Berserker

Hey gang! A quicker one this week. We’re going to talk about one of my favorite figures, TLK Berserker. Now, let’s just be very clear about one thing out of the gate. This figure is trash. It’s hot garbage. The panels on the arms aren’t even glued in. You can just remove them. There is almost literally zero alt mode integration, the entire Chevy Suburban or whatever the hell it is just curls up on the back, and what alt mode integration there is is actually screen inaccurate, because this is one of those fun movie character models that just cheats its way between one mode and the next.  To top it all off, the figure is oh my god ugly. All of these compromises don’t even result in something good looking. Yes the giant red x painted on the chest is accurate. But why would you do that? It’s horrible. As are the scourge style pink fingernails that go up to the second knuckle. Plus, on top of all that, it’s just Legally Distinct from the Predator ™. Which, like. Isn’t a bad look. But what? However, the sum totality results in something, like TLK Scorn, which I find morbidly fascinating. My mind just keeps being drawn to this figure, contemplating over and over again how horrible it was like your tongue going to where you lost a tooth.

But here’s the thing about Berserker. I love it. It’s genuinely a lot of fun to play with. Because it is just an action figure curled up in a car, it has a stunning range of articulation. It’s not necessarily the most poseable, but this is almost certainly the most articulated single figure I own, rivaling stuff that’s famously bendy like Studio Series 86 Hot Rod. Plus, I think the panel work on the alt mode is really cool. I like how thin it all is, and I like how it folds up into the back pack. It’s satisfying how close all the pieces are able to get to each other. Plus, the Chevy Suburban is a cool vehicle, particularly the black one with light bars like he turns into. It makes him feel like a movie prop for some generic government vehicle, something out of the Avengers or something, which, to my thinking, is really cool. This is a take perhaps unique to me, but I also really enjoy how hilariously small the Suburban is. It doesn’t scale with anything, and it’s really nice how it just kind of cleanly fits in your hand. All of that combined, and in particular because it’s not really hard to transform (for being entirely shell, it’s way less parts massagy than it has any right to be), this is one of the figures I mess with the most. It’s just enjoyable to play with. It also helps that I literally don’t care at all and if I damage it or it gets wear, whoops look at that. 

This brings me to my other point about Berserker. I’m perhaps the biggest Berserker apologist you’ll find out there. But I totally get why it shelfwarmed back in the day. 20 dollars is a lot for a meme garbage bot. I got mine on ebay for 10, which was a lot more attractive. 

But yeah, overall, what can I say? I like it a lot. If you have the chance to pick one up and fiddle with it, I’d recommend it, if either you don’t have to pay for it and can just handle one, or you find it really cheap. He makes a nice little desk bot. 

Generations Scourge

Generations Scourge is one of my favorite figures from the base Generations line. This was back in 2012 or so, when you could still name some G1 toy-only rando from the european line and they probably didn’t have a modern Generations toy. We were still surprised to see G1 figures in 2012, and we didn’t expect them to be perfect recreations of the cartoon model, although damn we’d complain when they weren’t. It was also towards the end of the perceived ‘value for money’ era, when plastics were solid and shiny, figures weighed as much as a Buick LeSabre and you got free admission to the movie theater and an ice cream cone with the price of a deluxe. 

Scourge benefits from being released at that particular moment in history. Taking a page from Classics, Scourge is an update of the G1 character. He doesn’t turn into the weird boat thing that Scourge had going on in the G1 cartoon. Instead, he turns into the only semi-realistic vehicle that could even approximate such a thing; a flying wing airplane based on a Boeing concept. Not only does this give Scourge an alt mode that’s spiritually similar to his G1 self, he manages to retain many features of his traditional character model in robot mode, particularly the large, batlike wings on his back. Moreover, it means that there exists a Transformer of a type of airplane that probably won’t be widespread for the next fifty years or so, which is amazing however you slice it. Not only is the alternate mode super cool for what it is, it’s also superbly well executed. As any fan of plane Transformers knows, getting one without a robot curled in the fetal position underneath the wings is a rare treat. Scourge manages to achieve an alternate mode that looks clean and aerodynamic from every angle, thanks to a bit of clever paneling and the way his legs form the cockpit. He can even recreate one of the more iconic animation errors of the G1 cartoon; his head is jointed so you can push it up in alternate mode, and have his head just hang out on the back of the plane. Just like the show! Can your Kingdom Scourge do that? No. It can’t. The one flaw of the alternate mode, if you can even call it that, is that if you don’t have the rear landing gear out, the vehicle mode can’t balance. It is, from an actual plane perspective, a pretty weird landing gear layout, but, and this is important: who cares? 

