Customer Reviews

Transformers: The Ultimate Guide

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Every Transformer fan, new and old, needs to have this book. People who are only familiar with the newest incarnations can learn how it all started and long time fans will appreciate having a complete chronological account of the phenomonon. The book starts right where it should - before the original toy line or TV show and eplains the history of the Transformers homeworld Cybertron and the beginning of the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. What follows is a detailed examination/explanation of EVERY incarnation of the Transformers up to and including Energon. Character bios, selected show synopsis, toy descriiptions and inner workings of key players are all covered and supported by detailed artwork and photographs. Multiple pages are givin to the Japanese toy line and continunity as well as the US and UK comics, including the latest from Dreamweave. What more could you ask for?

Before reading this book I was skeptical about it's ablity to cover the entire Transformers universe with the detail it demands. Now that I've read all 141 pages, it has become a jewel in my Transformer collection. For once the title "Ultimate Guide" has been used appropriately!

I was skeptical that this book could deliver, but on opening the cover was immediately drawn in by its graphic spreads and the marriage of art and type. No one could hope to chronicle the multifarious incarnations of Takara's transforming toys; but someone has. No one could untangle all the plot threads weaving through the saga of Cybertron; but someone did. No one could possibly provide an engrossing account of Hasbro's marketing variations or its Sunbow division's many animated series; no one except Furman, himself an astute observer and able author of Transformer comics.

Amazon's low price shifts this book from its intended specialty audience to the wider fringe fandom with some tangential interest in its subject: Seen the transformers movie, or the Armada series or owned an original Optimus Prime. Transformers raised the bar for toys, transforming action figures into complex and intriguing robots, and for cartoons, giving all those blocks of steel individual personalities. Furman's guide will delight the cognoscenti among collectors while opening for the casual reader Takara's transforming world.

When looking at an item such as this you have to factor in three things:

1. Transformers (or any toy, TV show, movie, etc. with a fan base) is personal. Not everyone will like everything all the time and what one thinks is fantastic another will hate.

2. A writer makes promises to his/her reader that should be kept. Mr. Furman tried, but fell flat. Let me explain with some selling points from the back of the book: "Cross-section artworks of the inner mechanics of the TRANSFORMERS". Yes, both of them..there is only 2 such drawings in the entire book (Prime and Megatron) and there are fairly forced explainations of the inner workings. "Extensive reviews of the toy lines, TV series, and comic book chronologies". These are extremely brief..2 pages for the TV series season one (12 episode recap with scarcely more than a paragraph each), 2 pages for season 2 (12 episodes, again the same), 2 pages for the Marvel series (issues 1-37). 37 comic issues in 2 pages is an "extensive review"??? Add to this a quote from page 8: "The saga has spawned many inconsistencies and divergent storylines, but now, at last, the one true history can be revealed". Guess what Furman was referring to...yep, Furman's comic script. A tad biased and not really appropriate for a guide that covers all storylines. Another troubling section is the toy coverage seeing that all this *is* based on toys. Let's take Generation 1 for example, only 16 characters are shown in toy form (multiple Primes and Megatrons). Many of the toys actually show paint and sticker wear. This may be a bit unprofessional since it is the "ultimate" guide and they can't get a First Aid with a readable decal?

3. Finally the question: What generation are you? 77 pages are devoted to G1 - G2 and 64 pages are Beast Wars and beyond. People that don't like Beast Wars will be bored with almost half the book and the same for people uninterested in G1. If you are a fan of both then you probably already know 98% of the material presented.

Hope this helps and I apologize if I was harshly negative, but people do expect something top notch when the word "Ultimate" is tossed around.

