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Concept art for another commission, this time with Carly.

The Starscream and Optimus pieces were originally separate ideas for the Energon Universe, but I decided to include them in this upcoming piece.

Starscream becomes a Duocon, Transforming into a Cobra Night Raven, but also splitting into the Hiss Tank (his legs) and the little shuttle on top of the Raven (his torso).

Jet Optimus is just the Bang Bravern configuration but with Jetfire as wearable armor.

Carly’s armor is based on Baroness’ but mixed with the Mixmasher Transformers armor pieces.

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A fun giantess take on the Energon Universe that I got commissioned to do.

Baroness vs Devastator, baby.

Spike being into giant women was my addition because I thought it was funny.

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I doubt wild king has anything to do with Cyberworld seems like it is own thing

Nah the only thing both have in common is seemingly a return to a Beast theme.

That both, apparently by coincidence, went with a Beast and Armor theme is just funny also.

What the Armor part in CyberWorld does we don’t know yet, we just know it’s there via toy leaks, but we don’t have any images yet as of typing.

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I’ve mentioned before how a color change gimmick would be perfect for EarthSpark toys, so I made a visual mock up on Joe I think that would. It also implements the Hydro Pod toys Hasbro has made for Transformers and Marvel.

In this scenario, Nightshade and Wheeljack built the Pod weapons in story. The pods channel the water in a manner similar to Energon weaponry seen in other series, but unlike the Energon, the water can be re-absorbed into the Pod, filtered and purified for consumption.

The Pods, while equipped, supercharges the water’s Prime Energy from Quintus, and when ingested in this state by Terrans, temporarily powers up the Terrans, changing their exo-structure’s color and granting them new powers.

Landhammer starts out in green colors similar to Energon Ironhide, and gains a color scheme similar to Trailbreaker’s and can channel protective force fields in this state on top of his earth bending powers.

Phoenix’s upgraded colors has him resemble Masterforce Phoenix, giving him ice based powers along with his natural fire powers.

Nightshade gets energy wing attacks and a “Pellet Blaster” in Beast Mode when in their color changed state.

I don’t have specific color schemes for the other Terrans, Maltobot or Witwiccan, fully fleshed out, but the rough idea I had was Twitch and Thrash would probably use one of their prototype colors, while Jawbreaker would either have G1 Dinobot colors or be based on Cranidos’ & Rampardos’ colors.

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Since I saw grifters being stupid about it, let’s go into the conceptual history of female Transformers.

Ladybots have a very … clumsy origin, but not as clunky as stuff like the Matrix or 13 Primes.

Transformers fiction started with the Marvel Comics, and when asked by Bob Budiansky, the main creator of the general lore, if female robots were a thing at all, and Hasbro said no.

So Budiansky and later Furman just accepted that with the American Marvel comics not including female robots.

Later on, taking advantage of the humanoid Pretenders, Budiansky wrote this above part clarifying Transformers don’t do the same things we humans do in romantic terms. The comics much earlier clarified Cybertronians reproduce using the ancient Creation Matrix, with the cartoon using the equally ancient super computer Vector Sigma.

Cloudburst’s comment about TFs not having men or women wound up creating a misconception that lingers to this day, that Transformers collectively are a genderless species.

It’s not in my wheelhouse to understand the logistics of how that works, but it’s something I’ve never really agreed with due to the species still using masculine pronouns, which suggests, at the time, they’re an all male species. Some modern material like Aligned and IDW unhelpfully tried using this also, claiming the Transformers had no concept of gender as we define it and only began implementing it after contact with organic species. This also led to the controversial IDW Trans Arcee, and IDW’s flimsy retcons about how gender DID exist on Cybertron but biological (technological?) females went… extinct (?), with trans women filling in the gap, while bio-technological females naturally existed on the various colony planets. IDW was not shy on Cybertron being a planet of gay men in its later years, so take that as you will, same with the fandom misconception of Caminus being the “Amazon woman” planet due to it bringing in other females in IDW.

All that said however, female characters were tinkered with in the early concepts of the series. Budiansky had tinkered with females, with his original intent for Ratchet being a ladybot, as he was meant to be a reference to Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

This is where the cartoon comes in, as female robots were meant to be part of the story from the start. A recently unearthed script and pitch bible for the cartoon reveals the Autobots were meant to include a girl named Firecycle. Firecycle as a female medic and mutual love interest to Optimus Prime, with her shtick being she took her medic role so seriously she’d stop to repair Decepticons who were clearly faking it. She also valued life above all else, so she didn’t like to walk/drive on grass, fearing she’d hurt it. It should be noted Firecycle originates from the early story bible and pitch episode “A Robot’s Best Friend is his Dog”, repurposed from the Car & Cable pitch that had Muffy instead of Bumblebee.

This pitch also included the human cast from Car & Cable Matt Conroy, Eddie and Wendy Fairchild, and their dog Burt, hence the dog part. Burt was able to sniff out Decepticons hiding in Vehicle Mode, with this early pitch also leaning into the idea of Autobots and Decepticons being genetically distinct, as surmised by Matt.

