To sell toys

Hasbro wasn't quite sure whether to advertise this expensive toy until the fans forced their hand.

To understand Transformers fiction, it is important to understand that it exists to sell toys. Hasbro and TakaraTomy are toy companies, and they are primarily interested in continuing to sell toys to children and adults. The cartoons, comic books, etc., mostly exist to make this happen. To be sure, they normally make a profit in their own right, but this is regarded as mere gravy.

The "to sell toys" effect often distorts the fiction in interesting ways. Primarily, since you can't (usually) sell someone the same toy twice,^[1] Hasbro and Takara constantly introduce new toys, and often require the creators of the fiction to introduce the new characters into ongoing storylines. Older characters (whose toys are no longer being sold) are shoved aside to make room.

Another effect of "to sell toys" is when the toys have gimmicks which must be explained in the fiction. Sometimes this is relatively easy, while other times it requires a lot of imagination on the part of the writers. Japanese-original shows such as The Headmasters, Super-God Masterforce, and the various instalments of the Unicron Trilogy often structure their casts and storylines around a single specific play feature, which is highlighted in just about every episode.

The UK movie-based Transformers comic took this to more blatant heights. For its first year, it had a specific four-page feature every week called Top Gear, which existed solely to promote the newest Transformers merchandise. Any merchandise. This led to readers being told how great Optimash Prime was. For the 2010 Transformers: War for Cybertron game franchise, Ironhide himself opened letters pages by telling readers how awesome the game was and how you should buy it.

Casting

Huge casts

Gotta catch 'em all!

Hasbro makes a lot of toys at once, and they generally want all of them to appear in their fiction. This can force writers to bring in vast numbers of characters all at once, sometimes with awkward results. Examples include:

• The first issue of the Generation 1 comic, "The Transformers", in which twenty-eight different robots appeared and introduced themselves, even though only a handful are important to the plot.
• "The Special Teams Have Arrived", a free mini-comic given away with issue #54 of the Marvel UK comic, notoriously introduces the reader to twenty-four new Transformers in just three pages. Granted, four of those are the combined forms of the other twenty, but that's still a lot of new names to remember.
• The 1987 Headmasters Limited Series, which introduced over sixty characters in the course of four issues, including all the first waves of Headmasters and Targetmasters, all their Nebulan partners, the Technobots, Terrorcons, and Monsterbots.
• The cartoon episode trilogy "The Rebirth" likewise abruptly introduced well over forty of the 1987 toyline characters, mostly the same ones seen in Headmasters. In both cases, this wasn't helped by the fact that the nature of Headmasters and Targetmasters meant every new toy had to effectively get two introductions.
• In the first four episodes of the 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon, eighteen characters are introduced in quick succession.
• From #9 onwards, Titan's movie-based Transformers heavily bumped up the cast with new toys. In one example, #17 brought in nine new toys in eleven pages; only one of the five Decepticons got any real focus or dialogue.

Random casting

The Hasbro-induced need to show all the toys can also cause stories to suddenly focus on a new character, sometimes dropping ongoing plot threads about older ones. Examples include:

• Season 2 of the cartoon introduced many new characters/buyable toys with no explanation; despite never having been seen before, the story treats them as though they have been there the whole time. One episode even hinges on this idea.

After seven issues, it's finally time for these six dudes to do something!

Apparently, the Triggerbots didn't make much of an impression on Prime.

• The comic issue "Pretender to the Throne!" suddenly introduces a dozen Autobots and Decepticons that we've never met before, and follows their adventures. The story adds nothing to the long-range plot that couldn't have been accomplished by using existing characters; these teams were added to the mix to promote their new toys.
• Many issues of the Marvel comic had cover blurbs in the form "Introducing the _______!", where the blank was whatever the latest line of toys was. The following issues specifically introduce new toys on the cover: #8, #10, #11, #19, #21, #29, #30, #40, #42, #46, #47, and #60. Throw in a few covers where new characters were pictured but not named, and that's 1/5th of the series.
• In issue #36 of the Marvel comics, when Wheeljack decides that he needs help in dealing with Grimlock's inept leadership, he doesn't turn to any of the dozens of Autobots aboard the Ark, which include two combiner teams and Omega Supreme. No, he has to call in his "old buddy"/new toy, Sky Lynx.
• In the prelude to the Underbase Saga, Optimus Prime and Megatron were the lead characters in a story set before the Transformers came to Earth. But rather than palling around with the likes of Jazz or Soundwave, they are instead shown alongside the newest "gimmick" characters, the Triggercons and the Triggerbots.
• Mainframe Entertainment planned to use Wolfang in Beast Wars, but Tigatron appeared instead because he had an upcoming toy, and to save money as his CGI model was only a slight tweak of Cheetor's.^[2]
• Rather than revealing stuff about the Vok and Tarantulas, a long-running subplot, "Other Victories" spends much of its time telling us how great Tigerhawk is and how we should buy his toy. Then, when it looked like Tigerhawk's toy would be canned, he was almost immediately killed off.
• Material released by both 3H and Fun Publications tends to release characters from various series and continuities and then write stories featuring every character (usually with a particular focus on that year's box set), which often leads to some bizarre casting choices. Sky-Byte, Strika, and Obsidian were all retroactively added to Generation 2 and Machine Wars because they wanted to do toys of them that year. The Shattered Glass version of Tracks is introduced from nowhere, has minimal characterization, and doesn't do anything, because they wanted to do Tracks's 2010 toy in Diaclone/Road Rage colors. And pretty much every story taking place in the Classicsverse, ostensibly a Marvel G1-based series, will introduce or reintroduce characters who were dead (the various Underbase Saga casualties), not even implied in the original stories (Overlord, Metalhawk), or don't make sense in that universe to begin with (Elita One). Sometimes this gets a token justification, other times not.
• The sixth issue of The Arrival stops following the regular cast so it can flag the awesome cool out-now-in-shops Safeguard toy.
• Prominent generals in Titan's movieverse Decepticon army change frequently and without any acknowledgment as new toys jostle for (and gain) space.
• Dark Cybertron and its lead-ins were packed with Thrilling 30 toys, so suddenly Beast Wars characters Waspinator and Rattrap are in G1. Things got worse in later issues when Tankor and Crosscut needed a comic; Tankor berates Starscream for a few panels in Dark Cybertron #6, while Crosscut and Swerve briefly halt the plot in Dark Cybertron #7 to tell you who Crosscut is. Then he vanishes. They did end up getting increased roles in IDW fiction later, though.
• For "Combiner Wars", several Autobots had to abruptly depart the Lost Light for Cybertron so they could appear in their combiner teams. In the case of First Aid, this was despite him having just become the Chief Medical Officer: a long-running plot!
• Seaspray and Beachcomber appeared in the IDWverse after a seven-year absence in Starscream: The Movie and Another Mine. The fact that those two oft-ignored characters had new Titans Return and Power of the Primes Legends Class toys released recently probably had something to do with the matter.

Limited casting

On the opposite side of things, Hasbro doesn't want to pay to depict characters that aren't selling toys. This can force a story, particularly an animated cartoon, to have a smaller cast than it otherwise might.

The full might of the Decepticon army.