As a longtime Transfan who hasn't even gotten halfway through this book yet, what can I say but...WOW!!!
I'm well aware of just how comprehensive and attentive to detail DK's series of guide books are - from the Marvel and DC Comics character guides to the Star Wars books, from that super-cool James Bond guide detailing every movie up to 'The World Is Not Enough' to the Lego Book which contained almost every bit of info on the Lego company you could cram into print. But the Transformers guide goes above and beyond to appeal to both the rabid fanbase and those uninitiated in the multiverse of the Robots In Disguise. If you're not a diehard Transfan but are fascinated by that little toy line that became something of a pop-culture phenomenon, then this is the perfect place to acquaint yourself with the Transformers saga.
For starters, the first part of the book deals primarily with the story that started it all - the Generation One saga. And it's pretty expansive. Everything you could possibly want to know about the Transformers - from the geological makeup of the planet Cybertron to the exact inner workings of Optimus Prime and Megatron themselves, to the personalities that make up the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons - is covered here in glorious full-color detail. Veteran TF scribe Simon Furman was the right man to put in charge of cataloguing every little detail, smartly melding elements of both Marvel Comics' continuity and that of the G1 cartoon AND the newer Dreamwave Productions comics into one cohesive timeline. Furman does pick a little at the continuity conflicts and errors that have cropped up in the past twenty years of the franchise, but it's largely unimportant as the most critical elements are still covered. And there are some elements injected therein that even a Transfan would crack a smile at: Macadams Old Oil House, for one (complete with a transforming bartender who more or less looks like an Old West barkeep in robot mode), and even a chapter outlining Optimus Prime's many deaths and resurrections (I'm not sure, but I think only Dracula has come back from the dead more times).
But there's more. The book also covers the ill-fated Generation 2 segment of the franchise, the Beast Wars days and Beast Machines, Robots In Disguise and even the Armada-Energon continuity, all with the same depth and informative style, although not nearly as much as G1 given the rapid succession of these later series. And apart from character schematics, historical data and episode synopses galore, the book also hits upon the toys themselves, detailing some of the greats and even touching upon their Japanese upbringing in lengthy exposition. It allows for a great sense of prehistory to the Transformers franchise, explaining how the original G1 line was culled together from figures included in a multitude of toy lines released in Japan by Takara.
The comic book continuities are not left out, either, making up quite a bit of the foundation of the G1 backstory. Publishers and entire story arcs are referenced here, as are some of the defining personalities who helped flesh out an ever-growing mythology - from original TF writer Bob Budiansky to innovative TF artist Don Figueroa. There are segments dealing with both Marvel's American comic and its UK counterpart (both written, at one point, by Simon Furman, which gives him further credential for bringing this thing together).
But I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the more tantalizing, more mystic aspects of the Transformers saga brought up in this volume. Specifically, the origin of Cybertron itself, and of the everlasting duel between the heralds Unicron and Primus. Their struggle adds something not expected in a toy brand involving robotic characters: a defined mythology to their world. The Transformers' religious reverence for their origins highlights another dimension to the saga that, in the big picture, may enable the unseasoned reader to understand why these big lugs continue to ignite the 'sparks' of countless legions of fans.
When they say the Transformers are 'more than meets the eye', you'd better believe it...and if you don't, get this book. Kids will be drawn in by the outstanding graphics, and the young-at-heart who enjoy all things sci-fi and fantasy-related will not be disappointed. It's worth ever penny.

This is more recent than the 1st edition hardcover: If you *need* to have the newest ultimate guide, this silver paperback is it. You get the same content (G1, G2+, pictures of toys, comics, etc.) as the original white hardcover, plus 8 all-new pages.

First, some related items...
1. Transformers: The Ultimate Guide- hardcover. A very well made book, especially for G1 fans! And...
2. The Transformers - The Movie (20th Anniversary Special Edition). The *first* movie (animated), bridging G1 & G2.

Yes, this slightly newer paperback version has 8 new pages, but none of these cover the live action movie just released. It seems safe to say that if you already bought the hardcover, then this paperback is really unnecessary. They'll probably update both versions soon with pictures of the live action movie & toy tie-ins, right? So I know I'm sticking with the hardcover until the next edition is released. The hardcover is also better made (in my opinion) and goes well with the other DK hardcovers I bought. If anyone's curious: The 8 new pages in the paperback are split evenly in 2 catagories: 4 detailing recent IDW comics, and 4 showing pictures of various toys (2 pages of Alternators, and 2 pages of Transformers Classics). I'm thinking the official 2nd edition of this guide will be released later this year, or the first half of next. Until then, this silver paperback is OK- but I'm recommending the elegant hardcover as being the better overall design.

Over twenty years after arriving on American soil the Transformers continue to be one of the most popular toy lines. But more than just a toy line, with some dozen different animated series counting both in the states and in Japan, as well as multiple comic book series, the Transformers also has a rich and colorful history. The Transformers Ultimate Guide covers the toys, comics, and animated shows in this 144 page book that begins with a history of Cyberton and the eons long battle between Primus & Unicron, the light and dark side of the same coin. The book is written by long time Transformers writer Simon Furman. We'll learn of the very first Transformer named Prima, and the civil war on Cybertron, led by Megatron against the unsuspecting Autobots. Sentinel Prime was the first Autobot leader and would be killed by Megatron, and pass on the Matrix to the Transformer who become known as Optimus Prime. A timeline traces the Autobot/Decepticon war right up and including their eventual crash on Earth millions of years ago.

