dollar mark worldwide. It's fair to say that the critical response tailed off somewhat, even as the box office continued to grow. There was more acclaim for Travis Knight's delightful Bumblebee spin-off and, in 2023, Steven Caple Jr. took over for the Beast Wars-inspired sequel Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

During this time, Transformers has regularly popped up on the small screen in a variety of forms. As long as there are still kids around to watch television, there will still be toy companies using it to sell lumps of plastic to them.

In recent years, Netflix has been a key home for Transformers series, with the younger-skewing Transformers: BotBots landing on the platform. Meanwhile, Hasbro teamed with their big screen partner Paramount Pictures to make the series Transformers: EarthSpark for the streaming platform Paramount+. This series introduces Earth-born transformers called Terrans and follows the aftermath of the civil war between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Read more: Chris Hemsworth says Transformers One will show ‘different side’ of the robots (PA Media)

With so much continuity going on, it's easy to get lost. But the joy of all of the different Transformers strands is that, unlike the wide-ranging tendrils of the likes of Marvel and Star Wars, they don't require in-depth franchise knowledge. Ultimately, these shows and movies are designed so that young audiences think they look cool enough to ask their parents for the toys.

Transformers One has perhaps the starriest voice cast ever assembled for a Transformers project, with Chris Hemsworth voicing Optimus Prime. He's joined by the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Brian Tyree Henry, Jon Hamm, and Laurence Fishburne. Early reviews — to the tune of an 89% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes — suggest that this is one of the most satisfying Transformers outings ever made.

40 years after these massive machines first debuted on the small screen, audiences still can't get enough of the Transformers world. It's great for selling toys, obviously, but ultimately only a fool would deny the pleasure of watching giant robots fight each other. It doesn't have to always be clever; it's just cool.

Transformers One is in UK cinemas from 11 October.