• The original cartoon and early Marvel comics both featured an oddly lopsided cast, particularly at the beginning, with the Autobot forces on Earth outnumbering the Decepticons two to one. This difference was never really acknowledged, though the cartoon also used generics to make it look like Megatron had more than four guys, three pets, and a camera under his command.
• The early episodes of Armada featured only the toys available on the shelves. This resulted in two ridiculously small teams going to Earth for the all-important mission of gathering Mini-Cons, rather inexplicable in story terms.
• Both the Dreamwave and Panini comics suffered exactly the same problem, but it gets worse: The first Armada episode reused models of older Transformers as generic background guys to bump numbers up. The comics didn't. So Megatron apparently conquers all of planet Cybertron with an army of three guys, whereas the city/planet defending Autobots are just five blokes.
• Dreamwave would also feature a scene on Cybertron, where the only Autobot who seemed to exist was Jetfire.
• For the movie prequels, IDW got around this by deciding that Dreadwing was going to be a series of drones instead of one guy, allowing for really big battle scenes despite a then-limited number of toys. (It would later turn out there was also a Dreadwing who was one guy.) Titan Magazines would borrow this, and turn other Decepticons into drone series too.
• It seems unlikely that four bots and their human partners would be sufficient to handle every emergency on Griffin Rock, but those four bots were the only ones on shelves at the time (other than Optimus and Bumblebee, who were needed elsewhere), so they were the ones who went into the show. As the toyline expanded, toy characters Blurr, Salvage, High Tide and Quickshadow were introduced into the cast.
• Kingdom acts as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Beast Wars, but only includes characters who were slated for the first three waves of the accompanying toyline (with the exception of Tigatron, likely due to the ease of retooling Cheetor's animation model into a spare character). This means that notable cartoon characters like Waspinator or Tarantulas who didn't have toys in the first three waves never put in an appearance in the season. To compensate for the Predacons having depleted ranks as a result, Dinobot stays with the Predacons for most of his screentime while Scorponok was turned into a group of generics; Predacon Megatron also says many Predacons have been lost in his war with the Maximals.

Plot

Forced explication

Main article: Introdump

Rather than simply showing up in the background, new toy/characters often overtly introduce themselves, often with a ridiculous description of their special abilities. The Marvel comic is rife with examples, but it shows up across numerous fictions.

Reflector is actually here, he's just buried underneath a pile of speech bubbles.

• Again, Transformers #1 has two huge splash pages in which 28 characters do nothing but stand around and tell each other who they are and what they can do.
• Towards the end of "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1", Jazz puts together a strike team. Naturally, he does this by calling out their names one by one, so that the camera can cut to each Autobot in turn and show them transform in noticeable detail.
• The two-part original Transformers cartoon episode "Dinobot Island" features many new 1985 characters getting their own short little introductory scene, often with a characteristic bit of self-description (Tracks: "I'd rather stay in my stunning auto mode!" Inferno: "I'm always ready for action!" Beachcomber: "Wow, like, I hope we don't destroy this place before we can study it!")
• "The Rebirth" has three different sequences in which large new groups of characters form a lineup and introduce themselves to viewers one after another. Strangely enough, much of this screen- and dialogue-time is given over to Nebulan partners; the "main" Transformer characters get no such introductions, even though they are the items kids would have to purchase to acquire the Nebulan accessories. For instance, Spasma, Monzo, and Peacemaker (all speaking characters) are introduced by name as part of various lineups, but their in-store hosts Apeface, Weirdwolf, and Pointblank are never named (and Weirdwolf never even speaks).
• "Beast Wars (Part 1)" has the Maximals walk on one-by-one admiring their beast modes, loudly explaining their names and showing character traits. This even gives the impression they deliberately changed their names to fit these new beast modes for no apparent reason.
• Crosscut and Swerve fill in Crosscut's backstory and job during a fight. That's all Crosscut does in Dark Cybertron #7.

Gimmicks

Main article: Gimmick

When the toys can do something special, fiction writers must often go out of their way to show the gimmick in action.

• The Scramble City category of G1 combiner teams have the ability to freely swap around their limbs. Because of this, an unusual amount of Japanese fiction focuses on the idea of characters swapping limbs, best shown by Scramble City: Mobilization, with rather variable consequences, and sometimes resulting in the creation of whole new combiner characters. Sometimes, this purportedly results in some kind of increase in power or the combiner gaining different traits, but these changes are almost invariably told more than shown. In some cases, simply changing the arrangement of an existing set of limbs is cited as something that can vastly alter a character's capabilities, with little real explanation.
• The Headmaster gimmick got an entire Limited Series comic book devoted to it.
• The comic issue "Pretender to the Throne!" features Scorponok proudly creating the Pretenders, gloating that they will hide the Decepticons' identities from the Autobots "until it is too late". Not only does the plan not actually work, it's also a plot point with absolutely zero lead-in or build-up—at no point has Scorponok ever expressed concern about his troops being detected by the Autobots (if anything, considering the altmodes of his troops, he seems to be the least concerned with stealth), nor has he demonstrated the science skills to pull this off, and we've never even met the Pretender characters before. It was brought about solely because the new toys had to be jammed into the story. (The, uh, story of returning Optimus Prime's character to the comic book because he had a new toy.)
• Rotor Force made their debut in "New Dawn", and both here and in subsequent Generation 2 issues would primarily fight enemies not with guns like everyone else, but by firing their giant rotors at them. Page 3 of New Dawn actually shows them having to stop and reattach their rotors before they can carry on fighting.

It's Morphin Time! MASTODON!

• The 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise Megatron had six alternate modes and the cartoon really wanted you to see them, which is why his first appearance was as a giant hand punching through a building for no apparent reason. The series would also make it routine for him to use different modes for specific purposes: He would arrive to battles in Jet Mode, observe fights and command his troops in Robot Mode, personally engage his foes in Dragon Mode, and retreat from battle in Bat Mode. His Car Mode and Hand Mode would be used far less often than those four, but situations that deliberately called for their use would still crop up. Things got even sillier when he turned into Galvatron and gained four more modes. In "Mistaken Identity", he turned into his "Iron Mammoth" form to brace himself against a hostile Fortress Maximus... only for the form to prove useless when Maximus called off his attack. His griffin form was later made out to be his most powerful form, which he used prominently during the series' final episode, while his Pteranodon and hydrofoil modes would each only be used once, in cases where Galvatron barely did anything in those modes (much like the case with his mammoth mode).
• Jetstorm and Jetfire are the only Autobot jets in the Animated line. (Not counting the toyless Omega Supreme.) To fully big this up, their origin story has it that there have never been any flying Autobots before, despite them having been in (and won) a long and bitter war with enemies who often fly. This one was silly enough that a later episode explicitly joked on this, pointing out that there were multiple Autobots before and after Jetfire and Jetstorm with some kind of flight capability.
• The second season of the 2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon coincided with the release of the Deployer toys, which fire smaller Mini-Con figures. Suddenly, every Decepticon in the cartoon was partnered with a Mini-Con or two, even Decepticons who'd appeared in the past as solo operatives.

The Unicron Trilogy, noted for its gimmicks in all three toylines, was particularly notorious in this regard:

• The quest for power-enhancing Mini-Cons practically defined the plot of the Armada cartoon, with both factions out to recruit or capture all the Mini-Cons.
• Powerlinxing is shown again and again and again in Energon, despite having comparatively little relevance to most episode plotlines. In fact, due to the fact much of Energon's action was firefights, Powerlinxing seemed to be a disadvantage, since it resulted in a single larger Autobot shooting instead of two smaller ones.
• Cyber Key powerups are likewise shown repeatedly in Cybertron. In this case, while most characters had basic weapons, the Cyber Keys were necessary to unlock hidden weaponry or special techniques. So, for example, Optimus might be able to shoot at the Decepticons with a smaller firearm, but to fire his larger cannons he would need to summon his Cyber Key. Some characters, however, needed their Cyber Keys to activate what one would expect to be their main weapons (e.g. Starscream activating his Null Ray Cannon).
• All three series were also marked by lengthy transformation sequences which highlighted the gimmicks in very toy-accurate animation (and also made production cheaper, thanks to recycled footage).

