Transformers: The Headmasters

If like me, you grew up in the halcyon days of the 1980s, the chances are that you were exposed to the Transformers; a popular children’s cartoon series about warring transforming robots. I still have such fond memories of this show- the heroic Optimus Prime and his loyal band of Autobots (the good guys) against the maniacal villain Megatron with his thick headed Decepticons (the bad guys), it was a fun show full of vivid sci-fi imagery and showcased a surprisingly solid soundtrack (though perhaps blinded by nostalgia, I still cherish the quirky English voices for Starscream and Soundwave). The appeal of Transformers is perfectly encapsulated in the shocking and rather violent theatrical movie, starring the voice talent of legendary actors like Orson Welles and Leonard Nimoy and full of cheesy “hair metal”, it was a rare children’s series willing to take a few chances and sell a few cool toys too!

After 98 successful episodes, the US TV channels cancelled Transformers, but since the story and its famous characters were still making waves around the world, the franchise was given a new lease of life in Japan with “Transformers: The Headmasters”.

Even today, as you can no doubt tell from this enthusiastic introduction, Transformers has a permanent place in my heart. It’s a cult classic franchise, with a strong community built around a steady stream of DVD releases and rose-tinted nostalgia. As you are about to find out, “Transformers Headmasters” is anything but a perfect show and yet even as I sit hear now, my heart bleeds energon.

For a number of reasons, “Headmasters” is a disappointment. My forgiving nostalgia has been brutally shattered by a cringe-worthy English dub that is at worst “farcical” and at best “laughable”. There is no attempt made to sound like the old characters, no ‘robotic’ effects on the voices, it just sounds wrong. I implore thee, how could they do this to Soundwave? The coolest Decepticon of all time.

To be honest, with the novelty of childhood recollection cobbled, I’m struggling to find much good to say about Headmasters. I know we are lucky to be getting this release at all (with the original Japanese audio no less!) and for that, I’m geniuenly happy for Transformers’ fans, but I can’t hide the fact I found this newer series to be an utter bore.

The story begins with Galvatron (formally Megatron) doing what he does best, shooting at Autobots, screaming at his dumb minions and laughing out loud at near diabolical levels of insane villainy.

Yet again, he plans to take control of Cyberton and few dare to stand in his way. Only Optimus Prime and the Autobots are brave enough, but even they can’t hold off the powerful Decepticons for too long.

At the brink of collapse and suffering from ever dwindling numbers, the Autobots are saved by the “Headmasters”- a group of smaller, human-sized robots who had left Cybertron one million years ago in search of energy. The “Headmasters” have built themselves strong, normal-sized Transformer bodies and control them from cockpits located within the robots’ head. They go on to explain how Transformers similar to them have joined Galvatron’s side, and they will stop at nothing to bring these cowardly Headmasters to justice. So it’s now a fierce war between Transformers the galaxy over; good against evil, robot vs. robot.

If you are a Transformers’ fanatic, I expect you will have already decided to buy this Headmasters Collection anyway, but for the rest of us, I can hardly recommend this series. In a cynical ploy to create some new toy lines, several of the older characters are killed off early doors and reinvented as new Transformers. So if the wholesale change of voice actors and soundtrack wasn’t enough, the fact many of our childhood heroes are splattered without so much as a whimper pretty much destroys any of the old magic.
Irregardless of this new cast of idealistic robots, Headmasters just isn’t much fun to watch- the animation, while clear enough for a series from the 80s, is uniformly ugly while the break-neck story manages to be both hard to follow and moves so fast that we don’t have much time to make sense of it anyway .
Thankfully, at least some of the retro style from the old series remains intact- Cybertron, the Transformers’ artificial home planet (a towering neon metropolis of hard steal and dark skies) still looks great and the robot transformation sequences managed to force twinge of nostalgia but I don’t want to fool anyone here, Headmasters is obviously fan-service; a treat for hardcore Transformer enthusiasts but very little to the rest of us.