Missing Link Arcee (2025)

As I said last month, most of the new characters introduced in The Transformers: The Movie had corresponding toys that came out in 1986 (even if, as I suggested earlier, these will likely not be the versions of these characters I'll be featuring this year on the blog). Such was not the case for Arcee, although for rather different reasons than was the case for the Quintesson Trooper. Arcee was not the first female Autobot to appear in the franchise (there were several introduced in a season two episode of the cartoon^*), but she was arguably the most important. Despite the character's prominence throughout the remainder of the era, the prevailing wisdom was that boys didn't want to buy toys of girl characters, and so fans would have to wait many years before official toys of Arcee were finally made available.

Quintesson Trooper (Buzzworthy Bumblebee Troop Builder Multipack, 2023)

While The Transformers: The Movie did the expected job of featuring characters based on toys that either had already come out, or were scheduled to come out in 1986, it also featured a number characters for which no toy was ever expected. However, given enough time, Hasbro has demonstrated that almost any character featured in Transformers fiction has a decent chance of eventually becoming a mass-released official toy.^* So it is with this "Quintesson Trooper," which appeared as a bailiff in the courtroom scene as a very minor character.

"Classics" Rodimus (2006)

As most Transformers fans already know, 2026 is the 40th Anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie. Having done other celebrations of the movie in the past, I've decided to do something different this year. Most of the time I feature a Transformers toy in 2026, I intend it to be a representation of one of the characters introduced in that movie. It probably won't be the toy that actually came out in 1986 (I've featured many of those already), but it will nonetheless be one of the characters first featured in the movie. To start things off, I'm looking at the "Classics" version of Hot Rod.

The Impossible Cat - A Parody

As longtime readers know, my wife and I have been cat owners for over twenty years now. Sadly, cats have a much more limited lifespan than humans, and thus we've had to say goodbye to two of these cats (Turtle and Kona), but have recently welcomed Earl Grey (pictured) into our home. The following parody (to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from Man of LaMancha) was written before Earl Grey came to us, and I have to say it doesn't seem to apply to him especially well. Even so, I hope you enjoy it! Maybe someday I'll get around to a proper recording....