This pitch also included a Decepticon called Whirlpool but we don’t know their gender, personality or vehicle mode. I like to think they were the first female Decepticon, but we won’t know for sure unless more of the early concept work is unearthed.

In the end, Firecycle never made it through, Hasbro presumably still not wanting girls in the boys’ clubhouse. It wasn’t until the cartoon staff put their foot down later on, citing girls liked Transformers also, including their daughters, that Hasbro eased off on it.

From there we got Arcee, Elita-1, Beta, Chromia, etc.

The inclusion of ladybots later in the series did come off as something of a retcon, as to explain why we hadn’t seen them before, Shockwave would muse on thinking they were extinct this whole time, with the show later clarifying female robots were around from the start.

Most future cartoons would follow the G1 cartoon’s lead, not really dwelling on where ladies came from, but including them anyway. There was still a predominant male over female robot slant, with most females being generics that persisted in stuff like the Unicron Trilogy.

Some much later American retcons for the anime and toy line would state that several Mini-Cons, Alexis’ partner Sureshock among them, were female, with Galaxy Force’s Override, AKA Nitro Convoy, being gender bent from male in Japan to female in America to boost female presence in the show.

What’s interesting is the female robots pushed were exclusively Autobots, as the G1 cartoon never included female DECEPTICONS. It’s never been explained yet why this was, but I partly suspect that Hasbro was only ok with girls so long as they were Autobots, and didn’t want little girls being naughty due to girls in Megatron’s employ.

Japanese manga would surprisingly include the first female Decepticons for the Victory manga.

Though they were depicted as civilians, and never actually fought the Autobots.

Still the ball was slowly rolling from here to depict Ladycons, with Beast Wars BlackArachnia in particular as the more prominent representative for a while, with her inspiring the Decepticon Airachnid. Strika from Beast Machines also contributed to increased female presence among the Decepticons.

Interestingly Japanese media tried to split the difference, where while we did have BlackArachnia and Seacon Scylla…

…most of the female presence was limited to the Navi computers, who are similar to the Beast Machines Diagnostic Drone in being little side kicks that help the Maximals and Predacons for their missions.

RiD01 had a similar concept in T-Ai, the friendly AI that was pals with Koji and helped Optimus lead the Autobots against the Predacons.

Slowly but surely though, steps were being taken to include female Transformers on top of the female rep in humans like Carly, Sari, Miko, Kelly and so forth. Animated and RiD15 saw a particular increase in female Autobots AND Decepticons both as major toys and fun background/in-show only characters like Lightyear, Glyph, Filch and Glowstrike among others.

And then Aligned and IDW happened.

The creation of Solus Prime on the surface somewhat muddled things, as she’s the defacto female robot of which all female Transformers are descended from in the same way animal types and Mini-Cons descend from Onyx and Micronus. On top of being The Fallen’s girlfriend who fell to his (unintentional) domestic violence, early concepts also state she helped birth the entire Cybertronian race, so yeah none of that helps. Some more recent stuff seemed to catch on this mild stereotype and focused more on her forager status, being the inventor and gadget gal of the group. That didn’t stop her in modern times from becoming an exclamation/swear word in RiD15 and Cyberverse in “Sweet Solus Prime!” Her biggest contribution was primarily her giant Fixit Felix hammer, which was a reoccurring relic in Prime wielded by both sides, with Megatron using it in a scheme to build his own weapon.

Solus was also credited with building the Star Saber and Apex Armor, though the later in Prime was said to be built by Decepticon scientists, conflicting with the Solus claim…

IDW didn’t help either, as mirroring Marvel, Arcee was the first female robot, born from a forced gender transition reformatting by Jhiaxus for skud and giggles just to see what would happen if gender as defined by organics, was suddenly introduced into the Transformer species. Arcee was understandably none too happy about this, her identity being violated and viscously hunting down Jhiaxus to exact revenge.

She would finally get her revenge thanks to Dead Universe shenanigans, getting to kill the undead scientist over and over again until she was satisfied.

Furman penned this story way before the modern social justice warrior/grifter stuff took root, with most agreeing Furman’s more sci-fi way to create females in a robotic species didn’t work, and mostly ignored it. It wasn’t until the modern hoopla we’ve been stuck in kicked in did IDW writers try to fix the problem. My issue with it is they wound up over correcting it, continually drawing attention to a matter most would rather have left ignored until the end of the original IDW run.

The retcon ultimately became that Arcee was an ancient Transformer from its prehistory, who was a mighty warrior alongside his brother Galvatron. At some point, Arcee wanted to be reformatted into a female body, and out of desperation sought out Jhiaxus intentionally rather than being captured at random. The earlier anger and rage was reinterpreted as Arcee instead being loopy from bad software used in her reconstruction.