The book tries to provide a little bit of everything but with only 144 pages there has to be some shortcuts taken. The book provides profiles on the major Transformer characters including Optimus, Megatron, Shockwave, Jazz, Bumblebee, Starstream, Ratchet, Skywarp, and Soundwave complete with stats and notes on personality and weaponry. These profiles are interspersed throughout the book where they fit in with the TV shows chronology. Other Transformers featured are the Dinobots, Constructicons, Headmasters, Primus, Unicron, and Pretenders.

The book covers all of the American Transformers TV shows by season but rather than provide a detailed guide to each episode it instead spotlights the most notable episodes from each season. While it would have been great to have complete episode guides to all the shows, such a guide would end up being pretty massive considering the first Transformers show ran for 98 episodes alone. When you toss in Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Armada, Energon, etc..., one can certainly respect the decision to only spotlight a handful of episodes from each season. The bottom line is that with these certain episodes summarized along with a season synopsis you don't feel short changed. The one thing I would have loved, though, would have been some coverage of the Japanese animated shows and the Japan exclusive toys, especially since they are so readily available today thanks to the Internet.

The guide also looks at each of the Comic Book series' including the original Marvel Comics 80 issue run, the Generation 2 series, the UK versions, and the recent Dreamwave revival. Again the book provides a synopsis of key issues. Next we get a whirlwind tour through the Transformers toy line including a rare glimpse at some of the very early Takara Diaclone and Microman toys, such as the mini-Megatron and going right up through G1, G2, Beast Wars, RID, etc... The photography is very well done.

Is it an Ultimate Guide? Well it is very good but to me the ULTIMATE guide would detail every episode of every animated show and show all the toys. I know it's a pipe dream as such a book would have to be massive. But for a good sampling with excellent art ad photography and a concise history of the Transformers, it does a very good job and is a must have for any Transformer fan.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

This is a book that has guts - with its back cover proclaiming it to be "the first fully authoritative history" of the Transformers, and the interior introduction claiming that it is the "one true history" of G1, hardcore Transfans would not be frowned on for finding such statements insulting, sounding for all the world like the book will be dismissing the original comics and cartoon in favour of what IT says is right and wrong.

Thankfully, the reader will discover that this is NOT the case. The "one true history" that the entire G1 section revolves around proves to be that of the latest incarnation of G1 - the Dreamwave comic book series. While perhaps a little disrespectful to the cartoons and comics that CREATED the universe that these comics have to thank for their existence, it's understandable that this is the route taken - and the cartoons and comics themselves are hardly set by the wayside, getting multiple pages to cover their own stories. With everything from the geography of Cybertron, the history of the civil war, massive cutaways of Optimus Prime, Megatron and Unicron, profiles on selected individual soldiers and sub-groups like the Dinobots, Constructicons, Headmasters and Pretenders, the book provides a wide, general look at the G1 universe. However, it is in the cartoons and toy sections that its weakness shows, as scribe Simon Furman's lack of knowledge outside of the DW and Marvel comics results in several niggly factual errors - he's done his research, but he hasn't gone far enough to eliminate all his errors. The look of the pages is worsened by the fact that many of the toys photographed are mis-transformed, or look somewhat worn. It would have been child's play to find fans with toys that looked better than this, but they didn't bother.

Of course, the book doesn't stop at G1. There are sections for all the ensuing series - Generation 2, Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Robots in Disguise, Armada and Energon. The Beast sections are some of the nicest-looking ones in the book, with beautiful CGI art from animation company Mainframe, but each section could have done with just one or two more pages to add a little more details on the events of their latter seasons, with information on the BW events relating to G1, Transmetal 2's, or BM's Noble, Botanica and Megatron's numerous bodies limited only to the vague episode guide page (like every section of the book dealing with cartoons, the episode guide only has enough to room to include selected key episodes, so the whole story evades the reader even in these entries).

The G2 and Robots in Disguise sections, however, leave a bad taste in the mouth. There is very little to say about G2, and the section required nothing more than a comic summary and toy pictures, but in addition to this, it's been padded with an entry on G.I. Joe crossovers and fanfiction - two things which, while presented and written perfectly fine, are simply needless, and whose pages would have been bettered served elsewhere - namely in the RiD section, which is stuck only showing pictures of toys, lacking any real information on the cartoon series or characters (speculation was that this was because Disney, who own the show, wouldn't allow competitors DK access to it in time for print, but other comments by Furman imply it was bumped for the Energon section). Worsening the matter is that most of the pictures for the section are taken from adverts and package art for the toys, and feature some pretty bad mistransformations and missing parts.

