The History of the Gobots - Finishing 2nd to Transformers Isn't So Bad 

LMAO!! Good one.

Yep, then your parents blame you for the toys they just bought you getting broke when it was mikey who broke them!!! SCREW YOU MIKEY!!!! You ripped my He-man in half, and broke my cobra copter!!!

spit my cereal out, lmfao

@@CommodoreFan64 Just be glad your little brother didn't put slime on your Beast Man...

@@wiibrockster thats a killable offence in my eyes

Excuse me, young human. Why does this object evoke an emotional response?

Um, Data does not us contractions.

Well they were sending cyborgs back to 1984. Specifically to kill Sarah Conner, but she might not of had a chance to ask that question yet.

That was cringe out of campy Willy Wonka interviewing. Right before it, like TG, would turn psychedelic ;O

"I've gone from covering the White House to covering the Go-Bots, but I refuse to change me rhetorical tone, damnit!"

Japan makes real stuff like sony China makes knock offs soo more likely china made go bots lol

@@plagues-haze-3987 You realize that iPhones are made in China

@@yuenhai lmaooooo apple is from here stupid and if im wrong its Japan not China lmaooooooo

That boyfriend and your sister are they married now ?

@@nazmakhan178 na i took care of her jonny sport coat lol

And they all had the ability to shoot laser blasts from their bare hands rather than have any accessories like laser guns.

true

she was a professional, not an instagram model...

That’s my mom

I've always respected the stuffing out of professional journalists and on the stories, big or small, that they report! They're a true credit to their profession!

One word "Spinister"

@Shield Liger That is part of the reason it is the best, MULTIPLE LEVELS! :D

Always wanted that guy.......

Bludgeon.

Cy-Kill is right up there with Slaughter Steelgrave for me, which is my favorite.

I had a pile of these growing up, now I'm wondering if they might still be in a box at my parent's garage, my mom is closing on 80 but still has everything from my childhood.

@@maevethefox5912 That's awesome. I wish her good health and prosperity. Hopefully you can find some great stuff in those old boxes the next time you go visit.

Well, depending on what type of toys you're talking about, your comment could be almost indisputable. If we are talking about "boy toys," i.e.., action figures, vehicles, robots, etc, then the 80's were the ONLY decade that these things really existed on a large scale, and were actually played with by children. The 70's only had a few offerings like this. And by the 90's, kids playing with action figures dropped off considerably. While action figures since the 80's look much better, they are mostly bought by collectors, and rarely seem to be thought of as toys anymore.

Rocks aren't vehicles! I didn't like rock lords. Or the Go Bots! Thankfully I got Transformers. 😀

When in rock form they were indestructible almost

@@sethsassy, love the "almost" Firecracker say what? Some o' my Joes ended up hugging Jumpin' Jacks to the face.

I had the core line up of the Rock Lords, got them when a toy store went out of business. They were cool to the other kids because nobody else had them.

I wanted that gold rock so badly as a kid, but only ever had some of the less flashy ones.

The commercials were very catchy - ‘’Migh-ty Machine Men, Migh-ty Ro-o-bots!,.. Migh-ty Machine Men, Migh-ty Ve-hic-les!”

In japan, they're original name was Machine Robo.

In Europe they were Robo Machine and later Gobots were sold too

I think when a toy company is trying to compete with Transformers, maybe it would have been better to stick with one brand name... Just something I've been warned about in Marketing class in college.

Me too

@@arnoldb4526 it was the 80s man, Middle Class was Booming and a 3 bedroom home cost 14K

Yeah, Transformers were in general better, but Leader 1 was a better design than pretty much any Transformer. I hated the way Starscream (and the other two clones) required extra parts to complete their transformation (add fists, remove and re-attach the missles as guns, wings had to be reconfigured by taking them off). At least Optimus Prime had a place to store his hands in the cab though. Ratchet and Ironhide robot form was just tossed for the cartoon since it was so bad. The best designed Transformer of the time wasn't even a Transformer. Skyfire was basically just a ship from Macross, but damn it was awesome. Mostly metal, built solid and looked great in both forms.

Their transformations were so easy that really hurt them.

