Yeah, it’s considered sacrilege to make this statement, but I stand by it. In the 1980’s, I hated Transformers. Nowadays, outside of Beast Wars, I still hate Transformers. Even as a kid I always felt Gobots did a number of things better with a similar premise — all which Beast Wars eventually did as well, more or less.
1) Each Gobot had a unique appearance.
Every review of the Transformers movies brings up the problem with the robots being virtually indistinguishable from one another. It always makes me laugh because I had the same problem in the 80’s: many Transformers were palette-swaps of one another. Most of them weren’t, but even the “unique” ones were so similar-looking, that even now I could count the Autobots and Decepticons that’re recognizable to me on one hand. Gobots never had this problem: every character had a distinct look that made them memorable for a kid, something Transformers never tried until the 3D era. There were two spiders in Beast Wars, but you couldn’t possibly mix them up. Star Scream was one of what, nine identical asshole jets?
2) Gobots transformations were true to the toys.
In the cartoon, Transformers more-or-less magically morphed between robot mode and vehicle mode. In the Gobots cartoon, the robots were modeled after the toys so closely that they transformed just like their toy counterparts — very cool in an era when the toys often only vaguely resembled their animated incarnations. It made the show feel more authentic, as if the same people were behind both products.
3) The origin story of Gobots is more twisted and badass.
Transformers are sentient machines from a mechanical planet, who disguise themselves as vehicles so they can blend in on earth (y’know, where they’re constantly fighting out in the open). Gobots were flesh and blood once, but were so bent on ensuring their enemy’s destruction, that both sides had their brains implanted in immortal robot bodies so they could continue to fight, from planet to planet if necessary. Holy shit, man.
4) Gobots support equal rights better.
Can anyone other than hardcore unhealthily-obsessed fans name a female Transformer other than Arcee and Black Arachnia? At a glance it seems like there weren’t any female Transformers who were worth a shit until Beast Wars. Maybe there have been more since Black Arachnia, but let’s focus on the cartoons from the 80’s, since the focus here is what I grew up with. Watch 3 random episodes of the original Transformers cartoon and you might see Arcee, either in the background or maybe-possibly doing something proactive. Do the same with Gobots, and 3 out of 3 episodes will prominently feature Crasher, Cy-kill’s female lieutenant, as she commands the troops or ruins somebody’s shit while laughing like a maniac. You’re likely to see some heroic female ‘bots from time to time as well (and they looked just as clunky as the male ‘bots, which a commenter kindly reminded me of).
Skids and Mudflap would never appear in a modern Gobots movie, I’ll say that much. Which reminds me…
5) Gobots has no overrated movies.
It blows my mind that the Transformers movie from the 80’s is regarded as some sort of nostalgic Holy Grail. Yeah, it’s better than the terrible G.I. Joe movie from the same era. Yeah, it’s leagues better than the godawful Michael Bay movies. But it’s still shit, even for kids’ entertainment. I won’t say that the Gobots movie is superior…Actually, hell with it, I will say it’s superior: the plot isn’t as convoluted; it doesn’t use annoyingly out-of-place pop music for the soundtrack; and above all, it doesn’t try to be anything more pretentious than a movie for entertaining kids — one which doesn’t carry a supremely undeserved reputation-of-awesomeness like the Transformers movie does. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Go-Bots movie doesn’t kill all the main characters within the first ten minutes?
In the end, I suppose I’m glad that Gobots didn’t survive the 80’s to be molested by brainless, talentless, immature denizens of Hollywood and reduced to a terrible mockery of what it once was. As much as I diss Transformers, the travesty that franchise has become still makes me a little sad. Then again, kids eat it up like candy, just like my generation did the “infinitely superior” animated movie in the 1980’s, so what does that tell ya?
Mike's Toybox 
About time I find someone else who thinks Go Bots is way cooler!
Yeeuh, Gobots Buddies Club.
Sure Thing!
I agree with everything you said. I also can’t stand that even when transformers does do a female character they make her look more human than robot, unlike, Gobots you don’t get awkward “ro-boobs” and the female robots look like their male counterparts which makes more sense.
I don’t know if you know or not, but there has been word of Hasbro looking to do a New Gobots movie, ( if they do I hope for 2 things: 1 no live action and 2, no transformer characters), also they are releasing ( well not hasbro but someone in japan )new Machine Robo figures of a few of the Gobot characters, unfortunately they are 45.00 or more each and only about 4inches tall, so I won’t be buying any though.
