My brothers and I literally wore out our VHS tape of The Transformers: The Movie, re-watching it over and over (and over). It's one of my favorite memories of growing up as a kid in the 80s, and when Hasbro put it back in theaters for its 40th anniversary in September 2026, it was pretty clear I'm not the only one who never got over it!
The film landed in theaters on August 8th, 1986, made less than $6 million, got hammered by critics and killed off Optimus Prime in front of a theater full of kids. Forty years later, the anniversary re-release made about 71% of that entire 1986 total in its first four days.
So how does a toy commercial turn into a movie people are still buying tickets for?
Why Did Hasbro Make A Transformers Movie?
It all comes down to toys. The cartoon had been on TV since 1984, and by 1986 Hasbro had a whole new wave of figures to sell.
The movie was produced by Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions, animated by Japan's Toei Animation and directed by Nelson Shin, with Ron Friedman writing the script and Flint Dille credited as story consultant.
Shin didn't sugarcoat it when he talked to SFX magazine in 2011, saying Hasbro "created the story using characters that could best be merchandised for the film."
On the movie's 20th anniversary DVD, Dille put it even more plainly, as Den of Geek recounted: "We didn't know that he was an icon. It was a toy show. We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products."
Not everyone was on board. Friedman told Todd Matthy in 2013 that he warned against killing Optimus Prime: "To remove Optimus Prime, to physically remove Daddy from the family, that wasn't going to work." He later titled his memoir I Killed Optimus Prime, so that one clearly stuck with him!
The story jumps ahead to the year 2005, twenty years after the second season of the TV show, and leads straight into Season 3. That's why so many of the 1984 and 1985 characters you grew up with don't make it to the end credits. Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl and Brawn are all gone early on.
The animation got a HUGE upgrade over the TV show. Toei's Kozo Morishita spent about a year in the U.S. overseeing the work, and Shin already had a pretty wild credit to his name. While working at DePatie-Freleng, he apparently animated the glowing lightsaber blades for the original Star Wars.
Reports put the budget at about $6 million, which SFX magazine said was six times what the same 90 minutes of the TV series would have cost.
The planet-eating Unicron was designed by Floro Dery, who said in a 2007 interview that the character was originally named "Ingestor" until the writer saw the design and changed it, probably because of the horns. Dery also said he "got the idea of Unicron from the planet Saturn," which explains the ring around his middle!
Who's In The Cast?
Hasbro wanted a real Hollywood MOVIE, so it hired a group of big-name stars to sit alongside the TV show's regular voice cast. "It was groundbreaking to introduce these famous actors in an animated feature," producer Joe Bacal said on the 20th anniversary DVD, per the Associated Press.
Voice director Wally Burr remembered the difference at a 2015 reunion screening: "You send limousines for them. And you usually record them solo, rather than in an ensemble."
The main voice cast included:
- Orson Welles as Unicron
- Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron
- Robert Stack as Ultra Magnus
- Judd Nelson as Hot Rod / Rodimus Prime
- Eric Idle as Wreck-Gar
- Lionel Stander as Kup
- Scatman Crothers as Jazz
- Casey Kasem as Cliffjumper
- Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and Ironhide
- Frank Welker as Megatron, Soundwave, Rumble and Frenzy
- Susan Blu as Arcee
- John Moschitta Jr. as Blurr
- Chris Latta as Starscream
- Roger C. Carmel as Cyclonus
- Corey Burton as Spike and Shockwave
The biggest name of all was Orson Welles. The Citizen Kane legend recorded his lines on October 5th, 1985 and died five days later, on October 10th. His voice was so weak by then that, according to the AP, it was altered with synthesizers "until it hardly sounded like him." Unicron was his final performance (his last released movie, Someone to Love, was shot before this one).
What did he think of the gig? Depends on who you ask! Biographer Barbara Leaming quotes him in Orson Welles: A Biography saying, "You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy." Flint Dille remembered it differently, telling the AP that Welles said, "I'm playing an entire planet!" Nelson Shin has said Welles liked the script.
It was also Scatman Crothers' last feature film. He died on November 22nd, 1986, just a few months after the movie came out.
Why Isn't Peter Cullen In The Trailers?
Go back and watch the 1986 trailers and you won't hear Peter Cullen's name once!
According to TFWiki's transcripts, the theatrical trailer, narrated by Victor Caroli, calls out Judd Nelson as Hot Rod, Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron and Orson Welles, and the longer promo reel adds Robert Stack and Eric Idle.
From a marketing point of view, it makes sense. The stars were the selling point, and Cullen was the voice kids had already been hearing on TV every week since 1984. Still, this is the movie where Optimus Prime DIES!
"I realized that I was going to be killed off. That was a surprise," Cullen told MovieWeb in 2007. "I wondered for years if it was because of a bad performance."