Strange developments

Shoehorning loads of new characters with new powers can compel the writers to do things with the plot that, in all probability, they otherwise wouldn't.

• Marvel UK had to promote the Special Teams toys before they knew how they'd be appearing in the US reprints. To get around this, Simon Furman wrote a story arc titled "Second Generation!", where Buster Witwicky, Optimus and Shockwave watched an advert saw a Matrix-induced vision of the Special Teams in action. These events were previewed in "The Special Teams Have Arrived", nine issues earlier, with no indication that they were part of a vision, making their place in continuity uncertain.
• In the US Marvel comics, the simultaneous introduction of the Aerialbots and Stunticons and the introduction of the Pretenders both saw a lot of rigamarole involved in explaining why both the Autobots and the Decepticons had new members with identical numbers/gimmicks at the same time.
• Season 3 of the original The Transformers cartoon almost completely ignored the characters of the previous two seasons that were no longer on toy shelves. The 1985 Autobot cars, for example, are not seen at all. Bumblebee and the 1985 Mini-Vehicles, by contrast, show up now and again, as their toys were still shipping. Even Starscream, who was dead, managed to get a couple of Season 3 episodes all to himself; again, his toy sold through 1986.
• One season later, "The Rebirth" — the last episodes of the entire series — was almost entirely spent on introducing new characters and giving old ones upgrades, leaving just barely enough time to provide any kind of conclusion.
• The Headmasters was absolutely crazy about this. Optimus (whose toy was long gone) kicks the bucket only three episodes in for the sake of a sacrifice that would be nullified only a few episodes later, putting new(er) toy Rodimus Prime back in the command chair for a short while. In the tenth episode, Rodimus departs the series and hands the title of Supreme Commander to brand-spanking-new toy Fortress, who's had a few months, tops, of combat experience. Much like Season 3, Headmasters also ignored most of the Season 3 regulars (Springer, Perceptor, the Dinobots, the Quintessons) or removed them altogether, sometimes fairly dubiously (Blurr and Kup leave with Rodimus, Ultra Magnus gets shot a bit and dies, Galvatron is buried in ice and nobody digs him up until Battlestars). By the end of the series, the only remaining Autobots from the first three seasons were the Special Teams, Twincast and his cassettes, Wheelie, Metroplex, and Arcee.
• Transformers Comic-Magazin #2 wrote an entire story devoted to Optimus sternly explaining which Autobots and Decepticons were on sale in Germany in 1989. The reason he had to? Quickmix had shot an Autobot!
• The first thirteen issues of the Armada comic were focused around the Mini-Cons, with plots often revolving around their desire to be seen as equals and not be enslaved. Then without any prior set-up, the last five issues turn into a dimension-spanning battle against Unicron—who had just had a new and expensive toy.
• Tigerhawk debuts in "Other Victories", where he's the reason the Predacons lose their base and Tarantulas is killed. This disrupts any ending for the Tarantulas/Vok storyline, as the episode is left with little time to properly explain the mysteries of either character and the plot of last episode, Tarantulas trying to destroy the whole Ark, is reduced to two lines about the Tripredacus Council.

Upgrades are bad. Upgrades are GOOD. We have always been at war with Eurasia Eastasia.

• "A Fistful of Energon" has Prowl learn not to use upgrades, and he gives up using powerful samurai armour. But whoops, Hasbro thought "hey, we could make a toy out of that armour"! And so in a later episode, Prowl regains it and the show hurriedly claims that the upgrade is fine now because Prowl realizes now that it's the Autobot, not the upgrade.
• The French decided to be good sports and start using propeller-driven nuclear bombers again in All Hail Megatron #11, just so Tankor could be used.
• Ransack has been on Earth for a while, in hiding from other Decepticons while he waits for orders from the Fallen in "Turnabout". Ransack is a member of a race that can scan any object and take its form as a disguise. Ransack moves around in the cunning disguise of a 100-year-old plane. (At least, unlike the previous example, the oldness of the alt mode was pointed out.)
• In Titan's Revenge of the Fallen comic, Skids and Mudflap go from being Bumblebee's responsibility to bugging Ironhide to being Sideswipe's responsibility in the space of three issues, all to allow each issue to focus on a specific toy-bearing movie star. Similarly, only one or two Decepticons per issue are sent on a mission, when presumably the Fallen might want to send loads of guys to silence the twins.
• In Dark of the Moon, nearly all of the Transformers switch from built-in weaponry to handheld weaponry. It just so happens that the gimmick of the Dark of the Moon toys was that they had "MechTech" weapons that could be held by any other figure.
• Also in Dark of the Moon, most Autobots transform into Stealth Force mode, a weaponized vehicle mode that allows them to access various weapons in their otherwise defenseless disguises, an incredibly useful combat mode that's never used in any prior or later films. Uniquely, this was something Hasbro came up with for the toyline on their own; director Michael Bay decided to incorporate it into the film only after seeing what they were working on for the then-upcoming toyline and taking a personal liking to it.
• The subline imprint of the Prime toyline was the Beast Hunters line, which took hold at about the time of the show's third season, which was given the subtitle of the imprint. In the episode "Project Predacon", Optimus Prime awkwardly redubs Team Prime as the "Beast Hunters", when they begin looking for Predacon fossils. The Autobots must've felt the same way as we did about the sudden name change, since really only the protocol-obsessed Ultra Magnus begins using the term. Thanks to behind the scene troubles and the whole concept being a late addition to the series, the team never actually hunts any beasts, as only three Predacons ever take a central role in the story.

Talk about "shoehorned in".

• In Spotlight: Trailcutter, Trailbreaker has an existential crisis, and worries that everyone only sees him as 'the forcefield guy'. Deciding to revamp his image, he decides that he'll now go by the much slicker(?) "Trailcutter"... just as Thrilling 30 Trailcutter hit store shelves.
• The subline imprint for the Generations line from 2015 to 2016 was Combiner Wars, hence IDW's tie-in comic had to introduce a heapload of combiners in a universe that regarded combination as a lost art with unpredictable side-effects. (Devastator, Menasor, Superion, and Monstructor were around, but they had each been introduced separately, and each with their own unique explanations, over the course of ten years.) Enter the Enigma of Combination, an artifact of Nexus Prime with the power to merge any Transformers into a combiner. Not only is this artifact used on Superion, Menasor, and Defensor, it is also used on Optimus Prime and other selected Autobots to create Optimus Maximus. The fact that Optimus had two Combiner Wars toys (one released, one upcoming at the time of the story's publication) might have influenced this decision.
• Also, the big toy of 2015 was a Titan Class Devastator... in his classic configuration instead of IDW's newly introduced 'Prowlastator' form. Unfortunately, Scrapper had been long dead and hence was unable to take his spot as the combiner's leg. However, IDW had another bulldozer-bot conveniently lying around — Scoop. Naturally, he was merged with the other Constructicons by the aforementioned Enigma, restoring Devastator's classic silhouette.
• A long-running plot thread of More than Meets the Eye, starting all the way back in issue 5, was Ratchet preparing First Aid to succeed him as the Lost Light's Chief Medical Officer. Issue 40 finally sees Ratchet stepping down and leaving the ship (so he could participate in the events of Drift - Empire of Stone), officially declaring First Aid "the new Chief Medical Officer"... but after only two issues in his new position, issue 43 sees First Aid himself leave the Lost Light under a flimsy in-story pretense so he could participate in the events of Combiner Wars, appointing Velocity as his own successor (although he would later return to the Lost Light following the conclusion of Combiner Wars).
• In a follow-up story, Galvatron creates two combiners out of random soldiers and foes. To plug the new merch, these are called Galvatronus and Sky Reign but most of the characters that made them up in toy form were either on Cybertron, the Lost Light, or dead at the time. Unusually for this page, Hasbro allowed IDW to use random limbs as long as the names were right but this leads to the comic pimping a toy you can't buy (though you could make it with others), and in Galvatronus' case a toy that doesn't even have the same face as in the comic.

