The Program

Yeah, it was a pretty powerful moment, but The Transformers was a fairly important milestone in the cultural evolution of Generation X'ers everywhere. Millions tuned into the daily adventures of the transforming cybernetic beings from Cybertron, as the evil Decepticons attempted to rape the Earth's natural resources in order to procure Energon, while the brave, kind-hearted Autobots stood up in battle to defend our planet from Decepticon domination. Sure, most of the plots were redundant as hell. Sure, the animation was extremely limited in nature. And most definitely, these cartoons were little more than 22-minute commercials for Hasbro's extended and best-selling line toys. But man, those cartoons were great!

For a kid, anyhow...

Let's face it: nostalgia has a huge part in skewering our memories of the greatness of The Transformers. I immediately dropped my hard-earned shekels when the first box set of classic Transformers episodes were released on DVD... and watched a few episodes before I turned off the DVD player and sold the lot on eBay. Fifteen years later, I found that they did not hold up well. Sure, I got a kick out of revisiting my old friends, but that was mostly because while watching them, I was 13 again. But that sort of happy regression therapy only lasted for a short while, and I found myself happy to leave The Transformers back where they belonged, smack dab in the mid 1980s.

Still, I liked the attention given to charm and personality in that series, two elements sorely lacking in the new Transformers: Armada cartoon. The beloved transforming robots were brought back in 2002 to revitalize a once-successful toy line and capitalize on the nostalgia of an entire generation who had now acquired disposable income. Unfortunately, Transformers: Armada, while a serviceable cartoon in its own right, is a pale shadow of the original. We still have the Autobots and Decepticons, still led by Optimus Prime and Megatron, only this time both sides are battling over a third "race" of Transformers called the Minicons -- powerful Transformers from Cybertron who fled to Earth millions of years ago. It was disheartening to see that the robots seemed to have lost their individual personalities and quirks that made them so endearing in the past. Furthermore, they are saddled with a group of annoying kids who act as the human element of the show. The Hispanic kid Carlos has one of the worst faux-Latin accents I've ever heard, but that's the least of their problems. The kids are annoying beyond description, and take precious attention away from what people are really tuning in for: to watch giant transforming robots whup tail on each other.

I don't think Transformers: Armada is necessarily a bad cartoon. The animation, while far from perfect, is worlds above the stiffness of the original. There is an obvious attempt to give the series a sense of scope, adventure, and story that the original series lacked (for awhile, anyhow; later seasons showed more focus on an overreaching arc and multipart stories). But it lacks the charm, warmth, personality, and style of the original series. On the whole, Transformers: Armada is simply just another average cartoon. A moderate diversion, perhaps, but the series is far from memorable. If it didn't have the nostalgic goodwill of the original Transformers to coast on, the show would be little more than an afterthought.

Transformers Armada: Best Battles collects four episodes of the series onto a single DVD. The following episodes are included on this disc:

• Metamoprhosis
• Base
• Confrontation
• Decisive Battle