They don’t have reproduction organs. They’re not even organic at all. Yet somehow, even transforming biped vehicle creatures can now be “transgender”.
At this point, one has to wonder if household kitchen items could become non-binary. Perhaps your blender was always masculine and you just assumed it was a food-chopping item free of such constructs. Now that transformers have landed in this category, maybe Hot Wheels can be next. Who’s ready for transgender tonka trucks?
On Friday, we lost another one. The Transformers have fallen.
A few nights ago my daughter walked into my office to ask about the new Transformers show on Paramount+. She wanted to know if I had seen it yet, and if it was okay to watch.
“Maybe. I’ll have to check it out first, of course. You might not like it. There’s a new guy voicing Optimus Prime.”
My daughter is a BIG fan of Transformers. Years ago I turned on Rescue Bots on a day when another little boy had come over to play. He wasn’t very interested, but my daughter fell in love with the Burns family and the specialized team of Autobots that worked hand-in-hand with the first responders of Griffin Rock.
Not gonna lie, I love the show too. Even though there’s no mother around, the Burnses are a tight knit family made up of police, fire & rescue, engineering, and aerial rescue.
Hard work. Clear Morality. Family. Community.
The newest Transformers series, subtitled Earthspark, premiered last week. It’s taken a few days for the headline to surface, but word has gotten around that there’s a new kind of transformer in town. It appears that things are not as easily defined as they were Griffin Rock.
Despite the transformers having no organs of any kind, having no reproduction ability of any kind, and being robots: Transformers has entered the gender revolution.
earthspark has our first canonically, intentionally non-binary transformer 🥹🥹🥹 pic.twitter.com/gI0NVG13yO
— paolo 2024 (@marineBaeology) November 12, 2022
Full disclosure, in the interest of timeliness, I am only reviewing the final two-part episode of season 1 of Transformers: Earthspark. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
The episode, titled Age of Evolution, starts with Optimus Prime and Megatron arriving together at a military base. The last I had heard Megatron was pure evil, but today he seems pretty chummy with Optimus and the military as they get scanned by a female soldier with that same half-shaved haircut they’re giving all “tough lady” characters these days.
As I mentioned before, Peter Cullen isn’t voicing Optimus. Instead it’s the immensely talented Alan Tudyk. Tudyk’s Optimus is more playful and nervous than the great robot leader we’re used to. We can’t have a too strong of a masculine lead these days, can we?
As the obligatory human family arrives the base is attacked by a pair of female transformers demanding that Optimus give them his left arm.
“They want my left arm like their lives depend on it” says Optimus.
“They can have MY FIST” says Megatron.
Although I’m fairly confident the writers are native English speakers, that dialogue rings out like a mediocre translation. What’s even more strange is that Megatron starts preaching to the other transformers about how the humans will never trust them if they don’t change their ways. Later in the episode he tells a human that his quest to protect humanity is “more of a danger to humanity than any transformer could ever be.” At one point Optimus describes Megatron as “old friend.”
What in the world am I watching?
Fast-forwarding a bit, it’s apparent that everyone in this kids show has complex reasons for being good or evil. That’s disappointing from a parenting standpoint. Personally, I don’t really want my kids coming away from their show about robots that turn into trucks thinking that one day their heroes might turn evil, or thinking that someone wanting to do them harm “might be making some fair points.”
Morals first, complexity later, please.
The transformers are looking for an object called the Emberstone that is some kind of catalyst. It has caused the “next evolution of transformers” and a fight between the misguided transformers and the hero transformers gets going. The writing is on the wall. Buckle up.
In the course of the battle, the Emberstone lights up, the cave they’re in starts to collapse, and new transformers appear to save them.
The next evolution of transformers are identified as “Nightshade,” “Jawbreaker,” and “Hashtag.” It might have been my mood, but I let out an audible groan at that last one.
In an awkward moment, Optimus stumbles as he addresses Nightshade, now less than a day old.
“Nightshades pronouns are they/them” a child says.
“He or she just doesn’t fit who I am” Nightshade explains.
“My apologies, please switch their piece” Optimus obliges.
And there you have it. In three lines of dialogue, Paramount and Hasbro have not only introduced a non-binary transformer, but they’ve made Optimus Prime into a polite adherent to radical gender ideology.
Transformers has added itself to the growing list of children’s properties that have incorporated some form of transgender ideology, including Muppet Babies, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Big Hero 6, Blues Clues, and Star Wars. The list is longer if you included general LGBT themes in preschool content.
The greatest offense of the show is that it waits until the tenth episode to integrate a regular character that forces children to have a discussion about gender ideology. That’s well past the window where most diligent parents will have made the call on whether a show is safe for kids to watch.
If it were part of the first few episodes, Paramount could take their points for diversity, equity, and inclusion with “pride,” but by sneaking it into the end of the season, they have pulled a bait and switch what looks like an end run around parental supervision. They know what they’re doing and that’s pretty fowl in my opinion. I guess it’s their duty to save children from their parents.
I struggle to think that the higher-ups at Hasbro that need to sell toys to keep revenues up would have even been aware of this. Perhaps that’s why it was so late in the season. If girl superheroes don’t sell well, then I can’t imagine a non-binary transformer is going to move merchandise. Maybe Hasbro will get lucky and whoever sees the toy will have no idea about the show.
If you’re looking for a larger discussion of the impact of the gender revolution on toy manufacturers, That Park Place has excellent exclusive coverage with clandestine sources from inside the toy industry and they have a lot to say about this issue. As always, drop a comment down below and let me know your thoughts!