Not helped either was a slip up confusing the matter if other ladybots existed on Cybertron pre-Arcee, with MTMTE, TAAO, & OP explaining them as trans ladybots also, and that Cybertron’s females either way left the planet or became extinct. Whatever the case, the planet became populated by male robots who were unfamiliar with females, creating a Vandread situation when Ladybots were shown to still exist on colony planets I don’t think was at all intentional…

Simply put it was a mess.

A mess IDW and later Skybound sought not to repeat by just having Ladybots of all makes and models exist from the start, no mental gymnastics needed.

It’s this heavy insistence though on trying to make trans woman rep, good intentioned but hopelessly flawed, that got grifters and some veteran fans cheesed off. On top of the bizarre situation with Arcee, the main trans rep besides her were Anode and Lug, new characters for MTMTE/LL who were met with revulsion because most readers found them incredibly annoying (though some were mad at them for being trans also, let’s not dance around that). It doesn’t help at the height of the feminism stuff in the mid 2010’s saw news outlets claim female Transformers were being introduced into the franchise by IDW, a horrible misunderstanding, and shows that most weren’t really aware of Arcee, Elita, Firestar, Blackarachnia, Thunderblast, Airrazor, and more from older material…

Another frowned upon thing from this era that persisted to EarthSpark was the habit of gender bending legacy bots into females, with Skywarp, Frenzy, Ravage, Swoop, and Jazz as particular standouts, alongside Nova Storm (a generic in the scheme of things but still noteworthy). There was also a peculiar push from modern cartoon writers to make Thundercracker a girl, but Hasbro put their foot down on him specifically. This is partly why Nova Storm occupies the modern Jet trio, to make up for the lack of a lady Thundercracker. It’s this modern flippant gender swapping that annoys people, as it comes off as an artificial attempt to boost female robots in a time when we have plenty more preexisting ladies to choose from. (And I say that aware of the era Override came from.) Clearly it doesn’t matter unless it’s a popular male character turned female, which is why I’m surprised Hot Rod, Grimlock or Soundwave haven’t gotten gender bent yet. It’s also why I side eye Mae Catt’s sole lament on ES being unable to bring back trans Arcee, the one thing everyone just wants to escape from… Read the room, Mae. There was room for a trans robot, but Arcee wasn’t it.

Still, despite the very bumpy ride getting there, female Transformers did start becoming more common place, with the Autobots typically having Arcee, Windblade or Elita-1 as the token chick of the team, while the Decepticons were a toss up. As of typing, they still haven’t settled on a defacto female Decepticon, despite experimenting with Airachnid, Nightbird, and Shadow Striker in those roles.

Still let it be known the next time a grifter starts trouble, female Transformers were supposed to exist from the start, it just took them a little longer to drive by was all.

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The Swapticons have been officially been unveiled.

They’re not really what anyone expected visually but they are basically a return to Micromaster Combiners…

…With a bit of Bot Shots.

They mix and match about how we expected, with the absurdity of combining Optimus with Cheetor being just what I hoped.

Still, making them into blocks that largely transform into chunky trucks or animals seems to have been the only way for it to work as intended, as Bumblebee and Hot Rod being a muscle car, or Shockwave being a spider tank Muppet again doesn’t lend itself super well to the engineering here. Presumably, as we’re getting Decepticon Jets, they too will be chunky cubes that mash into an equally chunky jet thing.

Now to see if Starscream is the ass end or not.

So the stand out thing are the Vehicle/Beast Modes.

Cheetor and Tigatron combine into a cheetah, but to be charitable, they’re probably meant to be a generic big cat. As we’re getting Ravage and Shadow Panther also, more than likely, barring any weirdness with Ravage, that it’ll be a repaint of Cheetor and Tigatron.

Also notable is the two cats being labeled as Maximals, as Hasbro has suddenly been more chummy in including Maximals as a third faction in the general toy line post RotB. The Predacons haven’t been as lucky, so it’s unclear as of typing if the black cats will be Predacons or just more Decepticons.

Hot Rod and Bee’s combined form surprisingly resembles Rodimus Prime’s Winnebago mode.

It’s just nice to see a new version of it after so long.

Megatron and Shockwave seem to combine into a space military vehicle, which adds some nice variety to both when usually they just wind up being tanks. That said, with Megatron as a helicopter in ES, a space jet in Wing Fighter, possibly a bull in CyberWorld, a space tank-gun in Skybound, and this thing in Swapticons, maybe Hasbro is becoming more flexible on what Megatron can turn into.

Optimus and Magnus are funny. The first major return to them being able to combine after RiD01, and it’s become what appears to be more of an off road truck. I guess Hasbro is really gunning for Optimus to be an off road type. I feel like people are intentionally ignoring the obvious jokes about Magnus being Prime’s trailer. Poor guy. I wonder if Magnus carries Roller inside of him in this scenario, or he IS Roller.

Fans seem to be mixed on these, as I think many expected something more complex when nothing indicated this was for adult collectors specifically, but the delightful weirdness of it does seem to be winning them over. Now if it attracts kids, that’s the important thing.

