This was last updated on 28 August 2007, and is intended as an introduction to "Transformers" as a whole.
Transformers are, ultimately, a line of children's toys that was started in 1984 by the massive US toy manufacturer Hasbro (though calling Hasbro a toy company is like calling Microsoft a spreadsheet software company). But the reason for the toy line's longevity is due to Hasbro's brilliant marketing of the brand.
To properly talk about Transformers, we have to go back in time in the United States some 30-odd years. At that time, television had been around for about 30 years, largely unchanged in its broadcast receiver form (the original television, invented much earlier in the 1920s, was a cable receiver - broadcast came decades later). Broadcast TV had started, naturally enough, with the radio broadcast model, wherein shows had corporate patrons who would sponsor the productions. But TV producers quickly realized the potential for short video commercial advertisements and so TV soon developed the model of producing shows without sponsors, then selling ad time to recoup costs. It worked and advertisers were quite happy with the new arrangement: they...
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