The book ends with a look at Armada and it's current, sequel series, Energon, then a brief look at the Dreamwave comics, two of the best-handled sections of the book.

Looking back at what I have written here, it seems overly critical - but please, make no mistake, I heartily recommend this book. It's a brilliant overview of the history of Transformers and as concise a written guide as you could want - but it's just infuriating to me that DK's other guides for characters like Superman and Spider-Man, with their 60 and 40 years of history, could be so comprehensive, and yet the 20 years of Transformers has to be so abbreviated, with so many characters and episodes flat-out left out, to make the book an acceptable length. I am not pointing the finger of blame at anyone, however - Transformers simply has a *massive* history of characters, concepts and scenarios, making it all the more impressive and enduring. Furman's name power may make him come off as the most qualified person to write a book such as this, but some fan assistance would not have gone amiss. This would have stopped the mis-spellings (Elita One becomes "Eleta-1", for example, or the Armada episode "Cramp" becomes "Clamp") which are just the result of carelessness and not enough research, and would have provided superior toy pictures, and more accurate information about them. The toy pages are truly the weakest sections of the book - not one of them goes by that a factual error is not made. A fact-checker who truly knows his stuff - or perhaps several of them, one to each category, toy, comic, cartoon - would have caught these errors, and the book would have felt as though more care had gone into it.

Bottom line - this book is by no means an "Ultimate" guide. Entirely too much is left out, generalised or glossed over for that. But it's still a brilliant overview of Transformer history that both hardcore and casual fans should not hesitate to add to their collections.

First off, let me just say that this is a wonderful book. I heartily recommend it to all Transfans, despite its shortcomings.

Shortcoming which are, unfortunately, something this book most definitely has. Being a hardcore Star Wars fan, one of the things I look for in most science fiction series is continuity. Despite apparent evidence to the contrary, Transformers does indeed follow continuity, albeit rather loosely at times. And as with most sci-fi series, Transformers is set not just in one dimension, but in a multiverse of parallel realities.

It is here that this book fails. There are no clear-cut distinctions made between the various continuities of Transformers canon. The book is divided into sections according to the various series (G1, G2, Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Robots in Disguise, Armada, Energon, etc.), but this fails to please because of the fact that some of these series co-exist in their own universe and others (most notably G1) include multiple continuities. For example, the G1 cartoon, Beast Wars, and Beast Machines all exist in the same universe, yet references are made to Marvel, UK, and Dreamwave continuity in the G1 section without noting that several of the compiled facts came from separate dimensions.

The book also fails to establish exactly which series co-exist. Do the Dreamwave G1 comics take place in the G1 cartoon-Beast Wars-Beast Machines universe? The Dreamwave prequels universe? A universe entirely their own? We aren't told here, leaving those of us who haven't read the comics to hang out to dry.

In the continuity aspect, the book succeeds by drawing from separate continuities in order to fill in the gaps with facts that are apparently common to every dimension of the Transformers multiverse. Yet even here it fails by also including information that can't possible be true in every universe.

I doubt that the average Transfan is overly concerned about continuity, but after being a Star Wars fan for so long, it's become one of my top priorities for a fiction series. This book has a few minor successes in this aspect, but those are greatly surpassed by its failures. If you don't care that much about the separate continuities of the Transformers multiverse, this book is for you. And even if you do, it's still pretty darn good.

Santa brought me this book. I give this book 100 stars. I like my Transformers and mommy's antique ones. It [this book] tells you all about them, and G.I. Joe, too.
From mom: 1st ed., 2004 - Very informative. 141 pages of thoughtfully laid out, colorful photographs and descriptions of Transformer toys from Gen. 1 through early Energon. Though my brothers and I had a few of the early Takara robots as children, my interest in the whole T-former world went no further. This book has been particularly helpful for me to explain the history of Cybertron and its major and minor characters to my son. Also included, are summaries of selected episodes of the various TV seasons and both US & UK comic books. From an adult's perspective, I found the behind-the-scenes look at the storyline challenges the writers faced quite interesting. One last comment, my son and I both enjoy using this book to follow the 'transformation'/evolution of toy characters who've been around since the beginning (i.e. Optimus Prime), and noting changes between the first release of Optimus and the many subsequent versions.

This is a great book to have as it divides the world of the transformers into Generation 1, Beast wars, beast machines, and beyond.

I have a few gripes with the book but I'm a transformer purist and was a little ticked off when they forgot to include primes original transformation vehicle from the comic books. But all in all everything in this book is great.

Get it and be informed.

Safe travels:

David