Little Green Men

No, not the plastic army men. Aliens. Extraterrestrials.

By far the coolest extra terrestrial to grace the collective consciousness of impressionable children is Superman. Faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent.

But next on the list, without question, are the Transformers. More than meets the eyes. Robots in disguise. Good guys and bad guys crash landed on earth, the only way to get back to their home planet (Cybertron) was to use energy they found here on earth (stored in energon cubes). The good guys (Autobots) worked with us humans to do so, the bad guys (Decepticons) pretty much just stole whatever they could and fought the good guys at every opportunity.

At the time of their introduction they were the second most popular Hasbro toy that was being cross-promotionalized (?) with an animated television show (right behind G.I. Joe and just in front of My Little Pony). (Since then Transformers have outperformed G.I Joe as money makers spawning seven additional animated series, but I’m not here to talk about tv…).

Hasbro decided to take the next step: Release a major motion picture. They crafted a story about a return to Cybertron, At long last the Autobots and Decepticons repaired their starships and made it back to space where the fate of their home planet would be decided. (Ok, I’m sort of half-guessing at the plot, I haven’t seen the movie in years and years. It is a good movie though. Really.)

Anyway, at the climax of the movie Megatron, the baddest of the bad guys (finally) kills Optimus Prime, the most virtuous of the good guys. Kills him. Dead.

And let me tell you, fans were outraged. Up in arms. Never has the death of a lead character in an eighties cartoon meant so much to so many (not even when they knocked off that Care Bear with the rainbow and replaced her with that stupid lion. Lions aren’t bears.).

Hasbro scrambled. They’d already started production on a similar (very similar) G.I. Joe movie to promote that line of toys. Guess what the script called for - you guessed it: the death of the lead good guy, Duke, at the hands of the lead (at the time) bad guy, Serpentor. (Serpentor throws a poisoned spear through Duke’s heart.)

So what could they do? The movie had been written, animated, Duke gets hit by the spear and we don’t see him again for the rest of the movie. This thing is scheduled to hit theaters in a month! I’ll tell you what they do: They pull it.

Hasbro can’t suffer another loss like the on caused by The Death of Optimus Prime, so they release the G.I. Joe movie as regular episodes, a five-parter. And, in the fourth episode, when Duke gets the spear through the heart, they re-record the dialogue and instead of Doc saying “I’m sorry, he’s dead.” He says “It’s bad. He’s in a coma.”

A COMA. Brilliant I say. At the end of the last episode when everything’s wrapping up they added one more line to the script “I’m glad Duke came out of the coma and is going to be ok.” What a save. Fans couldn’t deal with the death of an fictional alien robot (or, as we learned later, with the death of a fictional alien comic book superhero at the hands of a kryptonite-boned aptly-named Doomdsay) there’s no way killing off a real American hero would fly.

Duke was never supposed to survive that poisoned spear, but now you know – And knowing is half the battle.

Yo Joe,
-tom

recommended download:
Transformer Theme Song (Decepticon remix)
and
Stan Bush, Dare (from the Transformer Movie soundtrack)