Transformers Fan Fiction ❯ Transformers against HASBRO ❯ Transformers against HASBRO ( Prologue )

Tranformers vs. Hasbro

or

Why the Decepticons should come and attack America to destroy capitialism for good

Originally written for English class, I thought I would like to share it with the rest of my fellow children of the eighties!!! If you don't understand, then don't blame me, blame the school system that raised you.

Once upon a time there was an animated giant robot hero named Optimus Prime who could transform into a semi truck. He was the leader of the Autobots who were good, all of them were giant robots except for the one who transformed into a VW Beetle (he was a little robot). His evil arch nemesis was Megatron, leader of the vile, big-gun toting Decepticons whose goals were to drain the Earth of all it's fossil fuels (oh no!) and kill all the Autobots. The name of this show was the Transformers, and the fact that I still remember all these names almost two decades after the show ended speaks volumes in itself. It was a cartoon show I watched as a kid, but the subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages of the show have stayed with me all this time. I am not alone here, the Transformers has almost a cult following. Every year the in California the largest rave in the country is held, and it is called the Battle for Cybertron (Cybertron being the name of the planet the Transformers came from). Kids still wear shirts emblazoned with the symbols of both Autobot and Decepticon, and there are a growing number of cars with Transformer bumper stickers. Original Transformer toys can sell for hundreds of dollars, and some people collect them religiously.

But there is also a dark side to this story.

Once upon a time there was also a big corporation who wanted to make more money (as do all businesses). This particular corporation was called Hasbro, and they made plastic toys that were found by children all over the world in MacDonald Happy Meals. One day the leaders of this illustrious company stumbled upon the great idea to re-create some old Transformer toys, since the last ones had been made about a decade ago. But they did not stop with toys, they decided they would re-create the Transformer cartoon show to help sell the toys. While making it entirely different from the original cartoon they slapped the name of the beloved old characters upon the banal new ones. No longer did the Transformers transform into jets that flew at impossible speeds, or cars with oversized exhaust pipes. Now they transformed into animals. And the show was given the abominable name Transformers: Beast Wars. Whatever meaning the old show had was replaced by this cheaper version, a show created just to sell toys.

The beloved corporate gods basically said screw the nostalgic value the old cartoon had for the teenagers, there was an entire market group of kids who had grown up watching crap like Barney, Teletubbies and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Kids just itching for a show about giant robots from outer space who solved their problems by shooting each other. Repeatedly. Or by mauling each other, whichever was more convenient.

None of this had ever really bothered me before, or affected my life in any way. I mean after all, there are much more important things to think and worry about than cartoons, like the fact that acres of rainforest are being destroyed every day. And that if the country somehow manages to survive George W. Bush's term without getting into World War III it would be a miracle.

One day it did bother me, and the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I grew. Let me explain the situation before you claim that I am insane. It was this past Christmas, when I returned home for Christmas break disillusioned and brokenhearted. In the past three weeks three awful things had happened. It was one of those times in life when the only thing you can tell yourself is that things can only get better because they surely couldn't get any worse.

One night I was sitting in my old room with my brother, going through all my old stuff that my mom had packed into the closet. I found a bunch of old videos, and out of curiosity I played one on the VCR. I was surprised when I realized it was the old Transformers movie, and my brother was too. When I was six it was my favorite movie in the entire world. While I watched it again all these years later I realized I still loved it. Sure the animation wasn't as cutting edge as it had once been. Sure some of the sound effects sounded goofy, and the some of the lines were lame where they had once been funny. But that wasn't why I liked the movie. Watching it brought back a piece of my childhood, a part of my life from a better time. I remembered all these characters and how I had once really cared about them. I cared about the obstacles they faced throughout the length of their cartoon show, and how they would never give up, no matter the obstacle placed against them. Here there was more than just random shooting and pointless plot, here there was a show of substance and sincerity. A kids show, true, but to me it was much more than that. Those animated characters had once been my heroes.

When the movie was over it made me look at myself and my problems a little bit deeper, and it made me cry. It helped, it helped more than talking to my girlfriends on the phone ever did.

Television is American culture in its most visible form. And just as surely as television shows change, so does culture. And this particular television show is a part of my childhood. It is part of the childhood of every American kid who ever watched it. And when the corporations take away this show and make it into some new horrid piece of garbage, it is our own childhood they take from us. Our old heroes (and Optimus Prime was a hero to many children) had become nothing more than marketed goods. Americans have often been accused by other countries of having no culture, and in this aspect it is true. Our culture changes all the time in response to the supply and demand of the American consumer.

When I finished reading Fast Food Nation I almost felt like I was cheated out of something. Like I had been lied to. That a lot of those dear American values I had been grown up to believe in had no more meaning than Brittany Spear's "Hit me Baby One More Time" song. This is self-same disillusionment I felt about the decline of Transformers.

What are American values? American values, I think, are what the corporations want, what big business wants. Which is money. Only if something has monetary value is it worth anything. This is reflected everywhere, in our schools where the 'cool' kids are the ones who wear the newest, most expensive clothes and drive the most expensive cars. In our cities were there are sections for the rich and sections for the poor. In what we eat, the rich dine in nice restaurants, for the masses it is Big Macs and Whoppers.

If I must choose, I would rather choose the values I learned from television, and yes, from Transformers, to some degree. Always have a witty comeback to say, even if you are about to get punched. Try to never give up, even when things look bleak. An important one, do not compromise your ideals for others. To some extent, live your life with some degree of honor and dignity, be that what it may. That nothing is more important than life, and nothing is as rare as love.

American culture is money just as much as it is little plastic robots and MacDonald's hamburgers. But Americans don't have to be that way.