Transformers

Transformers is an American Japanese media franchise centered on a race of sentient robots able to transform into vehicles and other machines, created through a joint venture between the American toy company Hasbro and the Japanese company Takara, which licensed and merged elements of its own Diaclone and Microman toy lines for the American market beginning in 1984. The franchise launched with a toy line accompanied by a Marvel Comics series and an animated television series depicting the war between the heroic Autobots and the villainous Decepticons, and has since produced multiple further animated series, comic book lines and, from 2007, a live action film series directed initially by Michael Bay that has grossed more than four billion dollars worldwide across its main installments. Transformers is widely credited, alongside contemporaries such as He-Man, as a pioneer of the toy driven media franchise model, in which a toy line and its accompanying entertainment are developed together from the outset.