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I can’t help but think a small part of it IS DEI related, on top of all the excellent points above. The early press releases did mention diversity as being a selling point, which is probably why the show increasingly became about the Malto kids, and not the Terrans.

The original box art displays the kids front and center over the other Transformers on the side of the packaging.

The toys we do get of the kids usually wind up shelfwarming horribly.

And frankly I can’t help but notice the toy advertisements use kids that somewhat resemble Robbie and Mo exclusively.

They’re really trying hard to get people and kids onboard with the Malto kids and nobody’s falling for it.

The recent advertisement includes two other kids alongside the Robbie and Mo looking ones.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but if the Maltos weren’t self isolating in story, these two kids feel like kids Robbie and Mo would be friends with in story, maybe with their own sleeves and partner Digimon, er, Terrans.

The two other kids have this real life cartoon air about them like the Malto stand ins, so I think I’m gonna headcanon that now, these are the Malto kids’ friends from Witwicky.

God, Robby is so annoying. He whines a lot in S2/3. When he gives orders, I just wanna throw up.🤮 Why should they listen to you? Your mom was a lieutenant. You should be discussing plans with others! You are not a soldier and strategist! Get a reality check. I would love someone to smack some sense in him.

And seeing Mo, a ten year old, getting into action by being a “hero” and saving herself and others from death and threats she shouldn’t handle makes me cringe. It’s not fun and easy to avoid dying. I want to do Everything Wrong With so bad. Humans are important, but these Malto brats are the worst.

ES might as well be called The Robby and Mo Show. IMO they're the worst things about it. I'm not opposed to kid characters, but the TFP kids, Cody and Frankie from RB, Rad and Alexis from Armada are actually likable to me.

I'm convinced that part of the reason ES failed is because of how much Robby and Mo are shoved in the audiences faces. They were even prominently featured on a lot of original ES toy packaging. The writing stresses how SPECIAL they are when they'd be nothing without the cyber sleeves. According to the Production Bible, there was actually going to be an episode that had the Terrans and kids getting curb stomped because they let their cockiness get the better of them. Now that would've been interesting character development for them not to rely on the sleeves so much.

A common complaint about the show is that there's no sense of stakes because Robby and Mo just magic the pain away. Although I will say that I'm impressed the cyber sleeves weren't used to resolve the escape room episode in S3. The fight against Mandroid's Moving Lair in Age of Evolution remains one of my favorite things in the show because it was good guys working together and not ass pull powers saving the day.

Let's not forgot that S1 didn't care about Robby, even when he was dying. Now I'm suddenly supposed to care about his love life in S2? It's why I headcanon that everything post S1 is his self insert fanfic. I give him credit for trying to go against the Malto FAMILY thing at points.

Mo is frustrating to me because one moment she'll have more emotional maturity than a lot of adults, then she'll act more like a kid the moment the plot demands it. Her going on and on about FAMILY is also annoying. I still go WTF at her fighting Mandroid in Prime Time.

They don't even show up in my Lotus Au until way later when Mandroid removes the cyber sleeves at the request of Alex and Dot.

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So a new mobile game collab for Transformers came out based on a game I’m sure most of us have never heard of.

-sung to the tune of Clayfighters theme song- Wing Fighters~!

From what I can gather it’s an on rail shooter game with jets. It’s really nothing to write home about but what it offers I still find interesting.

The Autobot team consists of Optimus and Jetfire, while the Decepticons have Megsy, Screamer and Devastator. Unicron is a major boss, coming to eat Earth…

How that works when he’s just a disembodied head I don’t know. Either he’s come to literally chew us out out of spite, or it works on Futurama head in jar logic.

What’s most interesting is despite using the Evergreen designs everyone hates, they let Optimus and Megatron have new designs to better fit the game. Megatron in particular gets to turn into a space plane.

Optimus gets a jet pack in Robot Mode meanwhile.

The jet pack evokes Sonic Wing Mode and Beast Hunters beefy Optimus.

But Optimus, at least in the trailer, still turns into a truck. No special space truck ship thing for him.

Indeed, in game animation shows Megatron as the only one able to Transform in the game, with his Robot Mode also having a jet pack.

Starscream and Jetfire are only in Vehicle Mode.

Devastator appears to be a boss of some kind, but I can’t personally find footage of what such a fight looks like in gameplay.

I’m actually kinda sad Devastator doesn’t have his own jet pack. I just think it’d be funny since he feels left out.

The trailer is voiced, with Jon Bailey clearly doing Optimus, but I’m not sure who is doing Megatron; it’s not Frank Welker, but it’s a remarkable impression of him. Some think that might be AI which … might be, but I hope not. Maybe Bailey can do Megatron’s voice now, I’m not sure. It still sounds like a human doing it to me, it’s not robotic, no pun intended.

Still I think it’s neat, the collab. If nothing else, a lot of the recent collabs like Squad Busters have a certain charm to them I can appreciate even though this isn’t what fans want game wise.