Awkward continuity

This happened... er.... look just buy the toys, ok?!

Sometimes the requirement to feature new toys can be so strong that continuity takes a major backseat and stories are produced that feature combinations of characters that make the story very difficult to slot into the main continuity. The Marvel UK comic was especially prone to this as it could not always foresee where, when and how characters would be introduced:

• The Transformers Annual 1985 contains many stories featuring toys from the 1985 release long before they were formally introduced in the regular comic, often interacting with other characters who would be out of action by then. As a result, few of the stories easily fit the continuity of the weekly comic.
• The demands of Hasbro UK for the Headmasters and Targetmasters to be featured heavily even before the US Headmasters mini-series was available meant that both the Transformers Annual 1987 and the regular strip "Worlds Apart!" contain a slightly different set of events that are at odds with the mini-series.
• The requirement to give prominence to the rereleased toys in the Classics range resulted in one of the biggest continuity trainwrecks of all, Earthforce. Over three decades later fans are still uncertain where it fits in continuity, and even Simon Furman admits to being unsure.^[3]
• Germany's Transformers Comic-Magazin started in 1989 and reprinted older Marvel US and UK strips. Since, of course, these would rarely show the current toys, Comic-Magazin ran text stories from #2 that showcased completely different Transformers that were on Earth at the same time, and just happened not to be seen in the strips.
• Trapped between the need to pimp toys and the problem of not knowing what the plot of Revenge of the Fallen would be, Titan just threw up their hands and unambiguously set their lead strip in an alternate universe. Similarly, the video games for Dark of the Moon were all prequels so that the games would not directly contradict the then-upcoming movie's plot while still using some of the characters and settings who would be featured (some minor plot contradictions did occur, but few fans have ever accepted the video games to be in perfect continuity with the films anyway).
• Based on evidence from various sources, it's been speculated that the episode "Starscream's Ghost" was originally meant to star Blitzwing, who at the time had been exiled from the Decepticons and was on somewhat friendly terms with the Autobots. Instead, his role was taken over by new toy Octane. The only other episode to prominently feature Octane, "Thief in the Night", which was aired after "Starscream's Ghost", kinda sorta explains his falling out with the Decepticons—except it doesn't: While said episode does have him go rogue, not only is he still a bad guy—by the end of that episode, Galvatron is no longer on bad terms with Octane! Likewise, the episode "The God Gambit" starred Astrotrain, Starscream and Thrust, with Astrotrain (a new toy at the time) taking on a leadership role more akin to Megatron rather than the bus he's reduced to in almost every other episode.
• The Japanese broadcast of Animated outright skipped "Rise of the Constructicons" and "Sari, No One's Home", as they largely revolve around the toy-less Mixmaster and Scrapper. Meanwhile, "Sound and Fury" was moved up to be the first episode to air after the pilot to promote Soundwave's toys, which is at odds with continuity since Megatron only came back online during "Home Is Where the Spark Is", which was pushed to air after "Sound and Fury".

Power levels

In order to make new characters seem more totally awesome, they're often depicted as ultra-powerful in their initial appearances. Once they become old news, they frequently seem to lose their super-charged abilities.

• The original Transformers cartoon introduced Devastator as the ultimate threat. Once newer combiner teams came along, however, he was less of a threat, easily defeated at various times by Bruticus, Broadside and even Perceptor.

Buzzsaw reminds Omega Supreme he's not a new toy any more.

• The Marvel comics feature Omega Supreme as nigh-invulnerable and ultimately powerful in his debut issue, slaughtering all but two of the Decepticon forces sent to attack him. Just two years later, he's getting his butt handed to him by the likes of Buzzsaw, one of his original victims. He was also drawn as truly colossal in his first appearance, before becoming just a head taller than Blaster by the time of his death.
• Galvatron's first action was to turn Starscream into a pile of ash in a single shot from his cannon mode, and he accomplishes an even more impressive feat upon his reintroduction in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 2" when he destroys the entire planetoid of Thrull. In later episodes, his attacks seem to be, at most, somewhat stronger than those of the other Decepticons, and characters can withstand shots from him in cannon mode without any serious injuries.
• Metroplex, in a weird case of this, actually seemingly shrank between the third season of the G1 toon and The Headmasters, going from being drawn as a genuine giant to barely bigger than the average combiner. Even in official scale charts, he dropped from being shown as 800 meters tall to about 45. This was likely to avoid upstaging new-kid-on-the-block Fortress Maximus.
• Waspinator was, amazingly, something of a threat in early episodes; he holds his own against Cheetor in his debut. He only became significantly weaker than the other Predacons during the second season.
• In her first appearance on the Beast Wars cartoon, Airazor effortlessly blasts Terrorsaur to pieces. She never displays such a level of power again.
• Similarly, Rampage was presented as a huge threat when he first appeared, but just a few episodes later, he seems just slightly tougher than the average Predacon (save for a few notable occasions).
• Sky-Byte was actually a credible threat for his first couple of episodes.
• The Commandos were far more powerful and competent than the Predacons, who were made even less powerful and competent as episodes went on. Remarkably, this was actually used in the plot, with Megatron focusing on the new toys while the Predacons became underdogs trying to get their old status back and one-up the new guys.

Before he shrank in the wash.

• Any new toy character in the Unicron Trilogy cartoons is almost guaranteed to win the day's battle.
• Tidal Wave was a staggering behemoth as big as the sky in his introduction, and his ability to combine with Megatron gave the battle advantage to the Decepticons until his equally powerful counterpart Overload was introduced. By the time of the Energon cartoon, Tidal Wave is just this tall guy (but not as tall as he used to be) and is treated as just another Decepticon, even after he gets a body upgrade in the form of "Mirage".
• When the newly redecoed Jetfire and Optimus combine in Dreamwave's Armada comic, they are so powerful they can hurt Unicron himself.
• Jungle Planet ruler Scourge was incredibly powerful when he was first introduced, but later on, he's getting slaps on the wrist by Lori and Thunderblast, and schooled by Bud, ultimately becoming more of a sympathetic comedic bumbler than a credible threat.
• The Decepticons in Animated started off as being so horrifically powerful that the entire Autobot team had to take on a single one. By Season 3, this no longer happens. Uniquely, this was deliberate by the writers: they wanted to show the Decepticons as supreme threats, and have the Autobots gradually being better at dealing with them.
• The Vehicons in Prime started off pretty tough; easily wearing down Cliffjumper in a group, then just two giving Arcee and Bumblebee a tough time. In the next episode, they've got Stormtrooper aim, and basically exist to give the Autobots someone to kill while saving the named Decepticons from the scrapheap. It gets to the point where in the third season, Starscream actually counts on the Vehicons failing to execute Wheeljack, and Wheeljack makes several amusing comments about the Vehicons' incompetence.
• Additionally, the Insecticons started off as nightmarishly strong monsters. One wears Megatron to the point of exhaustion before dying (admittedly, Megs was deprived of his main asset when Airachnid webbed his fusion cannon). However, for the remainder of the series, the Insecticons are just as weak as the Vehicons, being blasted down in one shot, despite a return to form in "Tunnel Vision" and "Toxicity" (the latter of which saw the debut of notorious Autobot killer Hardshell).