@@cecilwebb1927 yeah, it did hurt them for most of them. Had they all been as good as Leader 1 they would have done better. For example, I had Puzzler, a GoBot combiner made of 6 cars that also made individual robots. I like that you didn't have to add any parts to make either individual robots or Puzzler himself. He held together pretty well, too. That was what they should have been doing. I also had Devastator, which every single robot had an extra part that had to be used to make Devastator. Forearms and his entire head were completely separate parts! And Devastator himself was incredibly fragile and almost impossible to be played with other than to just display.

@Jip Jackson Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't calling the entire Transformers line "cheaper". Transformers had multiple price/complexity lines, with a premium toy like Optimus Prime costing around 5x as much as a "budget" toy like Bumblebee. I remember Go-Bots being priced similar to the cheapest Transformers, the mini-cars. When you limit the comparison to just that, the Go-Bots can look at least a little better in some areas.

Back in the '80s, Box/Package Art was everything. Brilliant package art made you want to buy something that on its own may not be that impressive. Such was the case with toy robots, video games, or other consumer products. Compared to Leader-1 and Crasher, Sunstreaker and Thundercracker​​ had much more impressive box art. Awesome package art made some toys that were pretty much 'fancy bricks' seem like the most impressive piece of our collections. (I'm looking at you, Swindle, Terrorcons, and Wendy's Go-Bots!)

@Maximillian Wylde The transformers had 3 other things that made them wildly better. 1) stats, this gave purchasers an easy way to imagine that their favorite was unique, 2) the transformation sound - this, is arguably one of the most important sound effects in all of cartoons, and 3) a vastly catchier and more favorable theme song.

I totally agree with you there on how the Transformers cartoon's robots looked WAAYYYY better than the robots you had in your hand. I remember as an 11-year-old noticing when they transformed in the cartoon that certain parts of the plane or vehicle would shrink, thinking "hey, that's cheating!". However, it still brings back memories of holding a new transformer box (Gen 1) in my hands. My first one was Hound. My favorite was Sound Wave.

@@llyrghmnghyll I managed to perfect that sound early in my childhood. I can still do a pretty convincing rendition...

cool stuff

I wanted Leader One but my parents could never find that toy.

I like Transformers and GoBots as well.

Same ... Which they handled the evolution of the show better. Could have been as big as transformers

Hanna-Barbera made pretty generic cartoon series by this time especially.

@@RocStarr913 very true

❤ the gobotssss!. Was a pretty good show but transformers was definitely better done

Gender made sense in Go-Bots, as they were organic beings first. It has never made sense in Transformers.

@@pious83 I wasn't really comparing that with Transformers specifically. But either way, I disagree. Each transformer in that cartoon clearly had masculine traits as part of their personalities. We as viewers identified them as male. There's no ambiguity to that. Optimus Prime has been seen as a pseudo father figure for years. From the get go gender was baked into those characters because that's how the writers wrote them. Moreover, there were female transformers. You just only saw them once in the original cartoon (until Arcee showed up). As a kid I didn't question whether gendered transformers made sense and I don't really question it now. It's a creative biproduct of trying to create characters kids can relate to so they'll want to buy the toys. We as viewers inferred human characteristics that the writers directly implied. So from that perspective alone I think it makes sense. My sister liked Gobots because of Crasher and she became a transformers fan after she saw the episode with Elita One.

@@dbeane43 Within the context of the cartoon, take away their voices and there is no gender to G1, other than the Fem-Bots. Also you shouldn't really presume how every viewer defined the Transformers. Some of us simply saw them for what they were/are: giant shapeshifting alien robots. You don't need 'Human wo/man' stamped on their foreheads, to _get_ Transformers.

@@pious83 I respect your opinion and I don't see it as invalid. The initial comment I made was in reference to the idea that currently, folks claim there wasn't enough female characters in old cartoons/movies. Gobots is an example of that being untrue. That was my point. I should have stated it better. As far as this debate goes, on a purely conceptual level, yes, it makes no sense for alien robots to have gender in the first place. I also concede that you don't need to know the gender of each transformer to get the concept. But this wasn't exactly a hard edged sci-fi story. We're not talking about Blade Runner here. In terms of how this concept was presented to its intended audience, gender was clearly there. This isn't in refute. Otherwise, why did these "genderless" robots refer to one another as he and him? And again, they had male voices. You can't remove that from the equation. These things heavily imply they were dudes. And this isn't an argument about gender pronouns. That's totally not where I'm going with this. What I'm saying is the writers clearly implied they were dudes and consequently many of us inferred they were dudes. If you personally didn't infer that, it's cool, but many kids did. So if we could infer dude robots, that implies the possible existence of dudette robots. So at that point, it makes sense even though it doesn't make sense. If you disagree, that's cool. Truthfully, if alien robots did have gender it would be nothing like what we have as humans anyway. But who wants to get into all that?