As much as I loath it from the bottom of my soul when people talk about the quality of Transformers plastic (It’s the same! It’s all the same! Has it ever broken in your hands? No? Then it’s not low quality!) Scourge’s is… nice. It’s shiny, it’s smooth, and the figure doesn’t really have any of the ‘this is now hollow to save weight’ that Combiner Wars stuff is notorious for. The figure feels solid in your hand and I gotta say it’s pretty nice. It’s reminiscent of nothing so much as Beast Wars, back when the direct approach was the best approach, huge tracts of unjointed, undetailed plastic and the oil crisis be damned.  

In robot mode, Scourge is posable and articulated, relatively free of kibble, and sports some nice details that homage the G1 design, like those gorgeous pink fingernails. Makes a body feel like they’re in some didactic horror movie about how vampires ignoring proper nail hygiene is the greatest danger to the continuity of good, Christian civilization and they’ve just met the serial killer. The painting, both on the aforementioned glorious nails and elsewhere, highlights some really nice sculpting on the figure and plays very nice as a color palette overall. The light piping is also highly functional and excellent. He’s also got two c-clip attaching guns that homage the G1 figure’s targetmaster release. These have some of my favorite weapon storage of all time; the plane wings open and the guns go inside the space freed up by the nature of flying wing designs, much as we will as passengers, if we’re fortunate to live long enough. My highest praise of the robot mode is that it’s simply fun to play with. 

Overall, Scourge oozes sophisticated design. The transformation is involved but enjoyable, the robot mode reuses parts from the plane in ways that are elegant and look clean in both forms, the paint is exquisite, and, though I’m loath to admit it, the plastic and solidity have an ineffable je ne sais quoi that make me almost sympathise with those who dislike CW. I like Scourge; it occurred at a funky, experimental moment in the history of Generations, and updating his alt mode to be a flying wing was a flash of insight that wouldn’t have happened in another line. It’s not a figure that could have existed at another time, and I’m damn glad it got to exist at that one. 

Review: AOE Scorn

AOE Scorn is a figure I really enjoy. The figure has a couple key things going for it. First and foremost, Scorn has really good aesthetics. Yes it’s one of the admittedly quite questionable AOE dinobots with that weird, unnecessarily complex jagged thing going on. Yes, it’s not accurate to the grey blur of a dinobot from the movie. Actually I’d argue that this is Scorn’s strongest point.I think the thing that most particularly demonstrates that is his headsculpt. Between the bright blue of his visor, the simplicity of the design, and the block coloration, it feels like something more out of Animated. Because of the liberties taken with the movie character model, we get this weird hybrid design. It has many of the features of AOE aesthetics such as the aforementioned jagged bits, knight features, and those fun little djinni booties all the Dinobots have, combined with the bright, vibrant colors and pseudo cell shading of the toyline. This ends with the figure feeling very cartoony, in its own way. While the sculpting of the figure actually does hew fairly closely to many of the details of Scorn’s movie character model, the figure has an ineffable je ne sais quoi in terms of proportions that makes it feel more like a stylized version of the character, especially in contrast with the later TLK figure, which looks like it hopped off the screen into a vat of red paint. 

I think Scorn’s other primary virtue is the elegance of the design. He’s got a bunch of great little details that make the dino mode feel just that little bit more full. In particular, I’m very fond of the little piece of plastic that forms the bottom of the spinosaurus’s throat, and the way his legs collapse from humanoid ones into something more digitigrade, but quite solid. 

Similarly, the figure is a joy to transform because of the engineering, particularly of the arms and waist (the leg ball joints on my copy have been weird and powdery since day one, but I always chalked that up to sitting unopened in the back of a Toys R Us for two years. I found the thing at retail in 2016, if you can believe it.) The arms remind me of Siege or Earthrise engineering, just years before that happened. It’s just some very nice, smooth pin joints, and I love them to death. The figure reuses robot mode parts to form the dinosaur mode in a way that is solid and looks good on both modes. For example, the middle toe of the dino mode feet is repurposed as the djinni bootie foot in robot mode.  I also love how the waist transforms; the way his little loincloth piece perfectly slots into place as the rest of the waist assembly rotates is simply delightful. All of this engineering conspires to create a robot mode without very much kibble, and a dino mode that’s remarkably clean, especially considering AOE aesthetics. 

