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The series was produced by Hanna-Barbera, whose fame mainly lay in more light-hearted fare, but who were cheap and fast workers. Unlike the Transformers cartoon, which was produced with fairly close collaboration with Hasbro and under the auspices of Marvel Comics, Tonka's input into Challenge of the Gobots doesn't seem to have gone far beyond handing over a rough guide and the character models. Unusually for a toy-based cartoon, the series stuck to a handful of leads on each faction, with other Gobots rarely getting sizeable roles. The lead cast was as follows: - |
As
stated elsewhere, Gobots was basically a case of Tonka looking
at what Hasbro were doing and trying to do the same thing, only quicker.
They were a bit slower off the blocks in commissioning a tie-in series,
but fast work meant the thing arrived in syndication on September 9th
1984. |
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Leader-1:
The Guardian leader, who turned into a fighter jet. Honourable and reasonable.
Totally unmemorable. Voiced by Lou Richards.
Turbo:
Leader-1's right-hand Gobot, who turned into a sportscar. Grumpy, belligerent,
tough, but a good sort. Allegedly. Voiced by Arthur Burghardt.
Scooter: Guardian geek who turned into HMS Jervis Bay. Intelligent,
but scares easily. Always tries to impress Leader-1, but usually ends
up having to be rescued. Remembered mainly for the worst vocal performance
of all time, courtesy of Frank Welker.
Small Foot: A female Guardian, who turned into a 4x4 pickup. Aside
from getting kidnapped a bit easily, was given a surprisingly plucky
role in a 1980s boys cartoon. Wasn't pink, and didn't
have robotits. Joined a little later in the series. Voiced by B. J.
Ward. Cy-Kill:
The Renegade leader, who turned into a motorcycle. Evil, and largely for
the sake of it, it seemed. Good value typical 1980s cartoon pantomime
villain, giving to laughing evilly a lot, stuffing up his plans when victory
seemed certain, and bemoaning the stupidity of his underlings. Voiced
by Bernard Erhard. Crasher:
Utterly insane female Renegade, who turned into a sportscar. Liked crashing
into things and laughing for minutes on end. Had a fancy earthquake-causing
super power. Wore eyeshadow. Fantastically voiced by Marilyn Ward. Cop-Tur:
One of the many Renegades who filled the role of 'Cy-Kill's thick muscle',
turned into a helicopter. Possessed potentially devastating whirring blades
in robot mode, if he could ever hit anything other than walls or other
Renegades with them. Conical head. Voiced by Burghardt again. Fitor:
Generally loyal underling, turned into a jet fighter. Usually employed
as Cy-Kill's right-hand man, through being not quite as stupid as all
the other Renegades. Voiced by Kelly Ward. |
 Matt
Hunter: A human astronaut who got involved in the Gobot war when they
first came to Earth. Macho factor boosted by moustache on lease from Tom
Selleck. Flew Leader-1 fairly often. Hung around with children despite
being about forty even more often. Voiced by Morgan Paull. A.
J. Foster: Slightly spooky trainee astronaut,  Nick
Burns: Matt's other trainee. Got to be plucky, and like AJ, provided
moral boost for flagging Guardians. Rode Scooter around most of the time
because they were both weird geeks. Voiced initall by Ike Eisenmann, and
later Sparky Marcus (which makes Scooter's name look good). Anya
Turgenova: Comedy Russian (sorry, "Eastern") scientist,
similarly stumbling into the war. Had 'hilarious' flirty insult relationship
with Matt, given to wearing fur-collared coats, and saying "You Amerikans
are crazy!" whenever evil alien death machines were shooting at the
chums. Voiced by Candy Brown Houston. Dr.
Braxis: Mad scientist, who throws his lot in with the Renegades after
Matt shows him up at work. Probably best known for his four-episode stint
as Doctor Archvillain in the Transformers stories "The Ultimate
Doom" and "Countdown to Extinction". Voiced by Rene Auberjonois. |
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With
the exception of Fitor, these characters would generally battle on Earth,
and usually every episode would feature an additional Gobot or two from
each side who had arrived to help out. Large-scale battles rarely happened
outside of the two mini-series - the first five episodes were created
as a pilot, and then shown as a mini-series under the banner title "The
Battle of Gobotron". The remainder were produced in one solid block,
resulting in 61 further episodes (including another five-part mini-series,
"The Gobotron Saga", and a brace of two-part episodes). Across
these, most figures from the line do get a sizeable appearance in somewhere,
although these range from semi-regulars such as Path Finder, Zeemon,
Staks and Tank to rarely-seen characters such as Zero, Street Heat and
Stallion. Generally the later a character appeared in the toyline, the
fewer appearances they had. Several characters did not appear at all,
for varying reasons.|
Dr.
Go: The Renegade scientist, who had a moderate semi-regular role, was
based on the toy named Herr
Fiend. It's possible this was an intentional change to avoid the
racist implications of the mad evil German scientist, though he still
had a Germanic accent. |
Because
many of these episodes were created before the toys were finalised,
sometimes there were considerable differences between the animation
models and the released toys. Foremost among these were the name changes:|
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The
Gobots did get an origin story in the Gobotron Saga mini-series. The
basic backstory of the race was that the people of Gobotron were originally
organic, until a civil war (instigated by a fellow called The Master
Renegade) started, and the planet got hit by an asteroid (giving it
an applecore appearance). With the climate of Gobotron drastically changed,
The Last Engineer (real name Keith... maybe) devised the Gobot form,
transforming robotic housings for the population (it's unclear whether
the people of Gobotron, who were already turning to cybernetics, were
built into these bodies, or whether their brains were transferred).