@@dbeane43 When you look back at the 80's to 90's cartoons though, there wasn't really an issue of gender balance, in the way it is forced and unnaturally highlighted today. The three female Thundercats, for example, often featured more prominently than most of the male cast. The same with the D&D cartoon, Visionaries, Captain Planet and many others. Female characters were always there. As opposed to how completely unnecessary gender was, in a landscape of artificially created, sentient alien machines. The human secondary characters were there as representative of that. That was their entire purpose. Pronouns were used for convenience and expediency, not to send some profound statement of implication. Because the crux of your argument is _exactly_ about pronouns and language. Take the Quintessons, for example. Voiced by male actors almost exclusively, but are they male too? They were writing for kids to buy the newest toy, not trying to be clever. By the same token, kids don't "infer" anything. They liked the Red Truck, the Grey Gun or the Yellow Bug. Adults trying to read Scooby Doo level psychology into a vehicle for selling toys, while utilising the very best and most prolific voice actors of the day, regardless of gender. Those are the adults that infer. They would also be misguided.

I liked them both, but they should be compared to each other. When I thought of Robots of the 80's. Transformers, Gobots, Starriors and Robotix come to my mind in that particular order.

Good thing you feel that way, because they're part of the Transformers family now. :1

I remember both being in the stores. I'm sorry, but I can't say much good about Go Bots. Transformers had the better name, better "transforming" sound effect, and about 3 times the transforming parts. Plus, each transformer had at least one die-cast metal part.

@@autobotstarscream765 only partially. Hasbro can't make the toys and paramount who owns transformers movie rights can't make a movie. It's all mixed up. Kinda like how marvel/Disney can't make it standalone hulk movie

Where I grew up we liked them ok but they were viewed as the trailer-trash version of Transformers. Far more basic in their transformation and cheaply made.

U and 16 others. Lol

Well, make it 17 than Lol

@@AlexTM44 Make it 18 and watch the numbers climb!

@@jckdnls9292 Make it 18 and watch the numbers climb!

I did, too. I had Leader 1 and Cy-kill, but also had some Transformers. But even to this day (I'm 43), i clearly remember the Machine Men song, and remember watching the cartoons more than i recall watching the Transformers cartoons.

That was a dude. For real. He was the kind of dude that voted for Obama five times, can't seem to shit right, and gets triggered when someone gets his pronouns wrong.

I was given a Crasher, but it was white and labelled as Machine Men: "Racing Car Man". My 2nd "Transformer" after buying a generic changing robot vehicle (that I later pretended was Grapple, since it was some kind of ladder truck). My 2nd Machine Man was "Police Car Man" - because the only thing better than a car, is a police car (when you're 7). After that, I got serious and got Ramjet, then Optimus Prime, then Megatron, then some others etc etc

I had the ones voiced by Roddy McDowell and Michael Nouri in the movie.

You have now BECOME the rock lord!

Would your Transformer/Go-Bot be named Rock Hound? 😁😂🤣

You know, there are far worse outcomes from the toys we play with than subconscious inspiration to become a scientist. I salute you sir.

That commercial jingle was memorable. One of the few things I remember about this show was wondering why they didn't go with that jingle as the theme song. They had something WACK there in its place.

Wish you was a writer. You'd treat both lines with respect.

Yeah, i think they kid was talking about LEGO maybe cuz you cant really make "the shapes" into anything you want with TFs lol

I think we can all agree Johnny need a to be smacked. You can't transform a transformer in to a gobot. Stupid kid.

Got him!!!

LOL. It's true as long as the only thing you want is a motorcycle or a robot and nothing in between.

@@joshua2814 Or a mutated half motorcycle / half robot thing :)

And the autobots "returning" Wheelie. A "long lost" Gobot ;)

In Transformers the movie (animated) I was waiting for Unicorn to eat Gobotron, lol.

@@raymondburnett6468 Know what- you're right.

Indeed. I love how the ending gave a little nod to the fact that Go-Bots came first.