Overall, scorn is definitely my favorite AOE figure. There’s a lot of really cool stuff going on with the engineering and the design. If you’ve got an opportunity to pick one up and see what it’s all about, I’d definitely recommend it. 

Gender in Beast Wars

In many ways, Beast Wars marked the introduction of the first truly prominent female characters in Transformers. Although Arcee was present for many storylines, as discussed in the previous article in this series, she was often passive and relegated to maternal roles. In contrast Blackarachnia and Airrazor frequently drove the plot, and had entire arcs dedicated to them and their development. However, not everything in Beast Wars is sunshine and roses. Although female characters were introduced, there were actually fewer of them than in G1, in part because Beast Wars simply had fewer characters overall. The designs of the characters, in particular Blackarachnia’s, are not notably more progressive than their G1 counterparts. Additionally, both Airrazor and Blackarachnia are involved in romantic relationships, and while that is not in and of itself an issue, Blackarachnia’s results in her entire personality changing. Beast Wars is, in many ways, an era of progress, but even as recently as 1996, there was an unfortunate amount of room for growth. 

Because there are so few female show characters in Beast Wars (toy characters is a bit of a separate issue, we’ll be leaving that aside per the scope outlined in the previous article), I will treat each of them individually and in depth. 

    Airrazor is, in many respects, one of the female transformers most palatable to modern sensibilities. She talks, she shoots bad guys, she drives the plot, and she was even the first female character to receive a toy designed from the beginning to be female! (Tantrum, Airrazor) It only took fourteen years! (Tantrum, Airrazor) Even more impressively, she is largely free of the burdens of many, many other female transformers. Her character model is slender, but not busty or particularly sexual. (Tantrum, Airrazor) Although, like Tigatron, she doesn’t show up as much as the core cast because she enjoys the isolation of the wilderness, she isn’t absent simply because, as a female character, she doesn’t matter at all. (Tantrum, Airrazor) (That being said, it’s still not amazing that one of two women on the show is given a plot reason to not be around). She does end up in a romantic relationship, but it’s not Arcee’s floating around the core cast because women have to be attached donchaknow. As mentioned earlier, she shares a great deal with Tigatron and the relationship makes sense. 

    The one thing that causes Airrazor to have a bit of weird drama is the fact that, in the Japanese dub of the show, the character was male. (Tantrum, Airrazor) Beast Wars was animated in the US, and so as the show went on and eventually it became clear that Airrazor and Tigatron were in a romantic relationship, the Japanese studio could no longer simply edit the dialogue to change things. (Tantrum, Airrazor) Remarkably, it looks like they managed to handle the issue with at least a modicum of sensitivity. From a question and answers page; ‘Question: “If Tigatron and Airazor are both boys, how come they were flirting when the Aliens abducted them?”

Answer: “Even among humans there are boys who both love (like) each other. In the case of Tigatron and Airazor, they had been fighting together for a long time and as their emotions increased, their friendship turned to feelings of love. ‘Transform’, indeed!”’ (Tantrum, Airrazor) 

    The issue here is not so much that the Beast Wars show itself handled this poorly. Rather, subsequent depictions of the character, most egregiously the Transformers: Legends manga, really, really did. (Tantrum, Airrazor) Similarly, depictions of the character as female in media such as the Beast Wars: Metals manga also tend to be a bit… anime-y…  As this article is primarily about the character’s depictions in Beast Wars, so we’re going to leave that pot of joy on the table for another day. 

    Airrazor is certainly one of the stronger female characters in Transformers; her model, the fact she received not one but two toys, her significant role in the Beast Wars cartoon, and the lack of anything remarkably or outstandingly sexist propel her to the top. As with Blackarachnia, some of the less savory parts of her character do have reasonable in-universe explanations. However, while it makes sense, for example, that Airrazor shows up less than the other Maximals, we should not ignore that it does tie into larger, societal trends of female characters being sidelined, and at least ask ourselves how these things relate. Still, Airrazor does an amazing job, even when compared with many subsequent, contemporary, and especially earlier characters. 

Blackarachnia, like Arcee, is one of the most commonly present female characters in Transformers. However, again like Arcee, this status comes with some baggage. Although Blackarachnia is one of the most visible and active female Transformers, her character model and her status as a femme fatal character result in frequent sexual/fanservice style depictions. Moreover, her relationship with Silverbolt dramatically alters her personality in her primary fictional appearance, the Beast Wars cartoon. 

