Transformer

A popular brand of toys from the 1980s featuring robots that could change their form into vehicles, mechanical animals, cassette players and tapes, weapons or anything else the creators could think of. Spin-offs included a comic book series, TV cartoon and animated film.

The brand was revitalized in the mid to late 1990s with the advent of Beast Wars where the robots initially turned into real biological animals on prehistoric Earth. Although in subsequent seasons, the animal forms did become more cybernetic again.

The latest incarnation has been in the form of a live action movie trilogy, the first of which was released in July 2007.