New bodies

There's rarely a compelling reason for a Transformer to get a brand-new body in fiction; it's simply to promote a new toy. It has become a default way to keep a popular character on shelves, rather than having to kill them off and introduce a new character to keep moving toys. Sometimes fiction writers are able to work these alterations in elegantly... sometimes not.

Ratchet pulls a Kitty Pryde on Bumblebee.

• Bumblebee was rebuilt into Goldbug following his near-destruction... and was later re-rebuilt back into Bumblebee to sell the new Classic Pretender toy. The reason given in the comic storyline was that Ratchet reverted him without his consent because Ratchet liked his old form better, something Bumblebee is strangely fine with.
• Season 2 of Beast Wars introduced the new Transmetal toys in short order, requiring some strange sci-fi waffling to explain why members of both teams suddenly got special new bodies. The writers had originally planned to introduce these changes gradually, across the length of Season 2, but Hasbro ordered them to be brought in immediately. (The slow-and-gradual notion would eventually appear during Season 3.)

• The Unicron Trilogy cartoons feature Megatron getting recolored and renamed "Galvatron" three times; at the start of each subsequent series, he's given a different body but called Megatron again, because the name "Megatron" just sells more toys. (This also means Hasbro gets to keep the trademark "Galvatron".) The Japanese versions handled this differently (with Megatron known as Megatron throughout Armada even after his upgrade, and being known as Galvatron throughout all of Energon) due to different trademark laws. Galaxy Force (the Japanese version of Cybertron) played it straight with Master Megatron being upgraded into Master Galvatron.
• Several times during the Unicron Trilogy, characters get new paint jobs as part of some magical power-up enhancement. These new color schemes exist solely to promote redecorated toys like "Energon Ironhide" or "Powerlinx Hot Shot". Even the comics got in on the action, introducing the redecorated versions of Jetfire and Optimus during the Unicron arc.
• The three future members of the Cybertron Defense Team get shot up by Megatron, then transmogrify through the power of burning spirit into new forms. These new forms, of course, were just hitting shelves at a toy store near you.
• In the course of the live-action movie, Bumblebee gets irritated at a slight against his alternate mode, and scans a new form. Voilà, suddenly he's got two toys on the shelf! He later pulls the exact same thing in Age of Extinction, but by now, he's been established as having a fragile ego, explaining the constant desire to switch alternate modes.
• When IDW's Transformers comic originally came out, there were no Generation 1-themed toys to flog, and many characters were given altered designs for the series. Then along came Universe, featuring new toys of Generation 1 characters, and suddenly multiple characters get new, toy-accurate bodies in All Hail Megatron, for no apparent in-story reason. Later, Bluestreak even gets a namechange to Silverstreak to fit his toy.
• Sometimes, IDW's comics don't even bother with a reason: you just get the latest issue and a character suddenly resembles the latest toy. This can sometimes be explained as artist interpretation, but at other times...
• Shockwave was originally grey, but when he was reunited with the Animated Decepticons, he changed his colours to purple while referring to it as his proper look. Why he changed colouration to go undercover was not explained, but it may have something to do with a purple-coloured Shockwave toy being out when that episode aired.
• In Revenge of the Fallen, Skids and Mudflap start out as an old ice cream truck combiner but after a disastrous mission NEST decides to upgrade them to new individual General Motors vehicles. New toys and product placement!
• Armada Starscream got a new toy in 2014. There wasn't an Armada comic but there was a Generation 1 comic with a Starscream, which was then packed in with the toy series including Armada Starscream. And lo and behold, for Dark Cybertron Starscream got a new body! A year later, he swapped to another body for "Combiner Wars", which was his then-new Leader Class toy, and several issues were devoted to him choosing it and then flaunting it. Then again, this is Starscream we're talking about...
• Jhiaxus finally got a new toy as well. Problem is, his comic body didn't look much like the toy. Then, in Dark Cybertron Chapter 11, he revealed his new invention: reactive armor that changed his body to look like his opponent's. Who did he use this armor to battle? Why, it's Starscream, the guy his toy was retooled from!
• 2015's "Combiner Wars" comic series brought back almost all of the combiner characters that have appeared in the IDW continuity thus far. However, Slingshot was apparently killed by Devastator and Wildrider quit the Stunticons... so that Alpha Bravo and Offroad can replace them! Meanwhile, Starscream rebuilds Devastator; not only does Devastator suddenly resemble his toy counterpart, but Prowl is no longer a required member of the combiner team, leaving him free to combine with Optimus Prime and company to become the brand-new combiner Optimus Maximus. Superion and Menasor, who had made previous appearances in IDW fiction, are both rebuilt by the Enigma of Combination, causing their bodies to more closely resemble their toy counterparts.

Character pimping

Characters with toys may get more attention than those without:

• "Matrix Quest" has four separate teams on a mission. You could use any three Transformers in one of these teams, right? Nope, Furman has toys to promote: out go nine new Autobot characters and three existing ones with new toys.
• Depth Charge's presence in all three of his first three Beast Wars episodes: one for his origin, another for him joining the Maximals after all, and then an abrupt appearance at the very end of "Cutting Edge" where he turns up and single-handedly drives off a Predacon force.
• When Animated was released in Japan, episodes focusing on the Constructicons were never broadcast on television (instead being reduced to bonus content on the DVDs), as the Constructicons did not have toys. The episode order was also rearranged (and thus the internal narrative of the series, as well) so that episodes introducing new toys could air earlier than those that didn't.
• IDW's Spotlight came back in 2013 in order to promote six of the upcoming Generations toys. Even Hoist, a little-used character who would never have been given a Spotlight otherwise! (Initially published through Diamond and Comixology as per IDW's usual practice, these comics were subsequently packed-in with the toys they were based on, aiming to use the higher sales of the toys to boost comic sales in a "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" scenario.) Likewise, Waspinator, having a new toy out in late 2013, began making appearances and took on increased importance in the IDW universe. An upcoming Tankor toy brought forth a Tankor appearance in Dark Cybertron. The opening arcs of the second seasons of More Than Meets The Eye and Robots in Disguise (as well as Windblade vol. 1) in 2014 also heavily feature casts of characters with new toys, such as Nightbeat, Rattrap, Arcee, and Jetfire.
• When Steeljaw frees some Decepticons in the second season of Robots in Disguise, the freed 'Cons include his former minions Clampdown and Thunderhoof, yet not the other two members of the Pack, Fracture and Underbite. He instead frees Bisk, Groundpounder, Overload, Quillfire and Springload. There's no reason to neglect those who have already proven to be able to work together in the Pack (and thus Steeljaw should know would help in his eventual coup), except for the fact that the toys of both Fracture and Underbite had already sold, and the newly freed Decepticons have new figures on the shelves.

Abrupt conclusions

It's the end of the road for Transformers Generation 2! That can't bode well for the toyline.

Just as Transformers fiction lives at Hasbro's pleasure, so too does it die. Falling sales, a change of plans, and standard rebranding can all cause a storyline to come to a sudden end when Hasbro decides to pull the plug.