Blackarachnia is that rarest of Transformers, an evil-aligned female character. In her capacity as one of the longest serving Predacons, Blackarachnia swindles, betrays, and attempts to murder almost every other character on the Beast Wars cartoon. (ItsWalky) She wants power and is willing to use any means to achieve that power. She frequently manipulates other predacons, particularly Quickstrike and Waspinator, to achieve her goals, and often spars with Tarantulas as each of them seeks to execute elaborate plans. (ItsWalky) Several pivotal arcs of the cartoon hinge on her actions, or indeed, have been largely or entirely orchestrated by her. (ItsWalky) In short, she displays almost literally infinitely more agency and personality than every pre-beastwars female transformer combined.  

Blackarachnia even received two toys! Although her first toy was a redeco of Tarantulas and therefore not particularly accurate to her much more curvaceous character model, this did make Blackarachnia the very first female transformer to receive a toy at general retail in the United States. (ItsWalky) Her second toy was noticeably more buxom, (and featured removable chest armor because uhhhhhh) but is also among the first handful of molds designed to be female characters. (ItsWalky) 

However, for all the records she manages to shatter, Blackarachnia is not free from the struggles that plagued her predecessors. Her character model is arguably quite sexualized, or at the very least lends itself readily to sexualization. Where most male Transformers tend to be quite blocky and robotic, Blackarachnia is extremely curvaceous and femenine. Notably, Blackarachnia manages to be even less subtle than the G1 fembots when it comes to cleavage. Where the G1 female characters had some vaguely vehicular bulge on their chest, Blackarachnia has clearly defined individual breasts.   Apparently the designer of the model was even taken to a strip club before completing her design. (ItsWalky) 

Blackarachnia’s relationship with Silverbot is also baggage laden. Let me begin this section by saying I have not seen Beast Wars in a long, long time. Claims in this section will be made, as much as humanly possible, only with information cited directly from the wiki. 

In many ways, Blackarachnia and Silverbolt have a pretty good relationship. To a greater or lesser extent, they seem to be mutually attracted to each other. Personally, I remember some of the flirting being cute. However, as the wiki notes, “Though attracted to the Fuzor, Blackarachnia was endlessly frustrated by his seemingly idiotic chivalry and need to treat her specially.” (ItsWalky)  This is a good segue to the parts of the relationship that haven’t aged as well. As the wiki notes, a great deal of their initial interaction is Silverbolt insisting Blackarachnia is a better person than she is;  “She is eventually won over when he keeps following her and telling her what she’s really like when she yells at him to go away” (Female Transformers). 

Of course, encouraging someone to be a better person is not a bad thing. However, considered in light of the fact that Silverbolt is essentially insisting that Blackarachnia does not, A, understand herself, and B, should change her entire personality, it ends up feeling pretty gross by today’s standards. This is especially true since Blackarachnia herself clearly enjoys who she is; “thinking that Optimus and Rhinox were planning to force her to remove the (predacon) shell, Blackarachnia decided to split” (ItsWalky). Blackarachnia takes the idea of removing the shell program that initially caused her to be a Predacon seriously enough to abandon her alliance with the Maximals over it. 

The shell program is eventually removed, and even at that point, Blackarachnia retains her autonomy, her ability to independently deal damage, and her nasty streak. For example, in the episode Master Blaster, after Blackarachnia and the Maximals have been captured, “Blackarachnia sneaks through the base, then leads Inferno away from the Maximals he’s supposed to be protecting and locks him outside so she can free her team (and blast Inferno with the autoguns).” (Tantrum, Master) In this respect things are much better than they easily could have been. As Blackarachnia herself notes, “Even if I’m good, I’m still bad.” (Tantrum, Crossing) 

Blackarachnia is, in almost every respect, a strange and murky mix of progress and the more traditional unfavorable depictions of female character in media directed at young boys. On the one hand, she exists at all, and is crucial to the plot. On the other hand, she falls pretty neatly into the femme fatal archetype (a discussion of which falls well outside of the scope of this article), and has her hyper-curvacious character model. While many of the stranger aspects of her character and storylines are the result of constraints that make sense (e.g. there’s a good guy team and a bad guy team, and if she’s going to switch teams she’s gotta be a better person and there has to be a reason), these things still are part of the larger social context in which the fiction occurs. Unfortunately, we live in a world where it is extremely common for the only female character to be extremely sexual, and where female characters often have their autonomy diminished, or change as people as a direct result of romantic relationships with male characters. Although Blackarachnia is not the most egregious offender in these categories, she is also hardly a shining beacon of progress. While many of Blackarachnia’s idiosyncrasies occur for reasonable in-universe reasons, it would be irresponsible to ignore the existence of these tropes, and to ask ourselves how she relates to them. However, we should also not lose sight of what she does well, and the fact that there is enough content here to have a meaningful conversion is a huge victory. 