@@pious83 Not only that, Transformers eventually started implementing ideas about cyborgs and techno-organic merging of flesh and machine.

Yes, they were smaller and had simpler transformations, but that, along with the die cast construction on many of them, made them more durable on the playground and backyards. They had fewer extra pieces to lose, and were easier to tote several around on car trips and whatnot.

Loved the die-cast stuff, but the transformations and figures always felt very lazy to me, even as a kid. Go-Bots was transformers for babies, Transformers was serious big-kids stuff. XD

While they were sturdier and generally better made (they could survive harder play), that also meant the figures were less articulated and poseable (which meant they were less "playable" with). They had neither elbow or knee joints and their heads were often merely a molded contour on the underside of the vehicle and couldn't turn at the neck. Even Star Wars figures could turn at the neck. They were supposed to be involved in some sort of big, cosmic war, but they didn't have any weapons. While that meant fewer pieced to lose or break, it meant they didn't have guns. You knew Megatron's gun was more powerful than anyone else's because that scope on his arm was, by far, the biggest gun any transformer had. The smaller, hot-wheel sized vehicles of the Go-bots also had a lot less detail than the larger transformers. And part of what made transforming robots fun, especially to the kids over 8, was the complexity of the transformation (remember this was also the era of the Rubic's Cube).

@@liljenborg2517 The Gobot cartoon established that they all had built in blasters, so you could use some imagination. They're toys, so you suspended some disbelief if you got on board with any of the mythologies in the first place. If lack of articulation bothered you, almost none of these had knee or movable leg joints. Optimus Prime had decent articulation, but I can't remember a single Autobot car that had movable legs. Hound, Sideswipe/Red Alert had short stumpy arms that didn't reach above head level. Ironhide/Ratchet had half assed robot modes with no heads. The Decepticon seeker planes all had fixed legs and again stumpy arms. And as for lazy, the transformers line repainted 10 body molds to make 25 toys by my count.

As a kid my parents bought m Go-Bots rather than Transformers specifically because they were more durable. I never really followed Transformers as much as a result and always felt just a tiny bit like I was on the lesser side of things. As I got older I definitely realized that I had missed out. Go-Bots were great, but it was like growing up with a Master System.

I was digging it

@@EURIPODES lol classic

😂🤣😂🤣🤣🤣😂🤣

Yes honestly it felt like her and the cam op were on a bizzare date what with her bobbing eyes

Nice

You could imagine Crasher's red color as part of her desert daytime camouflage mode.

Yea, when I was a kid and my parents and I went to New York, there was this store selling the Gobots for cheap, it was my first time seeing these Hotwheel size toys that can transform and I was hooked, I think I bought three with my meager allowance, money well worth spent, also never seen the cartoon about them either or cared.

I was kid back then when the Gobots toys came out. They were called Machine Men here in Australia. The toys came out before the Transformers toys and cartoon. Then the Gobots cartoon came out (also called Machine Men in Australia.) I liked the cartoon mainly because it reminded me of the Transformers. The only problem with the Gobots cartoon is they were written for little kids instead of teenagers.

Well, the Go-Bots comic they released was excellent, and it actually tied in with the Transformers multiverse by implying that the Go-Bots universe is the "Universe 0" where all the Transformers multiverses originate from. Also, it implies that Starscream is a reincarnation of both Leader-1 and Cy-kill merged into a single entity.

@Shield Liger I know there was that Ehobby repaint set if that's what you mean. It was just a name reuse and they didn't resemble the characters. It's like saying G1 Ironhide was in Energon.

@@LuckyBird551 That's kind of annoying. Starscream is Starscream, his glory is his own (for better or worse)

Shield Liger like I said, they managed to make modern figures that look like G1 Jetfire, Roadbuster, and Whirl. Forgot to mention shockwave and Omega. None of those were Takara designs. Thrilling 30 Jetfire is notable as the Macross Valkyrie is Bandai like Machine Robo is. They were afraid more than they should have been.

Take the gen1 auto bot cars for example. That pivot where you push on the windshield to raise the head got super fragile, and then whoops no windshield. If I could redo childhood, I’d save my parents money by skipping transformers

@@AP-hv9ll I would want more of the Insecticons, I had Kickback and wanted the other 2. I had Jazz, and I would have traded him for another bug.