• The American Generation 1 cartoon got a somewhat rushed conclusion in the form of "The Rebirth", rather than a full fourth season.
• The Generation 1 comics were nearly canceled at issue #75, but granted a reprieve. The stay of execution was only temporary, however; with the Generation 1 toyline ending, the comic was terminated a mere five issues later, resulting in a rather hasty concluding plotline.
• Hasbro was only willing to support the Generation 2 comic for twelve issues, unless it proved an unqualified (perhaps phenomenal) success. Aware of this from the start, writer Simon Furman was able to plot a story arc that reached its finale as the series ended (and poked fun at it with a character whose name is a pun on "Gee, axe us".)
• The writers of the Beast Wars cartoon reportedly never had any idea if they'd be back for another season. When the axe fell with Season 3, they had only three episodes left to wrap up the whole series.
• Hasbro nearly killed off the just-begun comic series The Wreckers in 2003, wishing instead for 3H to focus on a Universe comic advertising its current toyline.
• Even though Cybertron wasn't abruptly canceled, Kids WB ended the series on the cliffhanger of the episode "Revelation", leaving millions of kids tuning in next time only to get a re-run of Xiaolin Showdown. The reason? The Cybertron Defense Team toys hadn't hit stores yet.
• With Revenge of the Fallen coming out in June, Titan had to end their alternate universe storyline in May so they could tie in early—an issue earlier than planned. The main strip handled this, with the notable exception of the Jazz plot arc going completely unresolved, but it played havoc with working out the IDW reprints!
• According to Rik Alvarez, IDW was asked to drop their G1 continuity and move to the brand-spanking new Aligned one. (They said "nah".)

Death

Killing off old product

Guess who's no longer in the Mini Vehicles case assortment?

Publisher's clearing house.

Scorponok, Terrorsaur, we're condemning you to a fiery death 'cause Waspinator has a bigger fan club.

The most obvious To Sell Toys effect comes from the temporary nature of retail sales. Even in the 1980s, toys rarely stayed on the shelves past two years; today that timespan is much smaller. Once a toy is no longer selling, Hasbro has no interest in supporting fiction about that character—especially when there are newer toys to promote. Therefore, writers are often compelled to remove characters from the story by killing them off. Sometimes this happens through carefully developed story arcs, but it's easier to do it with huge, apocalyptic battles with massive numbers of casualties.

• Right before the introduction of most of the 1985 cast, the Marvel comic saw eleven of the original Autobots taken offline within a single issue in "Prime Time!". A few issues later, six of the original Decepticons met a similar fate at the hands of Omega Supreme (which doubled as character pimping for the big guy). Though it was suggested they could be repaired, the vast majority of casualties wouldn't reappear in the US until they popped up in crowd shots thirty issues later, and a number had their next appearance being a second death in the Underbase Saga.
• In The Transformers: The Movie, numerous main characters are killed or changed in the movie's first 30 minutes, including Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, and Ironhide. They are replaced by a slew of new characters; in fact, the poster for the movie shows only new characters. And Laserbeak.
• Numerous characters are killed in the Marvel UK comics saga "Time Wars". The Grim Reaper seemed to spare either popular characters (Megatron and Shockwave) or newer characters (Carnivac, Catilla and Scorponok, for example.)
• The Underbase Saga features a super-powerful Starscream killing literally dozens of characters; some place the count over fifty. The survivors were mostly from the Pretender, Headmaster, and Targetmaster ranks, those being the then-current toy lines. However, the explanation (Underbase power didn't affect those TFs with organic components) meant that even the Seacons, new toys at the time and introduced three issues before, met their end.
• The climactic battle with Unicron 25 issues later killed off many of the Underbase survivors, whose shelf run had ended.
• With its enormously expensive CGI animation, Beast Wars was particularly vulnerable to toy-based interference. The expense of creating and animating a CGI body model meant that the character roster had to remain fairly constant; the introduction of all-new characters usually required the removal of an equal number of existing characters. And so, Scorponok and Terrorsaur die just in time for the arrival of Quickstrike and Silverbolt. (Frustrated with the situation, the writers carefully planned out^[4] the demise of Dinobot, anticipating that someone would have to be removed to make way for newer characters.)
• The Reign of Starscream would end up killing a large number of Autobots in issue #5, after their toys had been around for a while; as they'd not made an appearance in the comics until this mini, this is both an example of Huge Cast and Product Clearing. It would then go on to bump off some Decepticons, while its sequel Alliance slaughtered hordes of Decepticons with old toys. Mowry is the new Furman...
• The Dark of the Moon console video game is a prequel to the film and can't afford to kill off most of its characters due for an appearance in the then-upcoming film. Luckily, there's several characters who've been around since the Revenge of the Fallen franchise who can be used to give the game some bosses to kill off like Mixmaster, Breakaway, and Stratosphere! Like the prior comics, Transformers: Rising Storm also wipes out a lot of characters not due for an appearance in Dark of the Moon like Jolt and Elita-One, though some stragglers like the Twins, Arcee, and Chromia survive.
• Another odd case of this in the live-action film series, which, as well as advertising toys, also serves as advertising for General Motors vehicles. Hence, Autobots whose cars are no longer in demand have an uncanny tendency to either lose prominence or perish. The most prominent example would be Ironhide — the GMC Topkick had been discontinued for two years by Dark of the Moon, and so, despite a fifty-dollar toy on the shelves, Ironhide dies halfway in. Similarly, Ratchet is the major Autobot casualty of Age of Extinction due to his Hummer H2 vehicle mode being a thing of the past by the time the film hit theaters (though unlike Ironhide, Ratchet had next to no representation in the toyline).
• IDW's Robots in Disguise ongoing has to promote a Superion... with a new helicopter instead of Slingshot. Hence, Slingshot is the one to suffer most and die from the injuries caused when Devastator tore him in half. This is especially weird considering that Devastator tore through Superion from the right, and Slingshot was Superion's left arm at the time. Not to mention that Silverbolt, the torso, was explicitly ripped in half... The series would go on to have Wildrider leave the Stunticons over a humiliating defeat... one he suffered years ago, in Spotlight: Bumblebee. Naturally, the empty position was filled by new toy Offroad. Then Hasbro decided to release Quickslinger and Brake-Neck (Slingshot and Wildrider renamed for trademark issues) much later after the others' release, part of a strategy that effectively forced fans to buy toys both of the "replacement" characters and the original characters.

This has become less common in recent years, as Hasbro has come to realize that their target audiences can actually get attached to certain characters, and might not enjoy seeing them die random, brutal, meaningless deaths.

Hi-and-die

Likely dialog: "SHEEEAAGH!!"

Kids don't want to buy a toy of a character who's dead. So if the plot calls for someone to die, smart money bets on the character who has a toy as the survivor. The guy without a toy, who you've never heard of before? Toast. This is the Transformers version of Star Trek's infamous redshirt syndrome. The stereotypical hi-and-die character is killed off in the same episode/issue that introduces him, if not the very same scene.

• This approach was particularly common in the UK comics. Characters created specifically so they could be killed off include Wrecker leader Impactor, Autobot/zombie food Chuffer, Tailgate's Autobot trainee buddies/mutant fodder Subsea and Flattop, and the sixth member of the "Magnificent Six", Stampede.
• The U.S. comics also used this approach on occasion, as with Blaster's poignantly adorable buddy Scrounge.
• Transmutate showed up and died in that episode, of course Hasbro doesn't make a toy that don't transform, right?
• The Energon cartoon introduced Padlock, whose purpose was to die at Shockblast's hands, providing motivation for toy-character Wing Saber.
• Animated chucked in Arcee so Ratchet could have a tragic past where he failed to save someone. (And then she got a toy!)
• The Animated comic wants to do a story arc about an Autobot who's really a spy and then have him killed. Quick, make someone up!
• Exodus invents hordes of characters solely to populate the story with casualties while preserving the classic characters: Chromatron, Gauntlet, Halogen, Drixco, Revo, Catalycon, and dozens of other unnamed Autobots, Decepticons and Seekers.
• James Roberts elevated hi-and-die to an artform; though his run on More than Meets the Eye is crammed with minor non-toy characters who wind up dead, many still received some backstory, history, or distinctive characterization before — or even after — being killed off. Examples from More than Meets the Eye's first "season" include Polaris, Hyperion, Shock, Ore, Animus, Dent, Sonic, Boom, Piston, Crest, Torque, Sherma, Momus, "Fallout", "Streaker", Hammer and Anvil, Trepan, Frak, Rushcut, Rossum, Tripodeca, Pivot, Scattergun, Blockus, Datum, Ramp, and Suture. Similarly, Last Stand of the Wreckers introduced us to Squadron X, comprising just about every Decepticon hi-and-die character from the Marvel continuity, who were then all slaughtered by Impactor.

