Smashdown (2019)

For nearly a decade now, the Generations lines of Transformers toys have more or less explicitly focused on homages to Generation One (the plural suggesting a more expansive view notwithstanding). That doesn't mean that the occasional homage to another part of the Transformers franchise never sneaks in, but these occasions are definitely more the exception than the rule these days. Even more noteworthy, however, are the occasions when a Transformers toy is an entirely new character. Smashdown, from this year's War for Cybertron: Siege line, is such a novelty.

Universe Countdown (2009)

When the Transformers franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary (10 years ago now!), it used the Universe sub-line to feature homages to characters from the franchise's past. Ostensively, characters from all aspects of the franchise were featured, and this may even have been technically the truth, but it's hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the homages came from the Generation One portion of the franchise. Personally, this suited me fine, but I can certainly understand the concerns of fans who wish that other, now lesser-known, parts of Transformers history might have been revisited more often.

Combiner Wars Optimus Prime (2015)

If Hasbro has learned one thing in the past 35 years, it is that certain Transformers characters consistently sell toys, and that if any one character sells toys more consistently than any other, that character is Optimus Prime. The TFWiki suggests that Generation One Optimus Prime "has received the largest number of toys for any single Transformers character," and I see no reason to contradict that observation. While it perhaps isn't a guarantee that every new Transformers sub-line will contain at least one new Optimus Prime toy, one has to look fairly hard to find the exceptions.

Beast Wars II Powerhug (1998)

While it is true that animal forms have been a part of the Transformers franchise since the very beginning, the transition to the Beast era is marked by a move away from strictly mechanical approximations of animals to more organic forms. A focus exclusively on animals (as was the case when the Beast era began) also meant a wider variety of fauna being represented. It is hard to imagine a Transformer based on a pill bug (called a "roly-poly" when I was growing up) having come out during the "Generation One" era, but by the Beast era, such a mode was by no means unusual.

Smallest Transforming Transformers Bumblebee (2003)

Bumblebee was consistently described and depicted as one of the smallest of the original 1984 Autobots. This, of course, ignored the fact that other Minibots were essentially the same size (especially Cliffjumper, whose mold was so frequently confused with Bumblebee's back then that, as often as not, new Cliffjumper toys are often just straight repaints of Bumblebee toys), and as later explicitly-small Transformers like the Micromasters were introduced, it became a less important aspect of Bumblebee's character as time passed. When the "Smallest Transforming Transformers" Bumblebee toy came out in 2003, it may be seen as a return to Bumblebee's roots, although in fact the other toys in this line were, again, roughly the same size.

G.I. Joe featuring Ninja Force and Transformers box set (2017)

While I often mention Fun Publications as the group that used to run the official Transformers Collectors' Club (as well as BotCon) until Hasbro decided to go in a different direction at the end of 2016, Fun Publications had also been running the official G.I. Joe club and convention for several years at time they picked up the Transformers license in 2005. In fact, it was their success with G.I. Joe that led Hasbro to offer Fun Publications the Transformers license in the first place, and Fun Publications continued to hold the G.I. Joe license even after the Transformers club and convention closed up shop, with the Joe license ending only this past year, and final "going out of business" sales ending only this past week. Running clubs for both franchises offered Fun Publications the opportunity to do a few "crossover" exclusives, of which this box set is arguably the most ambitious (although, ironically, it didn't actually ship until after the Transformers club had ended just the month before).

Powerglide (1985)

When the Transformers line was being first planned out in the early 1980s, and the decision was made to feature two factions of characters in a battle of good vs. evil, attention was given to choosing alternative modes that made it possible to quickly determine one faction from the other, even if one didn't actually know who the character was or couldn't find the character's faction symbol. Thus, the early Autobots were all ground-based vehicles (cars and trucks), while the early Decepticons were weapons, communications devices, or aerial vehicles. It didn't take long for these lines to blur, and by just the second year of the franchise, we already get our first airplane Autobot: Powerglide.