Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001) - Team Bullet Train/Rail Racer

On September 8th, the dub of the Japanese Car Robots cartoon, called Robots in Disguise here in the United States, will celebrate its 20th anniversary. It's become a pretty obscure corner of the Transformers franchise for several reasons. One is that another cartoon has since been identified with the "Robots in Disguise" name (to say nothing of the fact that those words have been part of the franchise as a whole since its very beginning). Another, far more awkward, reason is that the cartoon hasn't been seen in the US since its original airing, and has never been made available on domestic video release (although it can be purchased via releases intended for other countries, and even played on some domestic players... although region-coding means that this option isn't available everyone¹). Nonetheless, the 2001 Robots in Disguise line has its fans, in large part for its unique take on the Transformers saga, as well as for having significant historic value as the very first cartoon not to be set within the original (now called "Generation 1") continuity family, a situation that has now become much more the norm for new toylines and cartoons (recent versions on Netflix notwithstanding).²

Not Your Father's Autobot - Episode #6 - Transformers: Generation 2 issue #6

For this episode of Not Your Father's Autobot, we're discussing Transformers: Generation 2 issue #6, cover dated April, 1994. This issue can be found reprinted via the Transformers: Dark Designs paperback, which may be purchased via Amazon. Listeners may also wish to try to find a copy of either the collected paperback or the issue itself via eBay (purchases through these links do not support the podcast in any way). 

Road Rocket (1995)

As the Generation 2 toyline moved into its third (and final, as it turned out) year, Hasbro began to quietly drop not only the "Generation 2" banner from the Transformers logo, but even the Autobot and Decepticon faction symbols from the toys themselves. While the toys were still all sold as belonging to one or the other factions, if you were to pick up a loose toy without its packaging or instructions, you could easily be forgiven for not knowing whether the character was a "good guy" or a "bad guy." That said, the color schemes will often give the astute collector a clue. In the case of Road Rocket, if you decided that the red color scheme suggested the likelihood that the character was an Autobot, you would be correct.