Hasbro, an American toy manufacturer, and Takara Tomy, a Japanese toy firm, jointly produce the Transformers media franchise. The story revolves around the conflicts between Autobots and Decepticons, two intelligent, living, autonomous robots who have the ability to change into different objects, such cars and animals. The franchise includes animated films, video games, comic books, toys, and comic books. In 2011, its sales amounted to almost ¥2 trillion ($25 billion), positioning it as one of the highest-grossing media franchises ever.

The franchise began in 1984 with the Transformers toy line, comprising transforming mecha toys from Takara’s Diaclone and Microman toylines rebranded for Western markets. The term “Generation 1” covers both the animated television series The Transformers and the comic book series of the same name, which are further divided into Japanese, British and Canadian spin-offs, respectively. Sequels followed, such as the Generation 2 comic book and Beast Wars TV series, which became its own mini-universe. Generation 1 characters underwent two reboots with Dreamwave in 2001 and IDW Publishing in 2005, with a third starting in 2019. There have been other incarnations of the story based on different toy lines during and after the 20th century. The first was the Robots in Disguise series, followed by three shows (Armada, Energon, and Cybertron) that constitute a single universe called the “Unicron Trilogy”.

A live-action film series started in 2007, again distinct from previous incarnations, while the Transformers: Animated series merged concepts from the G1 continuity, the 2007 live-action film and the “Unicron Trilogy”. For most of the 2010s, in an attempt to mitigate the wave of reboots, the “Aligned” continuity was established. In 2018, Transformers: Cyberverse debuted, once again, distinct from the previous incarnations.

Although initially a separate and competing franchise started in 1983, Tonka’s Gobots became the intellectual property of Hasbro after their buyout of Tonka in 1991. Subsequently, the universe depicted in the animated series Challenge of the GoBots and follow-up film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords was retroactively established as an alternate universe within the Transformers robot superhero storyline.