         Works Cited

ItsWalky et al. “Blackarachnia (BW)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Blackarachnia_(BW) Accessed 8/30/2020 

Tantrum et al. “Master Blaster” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Master_Blaster Accessed 9/6/2020

Tantrum et al. “Crossing the Rubicon” TFwiki https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon Accessed 9/6/2020

Steve-O et al. “Female Transformers” TFwiki.  https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Female_Transformers Accessed 9/6/2020

Tantrum et al. “Airrazor (BW)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Airrazor Accessed 9/6/2020

Gender in G1

Hey gang!  This article will be the first in a series going through the history of female transformers. We’ll be talking about character designs, relevance to the plot, and toys to analyze the role of female characters and figures in our beloved franchise. We will first observe traits, and then conduct analysis. I’m going to start with Generation One and work our way through the history of the brand. 

    There’s been a trend, starting in the 2001 Botcon fiction with the Beast Wars basic figure Sonar, of retconning toy only characters that were not explicitly established to be men as women, especially through Ask Vector Prime and more obscure fiction like the comics.(Crockalley) While this reflects an admirable desire to increase representation, it says more about our values today than it does about the history of the brand and the development of female characters, while still being an important part of that story. As we shall see, the existence of the conventions and exclusive toys complicates things a great deal. For example, technically, the first female decepticon is Nightracer, a Botcon 1994 exclusive go-bot, but most people never had the opportunity to purchase that toy, or have even heard of the character.(Elita2)   This does create, retrospectively, some ambiguity about who exactly gets to claim the title of first female transformer to have a toy, and other things of that nature. I started writing this essay with the intention of examining prominent female transformers, with the idea that, while people do indeed read the old 3H comics and scour Ask Vector Prime, the bulk of exposure most people, and operatively most children, have is to the primary fiction, and to the characters thrust into the spotlight by the good folks at Hasbro. 

So, without further ado, let’s jump right in with Generation 1! 

    While Arcee is the character who most immediately springs to mind when we examine female transformers in the Generation 1 fiction, there are in fact several others of note, and interestingly, several who appear first. The very first female transformers we meet are in the episode the Search for Alpha Trion.(ChrisMcFeely) We’re introduced to five whole female characters. The first one on screen, making her the first female transformer to appear anywhere, is Chromia.(Derik, Chromia) One of the first things we hear about them is that Shockwave thought they were extinct, and… There’s a lot to unpack there, and instead of doing that, I’m going to say “80’s cartoon sensitivity to issues of gender” and leave it at that.(ChrisMcFeely) These characters form a guerrilla unit of soldiers who have been harassing Shockwave as he tries to run Cybertron.(ChrisMcFeely) The character models are reasonably homogenous. The color palette used for them consists of traditionally female colors, such as pink, light blue, and lime green.(ChrisMcFeely) Rather than the blocky build exhibited by most of the G1 cast, they are slim and curvy.(ChrisMcFeely) Also unlike the rest of the cast, they wear lipstick and have sizible busts.(ChrisMcFeely) This really sets the tone for the majority of female characters going forwards. While the men exhibit a variety of body types and different degrees of blockiness, the women are almost invariably voluptuous and slender, and frequently rather busty.

 As far as the plot goes, there’s a bevy of pluses and minuses. In the opening scenes of the episode, the female autobots are shown operating independently.(ChrisMcFeely) However, Elita-1 is quickly captured and Optimus Prime races to her rescue. Later on, she saves him, but at the cost of her own well being, which forces Optimus to once again rescue her.(ChisMcFeely) Every named female autobot (Chromia, Moonracer and Elita-1) is romantically involved with a male autobot.(ChrisMcFeely)  A couple of the female autobots, Greenlight and Lancer, didn’t actually receive names for 25 years.(ItsWalky, Greenlight; Lancer) In the larger context of the G1 cartoon, these characters have essentially no impact. This is the only episode most of them appear in, with the sole exception of Elita-1, who would go on to appear in the episode War Dawn.(Omnisvalidus)

