How did the Transformer franchise begin?
Answer
Sometime around early 1983, Takara began selling some of their popular Japanese robot toylines in the United States, including marketing Diaclone under the name Diakron and parts of New Microman under the name Kronoform. Shortly afterwards, though, Takara and Hasbro representatives met at the annual Toy Fair trade show in New York. Takara was trying to find US-based partners to help them sell their brands, and struck a deal with Hasbro. The two companies already had some business history together. Once this deal was struck, Takara naturally stopped marketing the toys on their own, hence the rather short-lived lifetime of those lines in America. Hasbro, for whatever reason, felt they needed to develop a new story for the toys rather than sticking with the established stories from Takara, and approached Marvel for help. (Marvel had previously done development work on the 80's G.I. Joe franchise for Hasbro, to great success.) The backstory and characters were created by Marvel, and of course Marvel released the comic and Marvel Productions -- their animation branch -- did the cartoon series under contract from Sunbow.
This answer is from Steve-o's Transformers FAQ see Web Links
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