Reading – Transformers G1 Character Archive

Much like the Transformers Visualworks* book (reading post here), this Japanese Transformers book is packed with a ton of artwork I’ve never seen before. Yes, there’s a lot of art we’ve seen in US publications and eighties toy packaging, but if you’re looking for some obscure artwork — and characters I do not recognize — then crack open the pages of this book and get ready for a ride.

Released in 2004, this 128-page softcover book is filled with page after page of artwork and is loaded with text; unfortunately, all (well, most) of the text is in Japanese so I can’t really read it. But I can appreciate seeing the character designs (which we’ve seen collected before in Complete Transformers Ark*) and the old packaging artwork. But my absolute favorite pieces has to be the stuff I’ve never seen before, like the Megatron painting shown above. Great stuff!

Searching online for information on this book led me to this tformers.com post, but that was all I could find. I’m kinda surprised I couldn’t find a detailed overview and a ton of pics online but I guess this one kinda slipped by. I’ve posted a Flickr set with 31 photos if you want a closer peek at what’s inside, but it’s honestly just page after page of Transformers artwork and stills from the animated series.

This isn’t a must-own book for anyone, but if you can find it cheap (I paid about $10 for it a few years ago) then it makes a fun addition to any Transformers collection. I think the Transformers Visualworks* book is much nicer — it’s a hardcover and quite durable — but while there’s a little overlap between the two books this one has enough different material to make it fun.

I just wish those old packaging paintings from the back of the boxes and cards had been presented as spreads or fold-outs. I remember staring at those paintings when I was a kid and just loving all of the characters scattered throughout the images. If these were reproduced larger I’d likely get lost in the art again.

If you wanna get lost in pictures don’t miss Dork Dimension’s 1985 Transformers catalog post. Talk about another blast down nostalgia lane. The paintings in this book combined with those catalog photos may make me start to think it’s 1985 again.