Transformers
A series of Robot Toys created by Hasbro and Takara Tomy that turn into cars and other vehicles. Robots are cool, cars are cool and so they became popular. In 1984 they made some comics and a cartoon show. The comics show created a lot of toy sales and the toys kept the shows and comics popular. Over the years they changed things up to sell more toys and new series were made, some worked quite well (Beast Wars, Prime) others did not (Armada, Energon, Cybertron). It's amazing a tabletop game about sentient, shapeshifting robots fighting a war that varies from political to racial to theological hasn't been made yet. There are also 4 movies about Transformers made by Michael Bay, which is quite amazing since it´s about Robots fighting each other, able to transform into cars and stuff...
On the "no tabletop game" front, there was an attempt to do a "mini-setting" by Fantasy Flight Games as part of their "Horizon" lineup. Called Mechamorphosis, it basically used the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ruleset to play what was essentially "Transformers with the serial numbers filed off". It's pretty damn obscure, but probably not so much as the others in the Horizon quintology. To whit; Redline: post-apocalyptic Earth, Spellslinger: low-magic D&D meets Wild Western with the most notable new race being anthro-wolves that ride carnivorous horses, Grimm: kids adventuring in a seriously messed-up fairy tale -- this one got reprinted with its own ruleset, and... some lame-ass fifth one that was basically about roleplaying Tron.
The dark force known as Michael Bay has bought Transformers back as a series of live-action movies. The Matt Ward of the transformers setting, the movies are fan inducing rage fails and the only shallow redeeming quality is it has introduced Transformers to a whole new generation of fans who can be shown the good stuff.
It is widely agreed by the council of awesome that Beast Wars was the shit.
Still, despite the success of Hasbro's Star Wars roleplaying game and trading card game, they show no sign of doing up an official tabletop game for Transformers yet.
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