As far as toys go, Chromia didn’t receive a general retail toy until 2014.(Derik, Chromia) Elita 1 and Moonracer didn’t get general retail toys until 2018, although all of them did get a convention or Timelines toy in 2005-6 or so.(Vanguard; Derik, Moonracer) The most revealing thing about these paragraphs is that is more or less literally all there is to say. Elita-1 got a model kit in the 90s, but only in Japan, Chromia shows up in some BotCon comics… And that’s all.(Vanguard; Derik, Chromia)

    Then, in 1986, the transformers movie came out, and we got Arcee, the first really prominent female transformer.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47) She’s pink, she wears lipstick, and she’s got curves and a chest, planting her squarely in the traditional female aesthetic. Like Elita-1, she got a couple of model kits in the 90’s, but her history of receiving toys is famously abysmal. There were no fewer than 3 separate G1 toys of her that were canceled.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47) She finally got a toy in 2006, a convention exclusive redeco of Transmetal 2 Blackarachnia, but she only got a toy that actually turned into a car in 2008, again as a retool and only in Japan.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47) She only received a toy based on her character model in 2014, almost 30 years after her introduction.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47)

 We encounter here for the first time a pattern that will haunt us for the rest of our survey. Female transformers characters tend to not receive toys. In my personal collection, I have exactly 3, two of which are minicons. In my collection of approximately 200 figures, 3 of them are women, and only 1 is a deluxe. 

Arcee’s record of fictional appearances is not much stronger. In the ‘86 movie, Arcee basically hangs out and does vague crush things on Hot Rod or Springer, depending on who wrote the scene.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47) She also takes care of Daniel, and that’s pretty much it, not only for the movie but for the rest of her cartoon appearances.(S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47) I’m not sure she ever got an episode focusing on her, if she ever once drove the plot, or did anything much really other than hang out with Daniel, god rest her soul. 

    That’s actually not the bottom of the barrel yet. There are two other female characters of note in G1, both from the Japanese Super God Masterforce cartoon. The Masterforce characters were not actually transformers themselves, by and large, but human pilots of Transtectors, giant robot bodies that allowed Takara to sell headmasters and powermasters, figures where the head formed a separate little robot, represented in fiction by the human.(Singularity) Accordingly, the characters discussed here might not exactly count as Autobots or Decepticons, but, since they were main characters in a main show, they still form an important part of the history of women in transformers.  Minerva is part of the core cast of Autobots, and serves as a medic.(Derik, Minerva) The other is one of the primary antagonists, Mega, the… owner? Pilot? Of one half of Overlord. (Derik, Mega) 

Minerva is actually the first female character to receive a toy, in 1988, four years after the launch of the franchise.(Derik, Minerva) Minerva’s toy shares a mold with Nightbeat, and unfortunately we don’t have any information about who the mold was designed for “first”, as it were, so we’re going to have to wait a while for the first toy designed from the beginning to be a female character. Minerva’s toy is remarkable because it lacks many of the hallmarks of female toys released even today. It’s as blocky as any other Autobot car, doesn’t have high heels or a sculpted busom, etc.(Derik, Minerva) The proportions are also rather generic, rather than featuring the slender and voluptuous build that will haunt our survey. Minerva turns into an ambulance (Nightbeat’s Porsche mode with a lightbar), befitting her status as a medic. 

Mega’s toy is also very interesting. She controls one half of the rather generically proportioned Overlord transtector , which turns into a jet and a tank, two decidedly male coded vehicles. (Derik, Mega) Overlord is also absolutely bristling with guns, which is also not a traditional quality of female characters.(Derki, Mega) Indeed, Mega actually presents an intriguing dichotomy. While she herself is robustly and obviously female, Overlord is simply a robot, and in every subsequent depiction is male. 

In terms of character model, Minerva is quite interesting. One would expect that the model would be very similar to that of Nightbeat, and indeed to some extent it is. (Nightbeat never actually appears in the G1 cartoon, so he only has a character model for the comics and some commercial appearances.)(ItsWalky, Nightbeat) It features the same helmet, and hallmarks such as the chest and general kibble. However, some important liberties have been taken. Her color palette is not Nightbeat’s blues and yellows, but rather, white, pink and red, a decidedly more feminine set of colors.(Derik, Minerva) While not nearly as curvy as the original female Autobots, her proportions have been altered so that she fits a more traditionally feminine body shape.(Derik, Minvera)  Rather than the idealized Dorito of masculinity, Minerva’s robot mode had relatively slender shoulders and waist, and relatively broad hips and large thighs, all hallmarks of traditional female body imagery.(Derik, Minerva) Minerva actually doesn’t have breast analogues, largely because of the Nightbeat mold’s aggressively flat chest.(Derik, Minerva)  

Minerva walks a fascinating line of being female while still clearly being a giant robot, and not a person covered in metal as with earlier G1 women. This represents a really interesting way of presenting female characters visually. They can have traditionally feminine characteristics without being consumed by them. Unfortunately, that’s not something we really see too much more of in the brand, at least not for quite some time. In terms of her human character model, Minerva’s got a suit, and her proportions aren’t too disgusting, particularly for anime.(Derik, Minerva) It looks like she gets sexualized some of the time, but who doesn’t in anime (which is a can of worms quite outside of the scope of this article.) 