I love doing Stop Motion animation with my Go Bots & Transformers🎬📸🎞️🤖‼️

Well you kind of can if you don't mind a mess of limbs sticking out in random directions

As long as the Shapes you want are a Robot or a Vehicle.

Unfortunately that's how Michael Bay & Steven Spielberg understood Transformers.

JLvatron in their defense, Hasbro themselves kind of peed in the pool with all the unrelated name reuse over the years. The idea of Ironhide being a red minivan went out the window years ago thanks to that. Before the modern G1 resurgence, it was hard to make the argument that a character has an iconic look when a quick search shows all sorts of random things, including a pickup truck with a big bull head picture on the hood.

@@solidus0079 That doesn't mean a Toy in your hand can turn into ANYthing.

Scales was the name of your black/orange/red Renegade drag racer eptile bot monster.

Ummm if you were 4 or 5. Transformers had a wider array of options; some simple transformations, pull backs and more complex variety - (Triple changers and SixShot) You could transform your favorite characters in 3 seconds or less.

@@mrmsc919 Maybe, but those weren't the main focus of the line, were they? Minibots were more like a cheap way to expand your main cast of characters, who would've included the larger, more complicated toys. Besides, they turned into cars with obviously cartoonish proportions, unlike the vehicles in the Go-Bots line.

@@DarthVader1977 either works really. Can’t believe you nitpicking on this a year after it was said.

Yeah they were at points just as hot a transformers

The cartoon wasn't bad either. There were a few really good episodes.

I've fiddled with some of the toys and they have engineering that Hasbro wouldn't get to for years. Things like non-standard transformations and metal ball joints, of all things. I definitely see the appeal now, as a lifelong TF fan looking back.

Defendor (camo tank) was a prised toy in my younger years. I also,had Tank-Bust, but the hinge form the 1 wing got waaaaay loose.

The bootleg stuff coming out of China or Japan or wherever nowdays has some awesome looking toys based on the old go-bots. I forget who makes them or what theyre called, im sure you could find out via google if you cared to, but they are some sweet ass figures for sure. A big upgrade update from the originals.

"You humanoids...."

No, that would be the Borg, which had the same goal as the Cybermen.

My GoBots were the hostages in a Transformers battle scenario. Ahhh... the memories.

Lol.

Or Transmorphers.

At least the spinoff wasn't Battle of the Rockturds. Little poop shaped toys that transform into robots. I patented that idea and it will soon become a reality.

Converters had some pretty neat figures in it believe it or not. Like the slot machine guys and the birds. I had a bunch of them as troops in my robot armies. The main force of course was the Transformers, but I appreciated the GoBots and Converters as well.

@Bob L'éponge Thanks friend. The Rockturds are from the planet Scatotron. Want to join my Kickstarter?

It's sad the US never experienced the awesomeness that is Rom Stol MATTE!!!!

Oddly enough the death of Optimus Prime however shocking it was, wasn’t what made Transformers S3 so bad for me. I thought the season was a bit scarier, more gruesome and lacking in the same kind of “happy feeling” the first two seasons had. Mind you I was in the second grade when S3 came out. IMO I think that’s what did the series in.

Not to mention,the Battlehackers line is EASILY one of the most FORGOTTEN of the Machine Robo toyline and they have some of the best engineered toys ever. Who wouldn't wanna see the likes of Mach Blaster,Drill Crusher or even Garzack who was meant to be played for TV like Kamen Rider Black's toys and Captain Power toys? R.Jettan is one guy I wanna have the toy since I got Power Riser and Jet Riser.

And who's to say Katsushi Murakami's portfolio including the famous Voltron isn't a part of Machine Robo? That could've explained everything about his demigod existence as well as the legend of the Hyribead.

@@spacelinx Personally I thought everything about Season 3 onwards was a big step up from Season One and Two (aside from the animation, of course). The show was aimless prior to The Movie. It wasn't really until Season 3, that Transformers had an overarching narrative to what was going on. The switch to Sci-Fi also made sense given they were always Giant _Alien_ Robots. The character designs of the Post-Movie characters were a lot more visually interesting too. I was only 3y/o at the time of The Movie. That was my jumping on point to Transformers, which I adored and remain very fond of everything from the Movie and beyond. I've tried many times to re-watch Season one & two... I just can't get past the pilot.