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Released by: Warner Archive
Released on: 5/17/2011
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: 1984
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The Series:
Ahh…. bad eighties cartoons. Does it get any better than Challenge Of The Gobots? Products by Hanna Barbera, who really should have known better, this cartoon ran in syndication, first as a five part mini-series and then the next year as a regular series which lasted for sixty episodes. Many an afternoon was spent on school playgrounds across the world debating who was cooler - GoBots or Transformers - and while Transformers usually won out there were those of us who held fast to our love of the clunky and dopey looking GoBots. They weren't as well designed as Optimus Prime and his pals, there was no disputing that even at a young age, but you had to love their noble sense of dogoodery and screwy voice acting.
Like the Transformers, The Challenge Of The GoBots dealt with an alien race called GoBots who not so surprisingly came from the distant planet of GoBotron. There were good GoBots - the Guardians - and there were baaaaad GoBots - the Renegades - lead by Leader-1 and Cykill respectively. See, years and years ago civil war broke out and the Renegades got a little out of control and screwed things up to the point where an asteroid hit their planet. This resulted in a bunch of GoBots heading towards Earth where the conflict continued. There's more to it than that, but the basic plot revolves around good GoBots fighting bad Gobots on Earth.
The first of the five episodes that makes up the original mini-series is The Battle For GoBotron and it tells how Cykill (who is a robot who can turn into a motorcycle) and his evil pals Crasher (turns into a car) and Coptor (a helicopter if you couldn't figure it out on your own) steal the Guardian's rad new weapon, the Astro-Beam, which they intend to use to conquer the entire universe. Leader-1 and his best friends, Scooter (who is, um, a scooter) and Turbo (a fast car) and eventually stuff gets mixed up with a NASA space shuttle and the GoBots wind up on Earth.
In the second episode, Target Earth, some humans named Matt, AJ and Nick who have seen the GoBots (though nobody believes them) wind up helping Leader-1 repair a broken down Turbo. The Renegades show up and cause a whole bunch of problems and Scooter busts out some rad hologram technology. Cykill's got other tricks up his sleeve though and he intends to take Earth for his own evil uses.
Conquest Of Earth, the third episode, picks up where the last one left off with Cykill and his evil cronies attacking a NORAD base while Leader-1 and the Guardians do everything they can to save innocent human lives from imminent destruction. A chick named Anya shows up to help Matt but things don't end so well when Leader-1 gets blown out of the sky and taken prisoner by the Renegades!
The penultimate chapter, Earthbound, Cykill manages to enslave pretty much every human being on the Earth and Leader-1 cannot help them. The other Guardians are hiding so Crasher, crafty bugger that he is, decides to use some of their human pals to bring them out into the open where they can ambush them, destroy them, and keep the Earth under their control. Cykill turns the population of Earth into a bunch of worker bees who build things called Zod's for him to use in his war while Scooter figures out how to get some humans out from under Cykill's control.
It all comes to a head in the fifth and final episode, The Final Conflict, which would prove not to be the final conflict at all as next year the series would be back. At any rate, things were bad for our Guardian friends last go round but here they manage to bring their A-game back and save the day. We're not going to tell you how though, because that would spoil all of the intensity and suspense that this series can deliver.
Seriously though, this series was goofy in the eighties and it's still goofy now but it's also a lot of dopey nonsensical fun. The character design isn't on par with what The Transformers would offer but there are still some neat mighty robots who turn into mighty vehicles zipping around blowing stuff up. There's really not much to the stories and the plot is really just an excuse to move from one fight scene to the next but when this first aired in the eighties, we didn't care, and most of us won't care now. Mighty robots. Mighty vehicles. GoBots. Long may you reign.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Warner's packaging touts this release as re-mastered and the video quality here is surprisingly good. Colors look excellent, really popping the way only goofy old cartoons can, and detail is about as good as the source material could probably realistically allow for. There's a little bit of print damage here and there but if you're not looking for it you're probably not going to notice and even if you do, generally you won't care. The video quality on this disc is a very pleasant surprise indeed.
The no frills Dolby Digital Mono sound mix is in English with no alternate language dubs, subtitles or closed captions provided. The audio is clean and clear and you won't have any problems understanding the dialogue. The levels fluctuate a bit here and there and there are a few spots where the effects are a bit loud, but these are minor complaints. Generally the audio sounds just fine.
Extras? Outside of a static menu and episode selection, not a one.
The Final Word:
While it's not 'good' by most conventional standards, The Challenge Of The GoBots is such a direct hit nostalgia rush that anyone who remembers the series from their childhood will probably have a blast with it. The quality of the Warner Archive is very solid indeed, and while the lack of extras stings a bit, at least the original mini-series is finally out. Here's hoping there's more GoBots in the pipeline!
That's kind of how I felt about the GoBots.