Fathom Entertainment listed Cullen first in the cast when it announced the re-release in May 2026, and the U.S. screenings came with Optimus Prime: Awakening, a new 12-minute short that turned out to be his final performance as Optimus.
Cullen passed away on August 26th, 2026 at the age of 85, less than a month before the re-release premiered. Fathom then swapped out its poster of a fallen Optimus.
I had the opportunity to visit with and interview Peter Cullen back in 2014 for Transformers: Age of Extinction, and his lines from this movie hit especially hard for this kid who's now in his 50s and in many ways has refused to grow up:
- "Do not grieve. Soon I shall be one with the Matrix."
- "One shall stand, one shall fall."
- "...one day, an Autobot shall rise from our ranks, and use the power of the Matrix to light our darkest hour."
Cullen was a big part of my childhood thanks to Transformers and the animated Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Picking his brain on both of those was quite the treat and I couldn't believe how down-to-earth and friendly he was. I think "strong enough to be gentle" sums him up perfectly.
How Did It Do In 1986?
Not great!
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group opened the movie in 990 theaters on August 8th, 1986, and it landed at #14 with $1,779,559 on its opening weekend. It finished its run with $5,849,647 domestic, per The Numbers, which didn't even cover the reported budget.
Critics weren't kind. Caryn James wrote in The New York Times that "the movie is not for anyone too grown-up," Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times said it "seems more like state-of-the-marketing" (via Metacritic), and Leonard Maltin gave it a BOMB, calling it "little more than a feature-length toy commercial."
Then there was the reaction to Optimus Prime's death. "Kids were crying in the theatres," Flint Dille said. "We heard about people leaving the movie. We were getting a lot of nasty notes about it."
Hasbro listened, and Optimus came back in the Season 3 two-parter The Return of Optimus Prime, which aired February 24th and 25th, 1987.
If you saw the movie outside the U.S., you might remember a narrator promising at the very end that Optimus Prime would return. That line was added for the UK and European versions and isn't in the American cut.
The fallout even reached G.I. Joe: The Movie. Duke was written to die in that one, and after the reaction to Optimus, Hasbro had new lines dubbed in saying he'd slipped into a coma. Story editor Buzz Dixon has said there were three different audio versions of that scene!
And for a PG cartoon aimed at kids, it's got a couple of words you did NOT expect to hear in 1986, courtesy of Spike and Ultra Magnus! According to a user-contributed IMDb FAQ, this was a rating strategy because PG booked more showings per day than G rated films did.
Why Do Fans Still Love It?
The soundtrack is a big part of it. Vince DiCola, fresh off Rocky IV, composed the synth-heavy score, Lion recorded a hard rock version of the Transformers theme and Stan Bush's "The Touch" became the song most fans still associate with it.
Bush has said he and Lenny Macaluso originally wrote it for Sylvester Stallone's Cobra!
"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Dare to Be Stupid" plays over the Junkion scenes, and the band Kick Axe is credited as Spectre General, reportedly because its real name was considered too threatening for a kids' movie.
"The Touch" has kept popping up ever since. Mark Wahlberg sings it as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights (1997), Bee plays a snippet of it over his car stereo in Bumblebee (2018) and Transformers One (2024) slipped in a "You don't have the touch or the power" line. As for the 1986 movie's Unicron opening, director Josh Cooley told Gizmodo, "I want to bring that back."
As of September 2026 it sits at 63% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 97% with audiences. You can probably tell which group I'm in!
Hasbro and Fathom Entertainment brought the movie back to theaters in 4K on September 17th, 2026 (Transformers Day), as part of Hasbro's "Apology Tour," with the tagline "40 Years Later... It Still Hits Like a Truck."
The re-release made $3,103,922 from 1,454 theaters over its first weekend to land at #7, and $4,156,531 over its first four days.
Where Can You Watch It Now?
If the re-release is still playing near you, showtimes are on Fandango, and U.S. screenings come with Optimus Prime: Awakening. We covered the run in more detail here on Toonado.
For your own shelf, Shout! Studios is releasing The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary Limited Edition 4K steelbook on November 17th, 2026, and it's up for pre-order now. Shout's listing says the Blu-ray disc includes a new 2026 animated coda, but it hasn't been confirmed whether that's Optimus Prime: Awakening.
If you don't want to wait, the 35th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray is available now.
Insight Editions also has The Transformers: The Movie: The Ultimate Visual History by Chris Prince coming in the fall of 2026, a hardcover history of how the movie got made.
And if you want the music, the original soundtrack is available on vinyl, and the 2026 Knights of Unicron re-recording, The Transformers: The Movie: The Soundtrack: The Reformatted Edition, brings in Stan Bush, Vince DiCola and Sebastian Bach.
What do you remember about the first time you saw it? Who were you watching it with? For me, it's my brothers and that poor VHS tape.
Sound off in the comments below!
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