This is basically why there are gendered Gobots - they were humanoid
males and females before the population was placed in Gobot bodies,
and obviously these characteristics have been carried over. It doesn't
really explain how Crasher once had a crush on Leader-1 when he was
a robot, though. The
series itself pitched the heroic Guardians, basically the Gobotron police
force, against the evil Renegades (who were power-hungry outlaws). An
ongoing minor background plot thread is the Guardians' attempts to rebuild
Gobotron. An interesting aspect of the series set-up is the Guardians
are an organisation, rather than a race, and the planet is covered with
civilian Gobots. Leader-1 seems to be merely the field commander of the
Guardians, with Zeemon above him (himself answerable to the Gobotron Council).
After the first serial, Cy-Kill and his Renegades operate from their massive
spaceship Rogue Star. The majority of the stories take place of Earth,
which Cy-Kill intends to conquer to use as a launch pad for a full-scale
invasion of Gobotron. |
 Sadly,
as is often the case with 1980s cartoons, it was pretty rare for much
of the grand stuff to filter through to other episodes, which were usually
knockabout 'foil the diabolical scheme in 22 minutes' stuff, with reset
buttons and sledgehammered moral lessons. Character depth and development
was at something of a premium, with most Gobots on either side being pretty
generic - brave Guardians and cruel Renegades was about the size of it.
The animation was also shockingly poor, especially for an action-orientated
series, with a very low frame-rate, simplistic drawings and a habit of
using cheap profile shots. The voice acting also isn't often up to much,
with a few exceptions. |
 On
the plus side, the series did get a handful of things right. The use of
female characters is generally to be praised - for the most part, these
looked and acted the same as everyone else, with none of the girlification
that was foisted on the unfortunate female Transformers such as Arcee
or Elita-1. Crasher was among the most feared Renegades, Path Finder was
a high-ranking Guardian, Small Foot was trusted with all sorts of stuff
on Earth, Snoop was an important Renegade spy, Sparky is a bullish scrapper,
and so on. Every now and then someone did get some useful characterisation
as well - Dive-Dive and Flip-Top would both benefit from being a little
different when 'guest-starring' with the team on Earth, while there were
memorable one-off characters on occasion such as Steamer (a defecting
Renegade) and Rex (champion of a derelict area of Gobotron). |
 The
show was a moderate success despite its' numerable shortfallings, but
the rapid decline of the Gobots toyline meant its' days were numbered.
It closed with a theatrical feature, as Gobots
- Battle of the Rock Lords managed to make it into theatres in June
1986. It seems, much in keeping with the whole drive of the line, that
Tonka got wind of Transformers the Movie, and rushed something
out to try and steal the thunder. Battle of the Rock Lords (often
called War of the Rock Lords, though I've yet to see anything with this
actually on) introduced the Rock Lord characters to the audience,
and it's popularly theorised that it was originally intended as a three-
or four-part cartoon story patched together, with a few affordable celebrities
(Roddy McDowall as Nuggit, Margot Kidder as Solitaire, Telly Savalas as
Magmar) were hired to lend a little star quality. Hanna Barbera didn't
exactly raise their game for the occasion, and the film still features
fades for commercial breaks, as well as a standard-sized picture. The
film was effectively the last episode of Challenge of the Gobots
(with the toyline on its' last legs by then too), and took just $1.5m
at the US box-office, going direct to video in most of the world. There's
a fairly comprehensive write-up at X-Entertainment
 , though the guy
mainly just bangs on about how this isn't Transformers while trying to
channel Maddox. The VHS tape can also be found fairly cheap - however,
it's really not a "so bad it's good" film, it's just pretty
dull and irritating. The Rock Lords were another transforming toyline
designed by Bandai and marketed in the West by Tonka. Within the movie,
they were a race of people who became bonded to rocks, and thus can now
transform into them. Good Rock Lords included stern, heroic leader-type
Boulder, unnerving psychic young 'un Marbles, bling geek Nuggit, lanky
femme Solitaire and ugly facestuffer Crackpot; evil Rock Lords involved
heh-heh-hehing tyrant Magmar, comedy conjoined twins Sticks 'n' Stones,
and faceless muscle Flint and Brimstone. Despite this appearance in the
film, the Rock Lords toyline was promoted as a separate entity
for the Gobots, enjoying a good first year before rapidly collapsing. |
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The
series was exported to several countries. In the UK its' arrival on
the growing video rental market was enough of a factor for the local
line |
Vol.
1 - "Time Wars" & "Cy-Kill's Shrinking Ray" British
releases were less organised, but the following were amongst those released:
- |
Various
episodes were released on VHS in the 1980s on both sides of the Atlantic.
 The
series has yet to be released on DVD. This is partially due to its' complex
legal status - the actual physical masters of the episodes belong to Hanna-Barbera,
but they're packed full of trademarks owned by Hasbro (who bought out
Tonka in 1991, and have since used both the Gobots name and other
related trademarks for Transformers). A re-release wouldn't suit
Hasbro, who wouldn't want competition (however minor) on the retro DVD
market for Transformers, or confusion as Go-Bots was a recent
Transformers sub-line aimed at pre-school tots (who would probably find
Challenge insultingly simple). There's also a chance Bandai would
take issue with a rival making money off a cartoon based on designs they
still own. Still, not the end of the world, eh? TransformersCDs.com originated
a bootleg set of 55 episodes (including the feature film) of wildly varying
quality, ranging from pretty good for episodes released on VHS in the
1980s to near-unwatchable for some of the 20-year old off-air recordings.
Being out of circulation on official channels, episodes regularly turn
up on YouTube too. |
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Challenge
of the Gobots Resources on Counter-X.net: - See
Also: |