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Colony planets are kind of weird in the current era of Transformers, as it feels like modern writers hate them, coming up with excuses to destroy them rather viscerally. Cyberverse destroying Velocitron and the Dinobot planet come to mind in particular, and with the Autobots on Earth in EarthSpark convinced they’re the only Transformers left in the universe, makes me think similar destruction to colony planets happened off screen…

EarthSpark really hammers home how much they want the Transformers to suffer and how the Emberstone is the only life giving relic left to give hope to the species.

And then the show later on reveals the Sharkticons and several Quintesson victims who appear to be other Transformers from other planets Quintus created…

The show either can’t commit to its own isolationism, or just wants the outlook for the Cybertron species to be absurdly bleak. There’s no middle ground here.

It should be noted colony worlds predate G1, as Antilla, Chaar, and Paradron existed in the 80’s cartoon, with others appearing in Japanese media like Planet Micro.

Galaxy Force would center its entire story around the planets Velocitron, Gigantian, Animatros, and Earth as long lost TF colonies as part of an ancient colonization effort in Cybertron’s past, with IDW borrowing Velocitron and Animatros (now Eukaris) in particular for its stories.

I agree with @monocle-teacup’s ideas.

By Galaxy Force terms…

Metroplex would be bemused at the wee lil’ creatures harnessing such incredible ancient Prime power. I think he’d be humbled and mostly cool with it thanks to Terratronus speaking on the Maltos’ behalf.

Scourge on the other hand would be aghast the audacity of these puny fleshlings he could easily crush between his claws like Turbosects.

My own notes have it that most colony planets are creations of Quintus, to better reflect his “Johnny Appleseed” concept, and that a pulse wave sent out by Hashtag to see if other Transformers are still out there starts bringing them to Earth. Mandroid is no more by the time colonists start arriving to investigate the signal, but his own fears about more Transformers coming to Earth are realized this way.

While still small, there’s a larger number of Terrans in this scenario to justify to other Transformers that Earth is a fellow colony: The Maltobots, The Witwiccans, the Chaos Terrans (who have more to their number here), the prehistoric Terrans that served Terratronus, the organic Sub-Atlanticans, the organic Cobra-Laians, and humanity itself all being descendants of the Emberstone.

What do you think of Earthspark rewritten, or in an AU or whatever where former colonies exist like in IDW? It’ll be cool to see the involvement of other planets of Transformers and how they’ll revolve around Cybertron (after the war ended on Earth and Cybertron). How will Earth fit in the picture if the former colones found out there are TFs born on Earth?

TBH, I haven't thought about things on a galactic scale in the ES universe. I admit that I'm a bit rusty with IDW stuff but as for what I could see happening:

-I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be backlash of some sort that two human kids were put in charge of the Emberstone.

-There would be debate about whether or not Earth would count as a colony since the Terran population is so small

-TF colonies being a thing would further explain why Mandroid was only concerned with wiping out the TFs on Earth: It's a warning to other TFs that they would meet the same fate if they came to Earth.

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A recent comm for @thebigboy71 where Illumination Bowser comes to check out the Mean Bean.

It's set in my own Sonic Movie AU that goes more into the Owls and other villains out to capture Sonic besides Robotnik.

The lizard guy is my take on the scrapped Rava, the original villain for the first Sonic movie. A teenager from the Lizard clan that's constantly vying for control of Planet Mobius (as well as Earth) and is in a three way feud between the surviving Echidna and Owl clans.

The Metal Sonic behind Stone is part of several prototypes Stone and Robotnik were developing using Sonic's quills as a power source.

The Owl is a haggared elderly Owl named Terios, after Shadow's prototype design. I saw him having connections to Shadow, but otherwise is a traitor to the Owl order, working for unscrupulous types like the Lord High Monitor Lizard (the leader of Rava's clan), Zavok the Warlord, Black Doom, and Dark Oak.

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Jazz’s last known major TV appearance after TFA was RiD15.

He assists dealing with Decepticon Ped and later a Decepticon invasion at series end.

Jazz is in Cyberverse… kinda.

Jazz has a toy, but never appears in the cartoon beyond a name drop. One of the writers insists this version of Jazz is female, which some fans… absolutely didn’t agree with… Genderbending remains a touchy subject.

Jazz SHOULD have been a mentor character in EarthSpark, but he doesn’t appear outside of a brief cameo in a flashback, and so far hasn’t appeared in person.

Poor dude doesn’t even have a crappy recolor toy like Breakdown got.

Can someone remind Hasbro that Jazz exists

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I drew this last year, but I forgot to post it here. Since Geeta appeared in the anime battling LDR, it felt appropriate to post the Ash version now.

Geeta… is not popular at all I’m finding. And apparently her role in the anime also ruffled some jimmies, so with that in mind, I played around with this intentionally.

In the Paldean League, Ash and Nemona are set to fight in the final match, with Geeta being the semi final opponent. Geeta and Nemona already fought in the past, giving Nemona her Champion rank, and knowing how much Nemona wanted to fight Ash, she intentionally threw her fight with Ash, using Pokemon weak to Ash’s choices. Larry saw right through this, which is why he’s uncharacteristically a bit more… heated, and when he confronts her about it, Geeta just shrugs him off.