Resurrection

Killing off a character isn't always toy-motivated; sometimes it's a dramatic plot development. But it can also be a problem if Hasbro decides to make a new toy of that character.

Only a flesh wound!

• Optimus Prime has been resurrected so many times that it's practically a defining character trait. His original revival in the cartoon didn't correspond to any actual toy release, but the Marvel comic brought him back specifically to advertise his Powermaster form. A second death-and-revival introduced his Action Master body. And a third death-and-revival in Generation 2 brought him into his Hero toy form.
• The Japanese killed off Optimus (or "Convoy" as they called him) in The Headmasters. A few years later, they not only brought him back with a new toy, the entire franchise for that year was called Return of Convoy.
• Numerous "dead" characters were brought back into the Marvel comic series when their Classics and/or Action Master versions were released. Many were "deactivated" rather than outright dead; however, very few non Action Master characters showed up alongside them.
• The series writers for Beast Wars considered Optimus Primal dead and gone at the end of Season 1. Hasbro, however, had a Transmetal Optimus Primal toy to promote, and so he was returned to life in Season 2. Hasbro wanted him brought back in the first minutes of the season premiere, but the writers managed to convince them that it would be better to do so at the end of the two-episode story following the premiere.
• At the end of Season 2 of Beast Wars, Inferno was pretty clearly shown being killed—being disintegrated—but in the next season appeared to have just been bruised and cracked, because Hasbro was not ready to have a Mega-scaled toy removed from the series.
• Pretty much nobody could successfully die in the Energon cartoon. Megatron, Starscream, Demolishor, Tidal Wave, Wing Dagger, and Inferno all die and/or are resurrected from the dead during the course of the show.
• Jazz still had toys out in 2008. The bio for AllSpark-Enhanced Autobot Jazz states he was brought back from near-death by the AllSpark and is "more powerful than ever". Voilà, Jazz comes back from the dead thanks to the AllSpark in Titan's tie-in comic! Optimus even uses the term "Autobot Jazz" in a later issue...
• Nightbeat was shot in the head and abandoned on Gorlam Prime back in "Spotlight: Hardhead". Six years later, Hasbro were releasing a new Nightbeat toy and back he comes into Dark Cybertron, a chatty undead from the Dead Universe. He proceeds to survive the destruction of the Dead Universe and wound up on the Lost Light before dying again years kater.
• Sentinel Prime's IDW incarnation first appeared in the Megatron Origin limited series, set millions of years in the past. The final issue originally left his exact fate following his final confrontation with Megatron ambiguous; according to artist Alex Milne, Sentinel was not dead yet as far as he was concerned, and the script had called for him to look like he could go either way.^[5] However, Spotlight: Optimus Prime, published around the same time, at least implied that he was dead in the present day just like in other continuities, given how Optimus Prime had succeeded him. Subsequently, Spotlight: Blurr and Autocracy, among others, presented Zeta Prime as the Prime who chronologically succeeded Sentinel, before being himself killed by Megatron and succeeded by Optimus. Fast forward to several years later, when Hasbro's Titans Return toy line introduced a new Sentinel Prime toy that was also a Headmaster with a Titan Master named Infinitus, and lo and behold, the IDW version of Sentinel, having been presumed dead for four million years, suddenly makes an unexpected return in a Titans Return one-shot, with absolutely no buildup beforehand, and is revealed to actually be a smaller robot named Infinitus who survived the destruction of his larger body. After menacing everyone a little for a few issues, he gets dropped down a very big hole, never to be spoken of again.

Untouchables

Really, they could just stand there making rude noises at Starscream.

Obviously, if a character does have a current toy (or soon will), they're (usually) not going to die, even if the plot or common sense indicates they should. This is sometimes because Hasbro itself declares a character unkillable, and so comics and TV writers must follow suit.

• In "Optimal Situation", Blackarachnia had betrayed Megatron to the Maximals, ruining his greatest shot at victory. As he declared, "There will be no more betrayals!", she would pay the price: being knocked into stasis lock so the Maximals could fix her and she could stay on their team.
• Megatron himself was in a prime position to be terminated, as were the Maximals later on, in "The Weak Component". Since this was only episode 6 and everyone had toys out, the cast politely agreed not to take this opportunity to end a brutal war for the planet.
• Titan's Movie strip was moved to an alternate universe, where you'd expect nobody to be safe from death. However, most of the cast had toys out, so whether it was a desperate guerrilla fight against Decepticon occupation, the rise of Unicron, a Decepticon Civil War, or the final battle, very few characters bought it. The big exception was Divebomb, dying in his first battle.
• In Last Stand of the Wreckers (mentioned earlier), James Roberts observed that Impactor was the only character who was guaranteed not to be killed. However, Hasbro shot down the idea of Perceptor or Springer dying, and so most of the fatalities were less well-known characters like Pyro, Ironfist, and eternally unlucky Wreckers Twin Twist and Topspin.
• Similar to his Beast Era counterpart, Prime Megatron was worn down to the point of exhaustion, and was at Optimus Prime's mercy. Optimus, now sworn to outright kill Megatron when he gets the chance, is about to pull the trigger, but ends up backing down when he's threatened by Decepticon reinforcements... in this case, the laughing stock redshirt Vehicons. It doesn't help that the Prime toyline had just gotten on shelves, but seriously? Optimus felt threatened by Vehicons?
• If a Decepticon with a current toy is about to be captured in Robots in Disguise, they can pull off the most miraculous of escapes, sometimes disappearing under our heroes' noses.
• Starscream, the end.

Notable exceptions

There are, however, a few notable exceptions to the To Sell Toys effect, such as fictional characters without a toy counterpart, and other anomalies:

Toys not released in the relevant market

YOU CAN'T HAVE ME.

Occasionally the Transformers fiction released in a particular country features characters whose toys were not released in that country. The Marvel UK comic featured two variations of this phenomenon:

• Characters inherited from the U.S. strips. Some, such as Shockwave, Swoop and the Predacons, were given fairly prominent roles in the U.S. stories reprinted in the UK comic and so it was hard to ignore them completely in the UK originated material despite their toys not being around to need advertising. However the decision to develop the Predacons (even before their US appearances were reprinted), to have entire storylines focusing on Swoop, and also to keep Shockwave in continuity even after he'd been (supposedly) killed off in the US comic goes beyond this.
• Characters not featured in the U.S. strips. Bizarrely the UK comic also made use of some characters such as Roadbuster, Whirl, Chop Shop, and Venom, despite their toys not being available on UK toy shelves. None of these characters were inherited from the US material.

Writer Simon Furman has since stated that when writing the stories he was generally unaware of which toys were unavailable in the UK.^[6]

This would happen again with Titan, as foreign exclusives such as Bludgeon and Slap Dash palled around with UK-available toys.

