Childhood Misunderstandings

[Dan]

As a minor I initially misunderstood the depiction of various Transformers characters (in my case all G1). Usually my misunderstanding arose from limited information - either I had only seen the character flash by in a cartoon episode or had only seen the toy in package or shown in a catalogue. My imagination filled in speculative gaps, with the following results:

- Megatron turned into a rifle, not a gun with extensions.

- Shockwave turned into a fixed position cannon, not a handgun.

- Rumble's only alt-mode was not a cassette, but rather those pile-drivers.

- Wheeljack and Ratchet were the same character. Wheeljack clearly appears as a van in the first episode, and the lights flanking his face were presumably his ambulance mode emergency lights.

- The hood-like structure over Huffer in robot mode looks like some kind of shovel so he must have been a construction vehicle.

- Some years later, I read Scourge's tech-spec as saying he literally lead a 'wolf-pack' and imagined the Sweeps as a group of domesticated cyber-wolves.

- Rodimus Prime and Hot Rod were something like uncle and nephew, a common relationship depicted in cartoons.

Did anyone else make these sorts of mistakes, for whichever generation or toy line?

[DELTAprime]

For the longest time as a kid, I thought the good guys were called "Transformers" instead of Autobots.

[Raider]

I think the biggest misunderstanding for me was the timeline of the cartoons. I was about 4 when I got into transformers and really started with the cartoons. I used to mostly watch them by hiring out the VHS tapes from the local video rental store. Most of the ones that I saw first were season 3 I think so I thought Rodimus was a Prime before Optimus as I saw all the Season 3 eps then ultimately the Return of Optimus Prime. It was a confusing time before the internet and the ability to figure out the watching order

[Paulbot]

It’s “more then meets the eye” right? Young Paulbot thought so.

I called the Monster Planet from the movie Unicorn. Then I was reading #75 and noticed it said Unicron. And when I checked I realised I was always reading it as Unicorn despite what was on the page.

[GoktimusPrime]

I initially thought that Spike Witwicky was just the cartoon name for Buster Witwicky (similar to how Jetfire was renamed Skyfire); I thought that, names aside, they were the same character.

Before TFTM came out...
* I thought that Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime were entirely different and unrelated characters. And I pronounced Rodimus as "Row-dimus" instead of "Roddy-mus."
* I never thought that the Sweeps were just clones of Scourge. I thought that they'd be more like the Mayhem Attack Squad.

Grotusque; saw this toy in the 1987 catalogue before seeing it in shops, and from the catalogue I thought that he was a retool of Snarl. I also mispronounced his name as "Grow-tuss-kew."

I thought that the red Tracks on the 1985 packaging diorama was a separate Autobot called Lightning Strike and that he had Thor-like powers.

I thought that the "M" on some of the Autobot Mini-Cars like Brawn, Huffer, Gears etc. stood for "Minibot."

[Tha_Phantom]

I thought that the "M" on some of the Autobot Mini-Cars like Brawn, Huffer, Gears etc. stood for "Minibot."

You idiot, Gok. It obviously stands for Microchange and you should have known this as a kid.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

For the longest time I thought Apeface's name was Ap-ee-face. Even though I was completely aware he transformed into a Gorilla! Took me ages to accept that it's actually Ape-Face.

Also for some unknown reason, I instinctively type his name as Apreface.
Every
Damn
time.

[GoktimusPrime]

You idiot, Gok. It obviously stands for Microchange and you should have known this as a kid.

Serves me right for not having Googled it on Wikipedia in the 1980s.