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The Heathers AU kids join the Unicron Trilogy.

Veronica, JD, Duke, Braverman, Liam are the main representatives, though Chandler, MacNamara, Specs, Sputnik, Thrash, Throttle, Kurt, Ram, Cheryl, Tracey, Martha and their siblings/parents have roles in the background.

In this version of events, the kids live at the CosmoScope Research Center village, their parents having some scientific or construction contributions to the Center.

Personality wise, the kids are similar to their Heathers counterparts, though JD’s situation isn’t nearly as dire as he’s lived at CosmoScope since he was six when Bud got a lucrative contract to help with construction down there, and he met Veronica and Braverman then.

Braverman and Heather Duke are Billy’s cousins, JD is Kicker and Sally’s cousin. Braverman, Rad, Alexis and Veronica are neighbors and they get along pretty well like siblings due to having similar personalities. Veronica and Alexis bonded over their scholastic achievements, while Braverman and Rad bonded over their adventurous spirit. Braverman had a little kid infatuation with Rad that years later, he’d realize Rad was his first crush.

The Heathers kids meet the Autobots and Mini-Cons originally at the carnival Rad and Carlos snuck High Wire and Grindor into.

Braverman was brought to the Autobot base by Rad shortly after, albeit reluctantly as Rad was forced to baby sit, and with the adults busy, and had no choice but to bring him along despite Jetfire’s reservations. Veronica and JD followed the two boys, conflating the matter more.

After Heather Duke started snooping after seeing her cousins toddle off with Rad and found the base by accident, Optimus appointed his wife Firecycle and Jetfire as the younger kids guardians, something the motherly Firecycle was excited about but Jetfire wasn’t as much. Jetfire did wind up forming a bond with the younger kids despite his concerns about sticky fingers and barf in his Vehicle Mode. JD wound up bonding with Firecycle, noticing she had similarities to his dead mother Jocelyn.

Braverman and the others tagged along during the camp adventure, and a different story saw them find and bond with the newly reactivated Dinobot Mini-Cons: Dile, Zaur, Graphy and Noise.

Due to the dangers posed by Unicron, Optimus and Rad insisted the younger kids remain on Earth much to their disappointment, but the kids got their shot 10 years later during the Energon conflict.

Specs and Sputnik worked on the Lunar and Martian Cities, with the jocks, Martha and Tracey working on Energon Tower and City construction at Bud’s company with the Autobot Build Team, Grapple, Hoist, and Boulder.

Cheryl, Mischa, Billy, Fred, and Veronica assisted with various tasks around the Energon Cities, while Braverman and Dean worked on the field helping Kicker scout Energon deposits alongside their Mini-Con Dinobot partners, a flock of Cyberhawks like Laserbeak, and the adventurous husband and wife team Outback and Cindersaur. JD is still close with Firecycle, though the two don’t get to see each other as much due to the frantic pursuits of the Energon mining boom.

A small Decepticon incursion after rumors of Galvatron still being online spread tragically saw Veronica disappear in an Energon processing facility explosion with JD loosing his hand. Due to friendly relations with the Aggorian and Zertonian colony, JD got a Handroid as a special prosthetic that allows him to remotely control and monitor the Cyberhawk flock as they scout areas of interest. The loss of Veronica shook Braverman and JD deeply, with them unable to trust other Decepticons afterwards as Tidal Wave, Cyclonus and Demolishor all defected one by one back to Galvatron. When put in a compromised position with Cyclonus’ cousin Snowcat, the boys would reluctantly choose to trust the Mercenary to escape their predicament, and it took a lot of convincing from Hot Shot for the boys to trust Wheeljack for similar reasons.

It’s heavily implied JD and Dan have been dating, with some gags showing them clearly interrupted in making out in private when an alarm goes off.

The Heathers’ rich families are shareholders and business partners in the CosmoScope and Energon mining and while Red, Gold, Red’s sister Charlie and Green’s older sisters and younger brother don’t usually interact directly with the Autobots, Green tends to bull her way into affairs. She insists she’s keeping tabs on where her family’s money is going, but secretly she’s looking to escape from her family’s drama, and is jealous Braverman and Billy work on the frontlines with the Autobots. Heather is not afraid to tell off Optimus and calls him fat due to his new body, and often wonders if all the Energon is going to his “beer gut”. Optimus’ protective sister Ariel isn’t a big fan of Heather for this reason, though Firecycle knows Heather is a good girl (it’s just buried under her mean girl flab…). When Sentinel Prime was reactivated by a stray burst of Energon and started his own campaign to smear Optimus, Heather was actually the first to come to Optimus’ defense alongside Kicker, Ariel and Firecycle. Heather would also form a friendship with the Autobot Downshift that persisted well into the search for the Cyber Planet Keys.