Mega is also an intriguing blend of different ideas. Her human character model wears a skin tight witch princess outfit, and is very traditionally feminine in terms of proportions, accessories etc.(Derik, Mega) The robot that she shares control of is a massive, male robot with guns poking out of every possible surface.(Derik, Mega)  Without consciously trying to make a statement about women and gender, the Masterforce team created a blend of signals of masculinity and femininity that, while not necessarily forward thinking, is at the very least a departure from the homogeneity of traditional portrayals. 

Minerva’s character is quite a bit more disappointing, with the caveat that I have not personally seen Masterforce. All of the male characters run around trying to gain her favor, which she bestows occasionally etc etc.(Derik, Minerva) She is a pacifist, and this keeps her confined to the sidelines of battle, treating the injured. Her pacifism appears to be presented largely as her not having the stomach to do what needs to be done because of her womanliness and desire to protect everyone.(Derik, Minerva) Apparently she has also been given a very “traditional” upbringing, learning all sorts of feminine skills like dancing, music, and cooking.(Derik, Minerva) 

Mega, in addition to being eeeeeevil, also appears to feel very maternal towards the younger Decepticon cast, to the point that it hampers her fighting. (Derik, Mega) The evil aspect of Mega’s personality is actually really remarkable. There is a surprising dearth of female Decepticons, much less ones who serve in important leadership positions. Indeed, Mega is one of three or so evil aligned females to have a position of command, the other two being RID 2015 Glowstrike and Beast Machines Strika, and one of a bare handful of female Decepticons more broadly.(Abates; ItsWalky, Strika) 

    The character models, absence of toys, and almost non-existence in terms of plot weight all conspire to sideline the very earliest female transformers. For the first two seasons of the cartoon, female transformers appear in two episodes. After the movie, there is a single female character who, while frequently present, doesn’t really contribute anything. Moreover, she is placed in the traditionally female roles of maternal style care of a child and being a love interest to several male characters over the course of her appearances. Being female is the personality of these characters. They do not have any other defining trait or motivations. While eventually other female characters become present, and do have motivations and characters outside of being women, there are only two of them, and they exist only in Japan. Mega and Minerva do have intriguing character models and toys, but in terms of their fictional portrayals, they still are largely confined to the traditional role of women, either the sidelines of battle or care based roles. 

 The fact that not a single one of these characters received a general retail toy until 2014 also serves to minimize their presence. People remember characters in no small part based on the toys they had in childhood. The absence of toys eliminates the opportunity for this to occur for any female character, creating the possibility that people won’t even remember that they existed. Fortunately, the Masterforce does break this trend for the first time, giving us toys of not one but two female characters. Unfortunately, Minerva has yet to receive another full sized toy, and Overlord has since become a separate character, sharply limiting the influence of Minerva and Mega in the brand at large. 

The character models also directly contribute to this marginalization. They evoke some of the purest signals of womanhood, such as lipstick and breasts. Minerva and Mega buck this trend in some respects, but in others, especially in their human forms, they contribute to it. The models are also remarkably slight, which contrasts sharply with the warlike bulk of characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron. This contrast creates the impression that the female autobots are less capable than their male counterparts, even though they are depicted in combat situations. Their bodies are drawn to be aesthetically pleasing, whereas those of characters such as Grimlock are unequivocally designed for function. 

 Of course, these narratives of comparative weakness and strength tap into larger societal narratives. The G1 cartoon would not be able to communicate these things so readily if slight and curvaceous builds were not already associated in the larger culture with femininity and a lack of capability. Indeed, what the Generation 1 cartoon does with respect to women is to evoke the most essentialized and distilled version of womanhood -buxom, romantic partner, mother- and then unquestioningly transmit it and it alone, not out of malignant sexism (for example, the writers were not seeking to communicate that a woman’s place was in the kitchen as part of an ideological agenda) but because it simply was not the focus of the work, being targeted to young boys as it was. They needed female characters without exerting a huge amount of effort, and pulling the societal narrative from the ether was the simplest solution. 

