It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since the first season of the Transformers Generation 1 cartoon was on the airwaves in the USA, but that milestone is this year, and that means it’s time to break out some DVDs.

In 1984, the Hasbro toy company wanted to continue the success they had just had with the G.I. Joe toy line relaunch, and were looking for something else they could easily market with a cartoon tie-in.  They found the Diaclone toy line in Japan which consisted of robots turning into ordinary vehicles, and the rest was toy and cartoon history.

The Diaclone line had been popular in Japan, but they were fairly generic toys with no names for the majority of them, and no back story of how they all tied in to one another.  All of that was created here in the United States, and for some reason the resulting cartoon struck a chord with kids of the mid-1980’s that finds many of them continuing their love affair with the license to this day.

There aren’t many toy lines that can say they have been consistently on the shelves for 25 years, and have gone on to inspire two blockbuster live action movies.  The first Transformers movie, directed by Michael Bay, was released in the summer of 2007, and the second film, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is due out this June in theaters everywhere.  While it has been cool to see some of the beloved characters in real world settings, many fans, myself included, have been annoyed at some of the changes that have been made to what we remember as children.  Luckily there is a new DVD set ready to hit store shelves on June 16th that will let us relive some of what we remember from our childhood.

This isn’t the first time the first season of Transformers Generation 1 has been available on DVD, but after Rhino lost the license some years back to continue production, copies of those sets shot up in value to over $200.  This new set contains the entire first season, a disc of bonus materials, a collection of rare public service announcements and even some of the original toy commercials.  This is going to be a must have for the older fans who remember the show, and the newer ones who want to see how the whole craze got its start.

The set has a suggested retail price of $29.99, but can be found for as low as $19.99.  I’ve already pre-ordered my copy!

Entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 10:09 pm under DVDs, Movies, Toys.  Print This Post