That’s an interesting point about the female Gobots. I never really thought about that.
I was actually thinking about writing something like that. Mike anchored many of the things that made for me Gobots an easy choice against Transformers for me in the 80s growing up. They were more original , unique, and honestly looked way cooler in my eyes. I prefered both the cartoons and the toys at the time although Gobots had its flaws as well.
Another point is that Gobots were both cheaper and smaller which for me were an advantage as they fitted my other toys and not the least my budget better. Although the quality was lower with gobots, they weren’t that much worse and most of them survived the treatment of the 8 years version of me.
Watching what Hollywood has done with Transformers, I’m almost happy Gobots never were very popular in the USA. I don’t have to look my childhood heroes reduced to bad CGI cashcows for Hollywood executives and kids who will have forgotten all about it 5 minutes after leaving the movies.
I never thought about the budgetary aspect. That’s a great point. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! (and sorry for the late reply)
What I can say is when I was a kid I only had 2 Transformers but more Gobots ,in fact, my most favourite Gobots were Turbo,Handcuffs,Crasher & Tux ,(respectively they each transform into a race car,a Toyota Crown cop car,Porsche 956 race car (something like that) and a Rolls Royce Phanthom 6 limo). at times I wish I had the Gobots Puzzler (Renegades that merge into a larger robot) ,a Guardian gobot named Sparkie or Sparkles that transforms into a Pontiac Fiero and a Renegade gobot named Stallion that transforms into a 1979-’80s Ford Mustang.
Ha, my first Gobot was Sparky, in fact.
I agree 100%.
Plus the Gobots cartoon was more racially diverse.
Gobots had main human characters that represented all races and gender.
Also I might ad, in my opinion the toys were better too.
Metal die cast, and in vehicle mode, Gobots look like real vehicles, very detailed as well.
I also like Puzzler better than Devistator.😎
Almost same quality as matchbox cars.
Tonka made solid toys.
Transformers were plastic and broke easier. And also the toys had alot of little parts which were easy to lose.
I own a collection of Gobots, as well as Super Gobots and combiners.
Nice. Yeah, I remember the show had that really cute black girl as one of the human leads.
The best part of the article was where you mentioned “godawfulness” of the Michael Bay movies.
As a Kid I watched both and liked both. I also liked He man and She rah and smurfs and snorks and all the other crap that they fed kids. As a kid Transformers always seemed more complex and the stories always appeared to require more processing in order to understand and I never really liked to process, I still don’t, It’s actually a miracle that I make it through work everyday. It could be because I never watched them in order or maybe not, cant say for sure. It’s possible that the stories weren’t all that complex and that it was all a kid’s perception. Never made the effort to re watch.
Now that you mention it I always did get confused with all of these Transformers, back then I thought maybe it was just too many of them but now I’m thinking that maybe it was too many of them looking too much alike, Remember confusing this other guy with Bumblebee, He was bigger and Reder a quick google search just told me that his name is Cliffjumper I think at one point I created my own lore and legitimately recognized him as bumblebee’s older brother. another thing is that a lot of the Transformers ( Especially the autoboots) always had what at the time seemed to be the hardest names to remember and some of them sounded alike Skyfire, , jetfire, cliffjumper, Sunstreaker…..
Dishwasher. I get now that the objective was to sell toys but good gravy man! Anyway besides Prime and some of the other regulars never really cared for the Autobots all that much, Decepticons was where it was at. They were cooler.
Gobots always seemed to be the lighter more fun series I’m pretty sure that I saw it from the beginning and caught quite a few episodes in reasonably ok order . Caught it on USA cartoon express with all of the other fun stuff by Hanna-Barbera. As I said before loved both didn’t care to compare then and don’t care too much now. But the argument does seem compelling.
One thing that I will give the Transformers over the Gobots is the toys. I remember Transformers action Figueres to be far more interesting (and expensive) not that I bought them with my own money but I do remember gobots action figures being easier to get for poor people like myself. kids in school had Gobots all over the place it was no big deal, but If you pulled out an optimus prime that could transform to a truck and still have a mini optimus prime to sit in the back and control the guns then you best watch it hard it’s probably end up in somebody else’s back pack by the end of school.
Even the Gobots toys were better in my view, because they were simpler. I do wish they resembled the cartoon counterparts a little more though: their faces were always pretty featureless.
I know what you mean the cartoon version of Crasher (when she was in robot form) and the toy version (again in robot form) had no facial resemblance to each other for whatever reason.