During the final battle with Liege Maximo and Galvatron, the children were aboard Omega Sentinel with a reformed Sentinel Prime and other Autobots when the Guardian Robot was sucked into a warp anomaly caused by the Liege. The crew was thought dead, with the partnership between Earth and Cybertron strained because of it, but in actuality the crew has survived, being brought a further 10 years later by none other than Vector Prime. Vector Prime also had an extra traveling companion, Veronica, who he had also saved from the earlier Energon explosion.

When reunited with their families, Braverman met his now 10 year old baby brother Liam, while JD learned through his Aunt Miranda Bud had died in a construction accident. Liam and Veronica joined the hunt for the Cyber Planet Keys alongside Coby, Bud and Lori.

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Yeah, the interactions with the other residents and the far superior writing is what helped Rescue Bots immensely.

It’s why it’s disappointing that despite having the same staff, EarthSpark seems to have greatly misunderstood Heatwave and co’s own isolation with the Burns’ on Griffin Rock…

I think a lot of the isolation frankly has to do with the show greatly advertising it having a mixed race cast, going above and beyond to make them the focus, to the point Robbie and Mo are front and center on the old toy packaging, obscuring the Terrans and Autobots. The show also doesn’t help by giving them Power Ranger-Tron suits and making them more important than the Transformers. Masterforce this ain’t.

I feel like Autobot City would be a thing here, with humans and Autobots living peacefully. Energon based technology is common place, with clean energy based systems based on Cybertronian tech helping generate Energon similar to what’s implied in G1 and in Skybound. GHOST operates within Autobot city and is a NEST/Earth Defense Command stand in, though it does have some limitations similar to what’s implied in Prime. There’s a prison system similar to the RiD15 crypo pods, with the worst Decepticons captured and locked up in there, with still at large Decepticons occasionally trying to break them out while trying to steal Energon.

Some of the Terrans release the other Decepticons, being smoothed talked by Starscream or another character, being lied to in how the Decepticons are merely an oppressed group trying to survive under Autobot doctrine, to better illustrate what I feel ES should’ve been exploring: the Terrans as a neutral party starting out that become interested in the Autobot and Decepticon ideologies and how that shapes them. Like Thrash actually aligns more with the Decepticons, but he loves his Autobot and human family and makes a point to say he’s a punk, but he’s not an extremist. Hashtag is interested in the freedoms Decepticonism promises, but realizes too late she’s fallen for “fake news” and has to make up for her mistakes. Twitch is like El Tigre and is somewhere in the middle of being an Autobot or Decepticon, Jawbreaker is firmly an Autobot, working with Bulkhead, Grapple and the Dinobots, Nightshade is also 100% Autobot, falling in with Wheeljack and Perceptor, and finding the Decepticons’ science intriguing but heartless and barbaric. Spitfire and Aftermath are all for the Decepticons and while they have some lingering attachment to the Maltos, they’re ultimately the bad bully kids you see in movies who love being a bully. That said the two Chaos Terrans are trouble makers but aren’t fully willing to kill anyone, showing even they have standards. Like say Aftermath beats the crap out Jawbreaker, thinks he’s made his point and lets him live, but Starscream insists the Dinobot needs to be shot in the head, which Aftermath is against, thinking that’s overkill.

A lot of Mandroid’s annoyances are the same, but he detests seeing the Autobots and some reformed Decepticons like Devastator and Knock Out running around doing public service jobs alongside humans. I feel like Knock Out would fancy himself the hot cop you see in pin up stuff, and likes to be the bad cop to Schloder’s Inspector Gadget like good cop. Mandroid especially hates the Terrans, noticing they have unique powers that if handled improperly could kill all humans, and he especially is concerned how some of them want to be Junior Decepticons.

Do you think ES would have been improved by going the Rescue Bots route? Like, the war is there, and people are fighting it, but there’s also other stuff going on where our protagonists are so the show focuses on that

For as many complaints as I have about ES, the setting being postwar is a great concept. What should've happened was actually showing the audience how Earth and humanity as a whole have been affected by the War. We see that there's TF focused media and collectibles, but that strikes me as more fan pandering than actual worldbuilding. Has Cybertronian tech been introduced to human society? How has the presence of TFs influenced things like economies, relations between world powers, etc? Does the average human worry that they might encounter a TF one day? Who knows since ES is too busy focusing on the Malto bubble.

Part of what made RB work is that it didn't solely focus on the Rescue Bots and Burns family. Griffin Rock was an actual town with a recurring cast of citizens like the Greene family, Mrs. Neederlander and Mister Pettypaws, Huxley Prescott, and Mayor Luskey. Most importantly, the writing quality was fantastic.

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I fear the finished product probably wasn’t that good anyway if they felt the need to cancel it instead of push forward.

I stand by the original plan was ReActivate and EarthSpark were meant to release together and shared some concepts for synergy, but both suffered in the end, and are now dead. Well baring any last minute thing from EarthSpark, but it does feel like Hasbro and Takara have moved on to CyberWorld and Wild King.

