CliqueClack (for the older) Kids: Challenge of the Gobots – VIDEOS

Hanna-Barbera

Some say that the 1980s was a decade of greed, lust and over-indulgence. Others label it as the decade of the Big Hair (both male and female), big shoulders and big sweaters. Still more describe the era with terms like Reaganomics and Iran-Contra.

Me? I call the 1980s the Decade of the Robots.

While there were other animated robots in the past, the 80s ushered in a whole new generation of living, breathing, thinking — and transforming — robots. Some ideas came from America, like The Mighty Orbots. Others came from our friends across the Pacific in the form of characters like Voltron. Then there were those that started as toys in Japan and transitioned into animated fare for American audiences. These were programs such as Transformers and, for this particular column, Challenge of the GoBots.

Like the Transformers, the GoBots concept began in Japan as a toyline produced by Popy (later Bandai) called Machine Robo. The product line consisted of small toy robots that transformed into various modes of transportation and, initially, were human-piloted mecha like the robots of Macross (Robotech to those in the States). Eventually, the line was picked up in the U.S. by Tonka, who made the action figures sentient robots and divided them into two factions – the good Guardians and the evil Renegades.

The Guardians were led by Leader-1, a robot that could fly, transform into a jet fighter an project energy blasts. His arch-enemy, and former friend, was Cy-Kill — a robot that could transform into a motorcycle. These two figures, as well as many others, were released to stores in 1983 to initial success. Unfortunately, just like it did on television, the line was superseded in its initial positive reviews by the Transformers’ line of toys.

One year after the toy line was released, Hanna-Barbera released the syndicated, animated series Challenge of the GoBots. Premiering one week before Transformers (September 8th against September 17th), GoBots was always considered the poorer cousin of the two, both in animation and storytelling. Yet, the plot of GoBots was somewhat more inventive.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXB4wvqCPBU

The GoBots originally came from the planet Gobotron (or GoBotron, depending on what reference point you use) where a human-like civilization thrived thousands of years before humans learned do draw cave drawings on Earth. Someway, somehow, that humanoid race became threatened with extinction (probably a financial meltdown). One surviving humanoid, called the Last Engineer, saved the civilization by developing the “GoBot form”; large robot bodies capable of turning into vehicles. Heck, this beats the search for Energon cubes any day!

Challenge of the GoBots also had another thing going for them: female GoBots. Probably due to the more human-like nature of Gobotron, female robots were more prevalent than they ever were in Transformers. Heck, there wasn’t a female Transformer until well into the third generation of the series. It was these female robots that gave a bit of diversity to the program.

But, it really didn’t bring in the viewers. With its tighter story and crisper animation Transformers dominated the syndicated robot wars over GoBots. It was also the amount of characters that were being used that may have caused the downfall of the series. With Transformers there was a group of robots, both Autobot and Decepticon, that were rotated in and out for the first season or two. With GoBots it was Leader-1 and his pals Turbo and Scooter against Cy-Kill and his buddies Cop-Tur and Crasher. Throw in a couple of dinosaur Zod monsters and there wasn’t much meat for the show. Only during the last half of the first season and beginning of the second season did we get to see more and more GoBots.

It was also the viewers they were trying to get that may have caused the lack of interest for the show. A Hanna-Barbera production, the cartoon was aimed at a younger audience than Transformers was. Transformers had shiny robots who used big guns to shoot everything up, including other robots. In GoBots no one carried a gun — they used energy bolts that came out of their eyes or hands. Transformers was for an older crowd of kids. GoBots was for the set still watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings.

Sixty-six episodes of Challenge of the GoBots were made between 1984 and 1985. When the show ended its syndicated run in 1986 they continued to garner an audience with the theatrical release of GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords. Other than helping sell a new line of GoBot toys, the movie turned out to be a dud (probably because the characters didn’t swear like they did in Transformers: The Movie, released in the same year). Eventually, Tonka was purchased by Hasbro, the makers of the Transformers. The two lines were merged and the Gobots joined the Autobots and Decepticons in an eternal battle for truth and justice.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8tokEcdMSs

Boys and girls, if you’re interested in seeing a childhood television memory written up in this here column, drop a note to me in the comments. I’ll try to get to them over the next couple of weeks.

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Oct 09, 2008 @ 11:00 EST5EDT