Another example would be the original text stores published by Condor Verlag in their Transformers Comic-Magazin: The text story from issue 11 features the Combaticons, even though catalogs from the era, backed up by German fans' recollections, suggest that the German release of the Classics line-up omitted the Classic Combaticons, possibly due to their "war" theme.

Post-Marvel, pre-2013 G1 comics

"Hey, Runamuck, it's our first appearance on a comic book cover in twenty years!"
"Heh heh, now if only we could appear on toy store shelves..."

Both Dreamwave and IDW comics, the two recent holders of the license to publish Transformers comic books, sometimes produce comics using whichever toy line is current (e.g., Dreamwave's Armada comic or IDW's 2007 movie tie-ins), and sometimes publish comics using whatever characters they please (e.g., The War Within and Escalation). The characters in their "discretionary" comics are often not currently available in toy form (Hardhead, a character appearing in numerous stories from IDW's G1 continuity during their early years, only had another toy on shelves at around 2009, a good twenty-two years since his last toy), sometimes are drawn with bodies that have never been toys (most of the War Within characters), and sometimes are toys that were never available outside of specific countries (Lio Convoy in IDW's Beast Wars).

Chris Ryall, IDW Editor-in-Chief and writer of the miniseries adapting the 2007 movie to comics, had stated on IDW's forums that Hasbro does not dictate what comics IDW must make ("Nope, no dictates at all from Hasbro. We put the plan together, send to them for approval.").^[7] By the time of All Hail Megatron, however, the Universe line came out and Hasbro asked IDW to start using some of those designs.^[8] Though this practice did not influence the subsequent ongoing series, it did raise its head again in 2013, as Hasbro and IDW began working together to create new toys based on character designs from the comics, to promote upcoming toys with New Bodies and to include the Dark Cybertron event (including various preludes) with the toys.

New toys, same basic design

In more recent times (mostly in the case of the live-action film series), Hasbro has used a combination of minor redecos, retools and sculpts based on the same basic designs to create new toys, instead of giving recurring characters a major design overhaul for the next installment. The fiction then rarely, if ever, acknowledges any of those minor design changes. According to screenwriter Roberto Orci, some people at Hasbro even argued against changing the designs of some returning characters in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so that parents would not have to buy the same toy twice for their children just because of a minor change or modification to the characters' designs.^[9] (Hasbro still released new, or modified, toys of those characters, prompting completists to buy them as well, and the film gave some of the characters slight tweaks in their alternate modes, based on changes in the real-life vehicle designs, which the toys had to incorporate.)

Killing off characters with new toys

Even characters with new or expensive toys can get the axe early on if the plot calls for it... or when poor timing caused by unplanned executive decisions resulted in bad coordination between in-fiction developments and toy release schedules.

• In Beast Wars, Tigerhawk was introduced and then killed off within three episodes, due to corporate uncertainty about whether the Ultra-sized toy would actually be produced.
• Despite being killed off in the middle of Dark of the Moon, Ironhide got a lot of new toys, including a Leader Class figure, a Voyager Class figure, and a Halloween costume for children!
• Prime Cliffjumper was hyped up as a major character in the lead-up to the show's premiere, and got several toys like the other members of the main cast. He dies within the first five minutes of the premiere episode. However, later he gets his fair share of screentime by flashbacks and the like.
• Due to behind the scenes budget issues and the Prime toyline getting pushed back thanks to the Dark of the Moon toyline, Airachnid is quickly shut away inside a stasis pod in "Armada" for much of the remainder of the series at the same time as the mass release of her toy; Breakdown also suffered a grimmer fate as he was killed off just a few episodes earlier (by Airachnid herself, no less). Even more egregious than that would be Dreadwing, who would be killed off in the show just one day before his toy hit shelves.
• IDW Galvatron gets a new Titans Return toy in mid late 2016, but was killed off at about the same time his toy was hitting shelves in the final issue of the second season of The Transformers.

New toys with minimal fictional appearances

Sometimes, characters that have a new or expensive toy barely see use in fiction.

• Generation 1 Whirl and Roadbuster were larger and more expensive than many of the other Autobots, but never appeared in the original cartoon. They were featured in the UK comics as members of the Wreckers.
• Sixshot's only appearance in the original cartoon is a quick sequence where he transforms into each of his alt modes to defeat the Aerialbots. He is never seen again.
• In Transformers: Armada, Optimus Prime is the only character to not receive an upgrade after being defeated by Nemesis Prime, despite having an expensive $40 redeco on store shelves. Optimus does receive the redeco colors in the final episode of the series, but he returns to his old colors by the episode's conclusion.
• "Silver Knight" Optimus Prime had an entire thematic segment of the Age of Extinction toyline dedicated to him that was exclusive to Target stores. However, the planned upgrade of Optimus Prime was cut from the theatrical release of Age of Extinction.
• Combiner Wars Quickslinger and Brake-Neck, meant to be Slingshot and Wildrider, did not get any focus in the accompanying IDW fiction: Slingshot is dead and Wildrider's whereabouts are unknown after his leaving the Stunticons. Instead, their selling point is giving fans the chance to complete G1-accurate Superion and Menasor toys. Meanwhile, the Autobot Rook made only a background appearance in the event, and was so overlooked he had to be digitally added to those backgrounds; Alpha Bravo, his Superion counterpart, gets a bit more but nothing you'd miss. (When Rook did get some work later, he was promptly killed off!)
• Titans Return introduced a massive amount of new toys and a massive amount of Headmasters, including many familiar G1 characters redone as Headmasters. However, very few of these new toys were given focus in IDW's tie-in comic arc, including prominent characters such as Megatron, Chromedome, and Soundwave. (Sentinel Prime is a notable exception, returning after a long absence.) Also, despite the heavy emphasis on Titan Masters in the toyline, only one character, Sentinel Prime, displayed actual Headmaster ability. Alpha Trion is briefly decapitated and turned into a lifeless body for Infinitus to take control of, for no real reason other than to show off the head-swapping gimmick inherent in all Titans Return figures. And, with a colossal new Titan-class toy for Fortress Maximus as the centerpiece of the line, you'd expect some significant toy-shilling action. Instead, Fortress Maximus's brand-new Titan body gets smacked around a bit before utterly failing in its one job of defending Luna 1's space bridge from the zombie Titans.
• Most likely caused by the complaints from fans about the small amount of Decepticons in the 2015 Robots in Disguise toyline, Steeljaw breaks out many monsters of the week from the first season. Each one gets a figure, yet they all get one or two episodes to shine. Bisk is the greatest example, appearing very briefly in Episode 4 of Season 1, getting captured, going free, and getting captured again in the next Episode.
  • Every major 'Con from or affiliated with Decepticon Island gets Mini-Cons, who do very little but appear anyway only because they had toys. Ratchet gets one as well.

DELUXE ROOK with Amazing STANDING AROUND ACTION!

• After having a Deluxe-sized figure despite being the largest Dinobot in Age of Extinction, Scorn got a larger, more movie-accurate Voyager class figure for the toyline of The Last Knight. Unfortunately, Scorn didn't even appear in the actual film!
• A more egregious The Last Knight example occurs in the case of Berserker. Despite being on-screen for only 8.39 seconds (in which he's a prisoner of war and not even released from incarceration), and having only one line, Berserker got several toys to himself, one of which was an entirely new Deluxe class figure. This is in stark contrast to more prominent Decepticons Onslaught, Dreadbot, and Mohawk, none of whom received toys until Mohawk got a Studio Series figure seven years later. Set photos seem to indicate that Berserker was going to have a larger role than he did, explaining why he was given such a prominent role in the toyline.

References