How these two would’ve fit together I’m not sure. Both share a blue eyed Starscream that feels like it was supposed to go somewhere but was just left hanging as a bizarre aesthetic choice.

The Terrans obviously weren’t going to be in ReActivate, but I wonder if the alien enemy the Autobots, humans and Decepticons were fighting against would’ve been adapted in ES somehow as another Emberstone lifeform, albeit hostile like the Quintessons. What the enemy from ReActivate would want with the Emberstone off hand I don’t know, since they seem to be a cancerous species. I guess they’d use it to spread more cancer but still. I feel like it’d be a take on the G2 Swarm and the Steven Universe Cluster somehow but whether the Maltos manage to make friends with it and purify it I can’t say. Maybe Terratronus wound just step on it and that’d be the end of it.

This is news surprising absolutely no one, but Transformer Reactivate has been officially canceled, which once again has the Robots in Disguise only really having their comics as a bright spot in media. Shame they couldn’t even get a finished product out.

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Based on a Makotron gag about Skybound Optimus upgrading into other forms after using Megatron’s arm as a replacement. One of the forms was him using Trypticon’s body…

And I thought it’d be funny to turn it into an actual Combiner in Energon, where Trypticon is an ancient Autobot part of the same faction as Omega Supreme. (My logic is based on Laserbeak being an Autobot in Armada, and Leviamon, a Dark Digimon, being part of the heroic DigiMemory Knights in Digimon Fusion.)

Design wise, this form is just a modified version of what Mako did, but designed to combine similarly to Omega Supreme. It also takes some cues from a few Daigunder and DragoBurst Combiner Modes and Shoutmon X2.

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Yeah like some fans are like “Oh maybe that didn’t happen in this version.” But considering how far Shockwave was willing to go, it’s pry not a stretch he caused a similar Ultimate Doom event to happen in ES at some point.

Everyone on Earth is WELL within their rights to tell the Decepticons to go to hell.

The only difference atm is a chunk of Cybertron isn’t in Earth’s ocean, or having been turned inside out like in DotM.

It’s why I’m forever confused who thought it was a good idea to make the DECEPTICONS into an allegory for minorities when the Autobots make more sense as escaping refugees looking for asylum from an oppressive regime.

Should Earthspark been a sequel instead of a standalone? I don’t see anyone discussing this.

In ES, we got Optimus who is the same as in G1, Spike Witwicky exists (or he’s a nobody), we don’t know how they got to Earth or how the fight began on Earth, did they have selected allies, who died, what characters exist in this continuity, what happened during the war on Earth that could play a significant role in the post-war, what concepts exists?? A lot of the story is generalized. Nothing interesting, just ‘post-war inspired by G1; make it vague, fill the minor gaps, add some changes and let the imagination fill in the rest’. I could be wrong. But I love that they borrowed some IDW ideas.

New audiences are not going to understand what’s going on and not get into this story. Only fans can watch this with their existing knowledge from other continuities. Watching a standalone show as a fan kinda feels… unfulfilling, empty, I don’t how else to say it. I’m glad it’s a new idea but it’s less satisfying. We don’t know who or what the iconic characters (Autobots and Decepticons) are in this setting, they have smaller roles and don’t have much depth. Especially for new viewers.

IMO, ES should be separate from G1. Even if it was a sequel, it wouldn't save the show from writing quality issues which I'll get to later.

From what I've seen on other sites like tfw2005 and reddit, one of the only times ES gets brought up is when a person asks if it's a sequel to G1. It doesn't help how much G1 fan service ES has. While it's neat long time fans can have a "I understood that reference!" moment, there are also TF fans that are sick of the G1 pandering and want something new. ES was supposed to be that, but then it added the fan service like it knew some people would immediately reject the show because it strayed too much from the typical TF formula. It's pretty telling that ES S2 pretty much scrapped everything from S1 to the point that one of the staff made a tweet about it:

Budget and time constraints are most likely a factor for how how vague things are in ES. However, most of the vagueness feels intentional because the writing quality wasn't up the challenge of doing actual nuance. It'd be hard to really make the Cons and Megatron sympathetic if they were shown being utter bastards like most of the them were in G1 and especially in IDW. The writing across all seasons of ES operates on the assumption/hope that the audience won't question anything.

And I know people are probably sick of me bringing this up, but the show's insistence with focusing on the Maltos as well as the way they're written is a huge reason why ES never realized its full potential. How are you supposed to look at the effects of war when the main humans behave like there wasn't a war most of the time? Wanna see more of the actual TF characters doing something? Too bad, this is the Robby and Mo Show. Sure, the TFs do get some time to shine, but they ultimately take a backseat to Robby and Mo. The Terrans were supposed to be a new subspecies of TF, but being a Malto is the most important thing.

So many people like to cite Nightshade as being THE reason ES failed when the reality is that the show's overall writing turned a lot of people away. It being a G1 sequel might've made more viewers stick around longer, but nostalgia can only get you so far.

If the writing was better in S1, I'm 100% certain that ES would've been one of my favorite TF series as well as one of my favorite cartoons in general.