Product Description

Where it all began! This 25th anniversary DVD set includes the complete first season from the Generation One animated series. Packed with Generation One extras including a new look at the Transformers, rare PSAs, original toy commercials, and more.

Four million years after crash landing on an unfamiliar planet, sentient robots with the ability to disguise themselves as common vehicles awaken on present day Earth. Engaged in a crucial race to find a new energy source for their home planet of Cybertron, Optimus Prime and the heroic Autobots must defend the innocent people of Earth against their archnemeses, Megatron and the power-hungry Decepticons.

For 25 years the war between the peace loving Autobots and the villainous Decepticons has captivated children and adults alike, launching countless collectible toys, comic books, animated series and feature films beloved by loyal fans. Now you can return to where the phenomenon began with the original The Transformers: The Complete First Season.

Bonus Features:

* Restored to the original broadcast versions with a new stereo soundtrack created from the original audio

* Triplechanger: From Toy To Comic To Screen: The Origins Of The Transformers

* Printable Transport to Oblivion Script

* Rare PSAs

* Archival Hasbro toy commercials

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #736 in DVD
• Brand: Uni
• Released on: 2009-06-16
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 360 minutes

Customer Reviews

Finally... Transformers On Standard DVD Done Right
The days of paying an arm and a leg for G1 Transformers episodes are over. Shout! Factory, LLC, in conjunction with Hasbro, has released the complete first season of Transformers: The Original Series, and it's a good product! It's also at a good price, which those who have paid extremely high prices for earlier releases (such as myself) are sure to appreciate.

Packaging: 4 out of 5
It would have been nice if the packaging received the royal treatment that the original He-Man and She-Ra cartoons received; however this is not so bad. Clean, fresh artwork printed on a metallic coating gives the box a highly attractive and modern look; the discs are safely encased in two slim DVD cases (made of soft, shatter-resistant polypropylene), each of which boasts 2-sided artwork visible through the sleeves and the translucent packaging.

Integrity To The Original Episodes: 5 out of 5.
These are the episodes the way I remember seeing them; on VHS tape from my local video store, with a high level of faithfulness to the original sound and visuals. Those familiar with the Rhino releases earlier this decade may be pleased to hear that the *original* soundtrack is presented here (remixed in stereo) without any additional sound effects. Care has also been taken to reconstruct the show's visuals; "Heavy Metal War" in particular has been restored to its original greatness, after a painful stint on the Rhino collection, on which the episode was marred by poorly-chosen takes replate with visual errors.

Episode quality and encoding: 4 out of 5.
Each DVD is 7.6 GB in size, and every byte appears to be taken in a high-quality encode of these episodes. Bit rate (a strong determinant of quality on standard DVD) varies from around 4800kbps to just over 6000 kbps during playback. The encoding is not perfect; an observant eye will see compression artifacts show up often on backgrounds and matte paintings; thankfully, characters and moving scenes show up with about as much clarity as the transfer probably allowed.

Special features: 3 out of 5 stars
The extras are fully contained on disc 3 of this collection, which I like because it leaves valuable space on the other two discs for high-quality episode encoding. However, the features come up a bit short in my opinion. Though the 20-minute documentary is all-new, it is not as thorough as I hoped it would be or as the packaging suggests. Also this documentary lacked any contribution from the original voice actors, whose involvement strikes me as necessary for a five-star special features disc. A printable copy of the "Transport To Oblivion" script (also available on the aging Rhino relase), three Hasbro toy commercials and one PSA (Public Service Announcement) make up the reminder of this light special features section. Hopefully Shout! Factory will continue to release the original series on DVD, in which case there are ample opportunities for further special features.

All in all, this is a great product at a great price, and bears the closest resemblance to the original broadcast episodes I have seen thus far. Looking forward to future relases, possibly someday on Blu-Ray.

More Than Meets The Eye!
A lot of us grew up on the Generation One or G1 Transformer's long before a live action film about giant transforming robots could have been thought possible. Now to tie in with this summer's live action sequel, Transformer's 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, comes this 3-Disc DVD set containing all sixteen episodes of the first season of this beloved eighties classic. Those sixteen episodes, originally airing September 17th to December 29th 1984, are:

1: More Than Meets the Eye (1)
2: More Than Meets the Eye (2)
3: More Than Meets the Eye (3)
4: Transport to Oblivion
5: Roll for It
6: Divide and Conquer
7: S.O.S. Dinobots
8: The Ultimate Doom: Brainwash (1)
9: The Ultimate Doom: Search (2)
10: The Ultimate Doom: Revival (3)
11: War of the Dinobots
12: Countdown to Extinction
13: Fire in the Sky
14: Heavy Metal War
15: Fire on the Mountain
16: A Plague of Insecticons

Special Features Are So Far Said To Include:

Original Concept Artwork
Archival Hasbro Toy Commercials
Rare Public Service Announcements
"Triplechanger: From Toy To Comic To Screen: The Origins Of The Transformers" Featurette
A Printable Script For The Episode "Transport To Oblivion"
& A Limited Edition Autobot Magnet

The animation may not have been the best on this series but in the eighties it's all we needed and our active imaginations filled in the rest. Despite the older less impressive animation these episodes are still classics to those who remember them and will be more enjoyable for most of us than the many spinoffs that followed the G1 series. There was something innocent about the series here, maybe because it was so early before the fact that each episode was really just a half hour commercial became common knowledge, maybe because here they actually looked like robots in disguise, but maybe just because they are the ones most of us grew up on and where the whole lasting franchise found it's niche.

Fans should be very excited to own these episodes in a new more affordable set. The set is being put out by Shout! Factory and they have always done an excellent job of providing fans with a lot of well done special features on long awaited sets. This set was originally announced as having a few special features included with more possibly in the works but I'm very glad to see the amount that they have now announced for it and have updated this review to include them. Alot of people who didn't buy the more expensive original sets are going to be excited at the chance to get this one and I know that I can't wait. I originally gave this set 5 stars just for the opportunity to own these classic episodes in a proper DVD set, but after hearing that they will in fact be restored to original broadcast versions with a new stereo soundtrack created from the original audio I'm more excited than ever.

Some may say that this series was just the next step in a great advertising campaign for children's toys but those of us who grew up being entertained by it know that there truly is more to this series than meets the eye. Thanks For Your Time.

*Rather than clutter up the review page I have posted a list of episode descriptions in my comments section for those who are curious.

*It now appears that Shout! will also be releasing Transformer's G1 in a complete series set this summer. While I think this first season set is still great for some I personally am more excited for the complete series.

Improved but still has errors
Most of the reviews on here give a rather lenghy description of all the great stuff and histroy etc. I will simply point out a few bad points as this set is not perfect (so don't expect it to be).

First off Shout! Factory was formed from Rhino, so the same people are behind this...you can read about it from their website. However they did attempt to fix many of the errors that were present on the original disc.

1. A lot of the ending credits text is actually misalined, though you can't notice unless you compare it to the broadcast versions. The first few eopisodes have the wrong (more then meets the eye) ending credits.

2.The last 4 epoisodes sound effects are turned down much to low. The remix was doing well up until Ultimate Doom 3 and the rest have loud dialog and low sound effects.

-The Ultimate Doom: Part 3
-Countdown to Extinction
-A Plague of Insecticons
-Heavy Metal War

3. Some scenes they fixed like with Ironhide transformering in reverse were done w/ cheap digital software and look out of place. But it's rather minor issues.

For $20 it's well worth it, just don't expect it to be perfect like I did.