    This is the core dynamic of gender in Transformers. We live in a world where there are gendered toys and concepts. It makes sense for Hasbro, Takara Tomy, and the supporting fiction to cater to those invested interests. People don’t buy things for their children that challenge their values. Interestingly, it is not that people actively seek to buy things that serve their values. Rather, they buy things that they can understand, things which make sense to them. Hasbro selling toys that are vehicles, robots, and war related, all things that are strongly male coded, makes intuitive sense to purchasers on a level below conscious understanding. It plays well with the societal narratives in which they live, and to a large extent have constructed their identities upon. Young boys will want car toys and robot toys, legitimately and from their own desires, because they have absorbed what society tells them it means to be men into themselves. For all of these reasons, Hasbro will always default to conservatism to turn a profit, and that means not trying to sell female coded things to boys, (creating a dearth of female characters), or trying to sell male coded things to girls, (creating a lack of representation that would appeal to a potential female audience.) 

However, all is not doom and gloom. As we will see in further installments of this series, Hasbro has been making an active effort to increase representation in recent years, especially since 2014. Moreover, since G1 is the source material from which much subsequent fiction draws, when people in more obscure settings, such as convention exclusive comics, do reach for female characters, they tend to reach for one of the female autobots established in The Search for Alpha Trion. Accordingly, in subsequent years, many versions of Chromia, Moonracer, Elita-1 and Arcee have appeared in various media. Arcee and Chromia in particular have had many incarnations. The Michael Bay films, Transformers Animated, Transformers Prime, and the IDW comics all feature their own iterations of Arcee, and the comics and the films feature Chromia. So, in some senses, the presence of female autobots in G1 gave writers a framework to build on in the future, even if the characters were not impactful at the moment of their inception. 

    The presence of female transformers in G1 is more or less exactly what you would expect from an 80’s cartoon. The women are voluptuous, irrelevant, and confined to romantic and maternal roles. Although there are some characters who do occupy an interesting space in terms of gender, namely Mega, and there are some that are not as overtly female in terms of design, namely Minerva, the overall impression is one of homogeneity of build and personality, as well as insignificance. Fortunately, these characters continue to appear almost 35 years later, and are increasingly receiving the attention and toys they once lacked. Many of these characters will be our near continuous companions in our examination of female characters throughout the history of the brand. That being said, in terms of an analysis strictly confined to G1 on its own, we find almost a complete absence of female characters and effectively no female characters of significance within the plot. Generation 1 is a boy’s club. Thank goodness it’s not the 80’s anymore. 

Works Cited

Abates et al. “Glowstrike” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Glowstrike Accessed 5/11/2020

Crockalley et al. “Sonar (BW)” TFwikihttps://tfwiki.net/wiki/Sonar_(BW) Accessed 5/11/2020

Chris McFeely et al. “The Search for Alpha Trion” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Search_for_Alpha_Trion Accessed 5/11/2020

Derik et al. “Chromia (G1)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Chromia_(G1) Accessed 5/11/2020

Derik et al. “Mega” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mega Accessed 5/11/2020

Derik et al. “Minerva” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Minerva Accessed 5/11/2020

Derik et al. “Moonracer (G1)” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Moonracer_(G1) Accessed 5/11/2020

Elita2 et al. “Nightracer (G2)” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Nightracer Accessed 5/11/2020

ItsWalky et al. “Greenlight” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Greenlight Accessed 5/11/2020

ItsWalky et al. “Nightbeat (G1)”, TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Nightbeat_(G1) Accessed 5/11/2020 

ItsWalky et al. “Lancer” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Lancer Accessed 5/11/2020

ItsWalky et al. “Strika (BM)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Strika_(BM)#Toys Accessed 5/4/2020

Omnisvalidus et al. “War Dawn” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/War_Dawn Accessed 5/11/2020

S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47 et al. “Arcee (G1)/Generation 1 cartoon continuity” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Arcee_(G1)/Generation_1_cartoon_continuity Accessed 5/11/2020

S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 47 et al. “Arcee (G1)/toys” TFwiki.https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Arcee_(G1)/toys Accessed 5/11/2020

Singularity et al. “Transformers: Super-god Masterforce (cartoon)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers:_Super-God_Masterforce_(cartoon) Accessed 5/11/2020

Vanguard et al. “Elita one (G1)” TFwiki. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Elita_One_(G1) Accessed 5/11/2020