 |
VOOZH | about |
|
VOOZH | about |
The bio, short for "biography", has been a staple of Transformer characterization from the very beginning. The public first saw them on the back of toy packaging: Rather than needing to watch the show or read the comic, a customer could read the write-up on the box and know who the toy was supposed to be. In fact, this practice eventually gave "life" to hundreds of characters who would never play a part in any story. It also spread beyond the packages to comics, trading cards, and magazines, continuing to this day.
Bios are often combined with Tech Specs and a small version of the toy's package art to form a single collectible card.
Contents |
In Generation 1, the on-package bios followed the format seen in the image above: Up top are the character's allegiance and function, describing their role in the military hierarchy. A characteristic quote (sometimes called a "motto"; see Notes below) follows, then a block of text describes in sequence the character's personality, weapons & abilities, and weaknesses.
These were actually abbreviated versions of longer bios given to the writers of Transformers fiction; Marvel Comics writer and editor Bob Budiansky crafted a lion's share of these. The expanded versions were eventually published in Marvel's The Transformers Universe comics.
The bios formed the basis for most portrayals of the characters in Generation 1 fiction, though oftentimes the bios' complexities and details were sadly underutilized, especially in the cartoon. Occasionally, portrayals would outright contradict bios, such as the cartoon version of Shockwave's servile loyalty to Megatron, as well as the Marvel version of Blaster's rogue stoicism.
As the years went on, less Generation 1 media was created but more and more new toys were produced. This made the omnipresent on-package bios increasingly valuable as sources of characterization, since many Transformers were being introduced with no media backup at all. Ironically, this came as in-depth personality was squeezed out of some bios in favor of playing up the might and power of new gimmicks like Pretender shells,[1] vehicles,[2] and Micromaster teams.[3] The decline in characterization was by no means universal; interesting new characters were still appearing right up to the end. But the worst offenders had reached a low not seen in the early days.
Happily, those impoverished characters were done some justice almost 15 years later when Dreamwave Productions published a massive profile-comic series featuring a new bio for every Generation 1 Transformer who had gotten a North American toy. Written to jibe with Dreamwave's concurrent Generation 1 comics, these bios were the first and only time many of their subjects were given any kind of real personality.
Turbo-charged bios with dual cam turbine exhaust sizzle readers with searing-hot flaming prose! High buzzword volume allows entire paragraphs to be devoid of meaningful content. Prefers stockpiling ultra-tech weaponry over describing personality. Multiple-adjective blaster overwhelms consumers with redundant verbage! Attempts at faux-scientific sophistication often elicit laughter instead of respect.
In Beast Wars, bios became noticeably less character-driven. Rather than describing personality, history, or character quirks, they frequently amounted to a bit of purple prose describing the animal mode in the wilderness and maybe a brief weapon or power call-out. The bios for the European releases were even worse. While the American releases at least had some sense of story, the multilingual nature of the bios meant that they were confined to little more than the character's name, function, and "secret weapon location".
Also notable is the disconnect between the first wave of bios and their eventual cartoon portrayals. In both their bios and their pack-in comic, Optimus Primal and Megatron were implied to be their Generation 1 namesakes in new bodies on modern, human-inhabited, post-Generation 2 Earth. When the Beast Wars cartoon began, the bios abandoned this micro-continuity in favor of the cartoon's continuity. But even aside from blatant continuity issues, there were still more subtle disparities. Tarantulas was portrayed in his bio as a ninja that preyed on humans, while Rhinox was portrayed as a security officer, yet both characters were later revealed to be scientists of incredible skill. Even so, some hints of the original bios did still make it through. For example, Rhinox was often the one updating and maintaining the Sentinel defence systems on the Axalon, and Tarantulas was often seen preying upon the wild animals and proto-humans on prehistoric Earth.
By the end of Beast Wars, the bios had returned to a more fleshed-out state, especially since they had a lot of raw material to work with in the form of cartoon plotlines. The Beast Machines bios continued this trend.
Like Generation 1, Beast Wars was revisited in comic form some years after the franchise had ended, and this included a series of profile comics featuring new bios for nearly every character, even Japanese-exclusive ones. They were kinda not that great, though.
3H invested much work into its BotCon-exclusive toy bios, tying them directly into storylines in accompanying comic books. Their incentive to do this was quite high, since they were being marketed to discriminating older fans and not just kids who wanted neat robot toys.
Robots in Disguise's trilingual packaging left no room at all for bios for many of the characters. Apparently Hasbro saw no drawback in doing this, because it set the trend for the first toylines that followed, none of which would have on-package bios at all.
Armada and the concurrent Universe omitted on-package bios altogether. Most of the main Armada characters did get Hasbro-written bios, but they were only available on the infrequently-updated Transformers.com. Dreamwave eventually wrote bios for all the Armada characters, which were published in a profile-comic series. The Universe characters, meanwhile, got no love from either Hasbro or Dreamwave; it was 3H that took up that bio-slack in the Universe comics and Collectors' Club magazine. These bios were, in the 3H tradition, very much tied into the comic storylines, but unfortunately there was only time and space for a fraction of the Universe cast to get this treatment.
The Energon bios were published online like Armada's, with the same problems of update-frequency and incomplete character-spread. The bios themselves were often riddled with errors and discrepancies, especially when compared to their own accompanying Tech Spec stats. For example, Grimlock and Swoop were stated to be "primitive in thought and simple in speech" and to "lack in intelligence", yet their stats gave them a "7" in "intelligence". In contrast, Six Shot, a "cunning Decepticon warrior", was given a mere "4" in "intelligence". Furthermore, Galvatron was stated to have "undergone an intense reformatting", even though he looked exactly like he did when he was still calling himself "Megatron" except for the new colors. Storm Jet was described as a "precision marksman", even though the toy came without any sort of weapon, be they built-in or included as accessories. To make matters worse, the website bios contained a lot of name and spelling errors: Shockblast was referred to as "Shockwave" in Six Shot's bio, Scorponok was spelled "Scorpanok", Sharkticon was spelled "Sharticon", Wing Saber was referred to as "Superion Maximus" in his own bio... and capitalization of trademarked names was far from being consistent.
Fortunately, Hasbro improved things with Cybertron, dropping the trilingualism and returning on-package bios as a standard.
Toys in the live-action film series often feature multiple releases of the same character either in different color schemes or in multi-packs with other characters. The bios for these toys often give explanations for the new appearances that are difficult to reconcile with other fiction. This has happened often enough that toy bios in the live-action film continuity are considered by some fans to be micro-continuities by default.
Hasbro maintains online bios for select characters in their current toy lineup on their website. In the past, these were named "Battle Bios". Currently, the bios are hosted on the Hasbro Play website, with the bios included on their own tap. Expect these bios to disappear periodically into the internet ether as new toylines are launched.
