Steve-o's Transformers Book Archive

Image of several vintage Transformers books splayed out in a display.

Navigation:

Coloring Books

Marvel Hardcovers

Young Corgi Adventure

Marvel Sticker Adventures

Other Books

About this archive!

Over the long history of the Transformers brand, lots of licensed merchandise--sometimes referred to as 'artifacts'--have been released. I have a special interest in BOOKS because they provide extra story and art content. Most of these books aren't very good! Some are downright terrible, but that's why they fascinate me. They rarely fit neatly into the major Transformers continuities: cartoon, comic, etc.. Often, even books from the same series don't fit with each other! The artwork is often off-model in interesting and/or funny ways, too.

Hasbro, of course, is not in the book business. These books are usually produced through contracts with publishers, and unlike the "bigger" storytelling seen in TV, comics, and movies... these books usually weren't scrutinized very closely for consistency. These inconsistencies can shed light on the behind-the-scenes development of the franchise, which can be really interesting from a fan's perspective.

My archive is focused MAINLY on Generation 1 material from the 80s. I've divided things up by publisher below, sometimes with detailed commentary about series or individual books.

Latest Updates:

2023-Aug: Ongoing updates to viewing options and commentary in the coloring book section including... Bumblebee To The Rescue!, Decepticon Patrol, The Deadly Fuel Shortage, Summertime Coloring Book, Forest Rescue Mission, Bumblebee's Dangerous Mission, The Autobot Smasher!, Battle at Oil Valley.
2023-Aug-06: Marvel hardcover book The Autobots' Secret Weapon has been refreshed with a notes page, new HTML, and PDF/CBZ options for reading.
2023-Jul-25: Marvel hardcover book Battle For Earth has been refreshed with a notes page, new HTML, and PDF/CBZ options for reading.
2023-Jul-21: Added new viewing options for When Continents Collide, as well as an MP3 of the audio, as opposed to the RealMedia audio file that was the only option beforehand. Also did a LOT of behind-the-scenes work.
Previous updates...: found at bottom of page!

Coloring Books

Marvel Generation 1:
Published by Marvel Books, these coloring and activity books span all three years of G1 in the United States. At least some of them were also printed in the UK, which you might notice if you look closely at the covers or indicia pages of the scans here.

These are some of my favorite TF books, so the links will take you to dedicated "about" pages with notes and highlights. You can get to the full scans of the books from those subpages.

Honey Bear G2:
A series of G2 coloring books were also released by a company called Honey Bear Books. These are much less interesting than the G1 books, but they're still worth posting. The artwork is excruciatingly faithful to the toys and/or box art (some artwork is even used more than once in a single book, just cut-and-pasted into a different background), and unlike the Marvel G1 books, there's not really a story to speak of. I mean, the Decepticons show up, and the Autobots show up, they fight. Is that a story? ::shrug:: I guess so. There's no potato deliveries or illusionary factories to see here, though, so don't get your hopes up. Still, the bizarre page captions are amusing enough. Most of the characters they use were from G1, but the relatively obscure G2 Decepticon, Terradive, appears too.

Unproduced OTFCC 2003 book:
Lastly, a very special coloring book, based on Hasbro's "Go-go-go-bots" toys and created for the OTFCC 2003 convention. Sadly it did not get to see print due to approval holdups.

Marvel Hardcovers

As far as I know, there are only two books of this type. They are larger, around 8.5x11 or A4 size, and have hard covers. They are quite silly.

Big Looker

This was a series of storybooks from Marvel Books. They are smaller than a standard letter-sized paper, so the name "Big Looker" doesn't make a lot of sense. They are square, with text on the left-hand pages and artwork on the right-hand pages. The artwork comes in two varieties, as far as I've seen: very solid painted art by Earl Norem, or very weird drawn art by John Speirs.

For presenting each of these books, I've created a sub-page with some commentary and art samples which links to two viewing options: First is a single long HTML page with all the pictures and a coincident transcription of the book's text. However, because of all the images, this might be too demanding on some fans' bandwidth. Thus you can also look at the art pages separately (as with the coloring books), but for the story's text you'll need to load the HTML at some point, presumably with image-loading turned off if that's an issue for you.

Battle For Cybertron (see Kid Stuff section)
Decepticon Hijack
The Great Car Rally (see Kid Stuff section)
The Story of Wheelie, Wild Boy of Quintesson
Car Show Blow Up

Kid Stuff Readalongs

In the 80s there was a whole little industry based around these "storybook records". Basically, it's a fairly regular picturebook, but it comes along with a little 45 rpm record (or later, a casette tape) on which is recorded a dramatization of the book, complete with voice acting, music, and sound effects. A series of TF storybook records was released by a company called Kid Stuff. Most were original works, but a few had been previously published as Marvel Big Looker books. Those that I have are all softcover, but Raksha's artifacts list says that longer hardcover versions with extra pictures exist. If anybody has one of these, I would so love to see it.

Among the five original stories I've seen, they appear to have all been written and drawn by the same team, but the first set of three books don't have credits so it's hard to say for sure. They share some very strange features, such as Autobots flying around (even when not in robot mode), extremely toy-based artwork, a highly limited cast (mainly Megatron and Soundwave versus Prime and Prowl), and strange characterization for Megatron and Soundwave: Soundwave is simpering and whiny, and Megs verbally abuses him with insults like "you cassette-stuffed twerp" and acts generally non-Megatron-like, treating his troops' ideas as his own, passing blame that is obviously his to others, taking offense at innocent statements, etc.. He's really much more like Insane Galvatron.

In the recordings, for the early books Megatron was voiced by Earl Hammond, doing pretty much exactly the same voice he later used for Mumm- Ra on the "Thundercats" cartoon. The recording of "Slaves of the Insecticons", from the following year / batch, has an all new cast. One of the modifications they made, though, was applying a vocoder to Soundwave's lines to make him sound more like the cartoon version. (They overdid it though, and he is barely understandable.) I know I've heard the second narrator before, but I can't quite place who he is... anyone know? Anyway, I find these oddities and changes even more odd than usual because the first set of books are copyright 1985, not 1984. I would expect this sort of strangeness from books that were prepared parallel to the main TF fiction, as is the case with the coloring books, but not so much here.

Kidstuff-originals

I have a lot of comments to make about some of these books, so as with the coloring books and Big Lookers, I'm giving each a sub-page with commentary and samples before the actual scans:

Big Looker adaptations

The two books below were originally published as Big Lookers, but were also released by Kid Stuff with audio recordings. Both have painted Earl Norem art.

Audio drama only

I also have a recording for another story produced by Kid Stuff which had no associated book--it's only the audio drama.

Attack of the Decepticons (mp3 format, ~5.4 MB)
This story is copywritten to 1985, and was written and produced by John Braden. All Music published by IJE Music, Inc. ASCAP. Kid Stuff ID's... cassette: KST4052, record: KSS5052. This file was sent to me by Derik.
YouTube version on the channel Video Armageddon. This is a transfer from the record, which looks like a 33 1/3 rpm LP instead of the 45 rpm records that most audio storybooks used. While the audio plays, this video shows still images of the record sleeve and disk. Other than the text, the sleeve just reproduces the 1984 back-of-the-box packaging artwork.

Ladybird

Ladybird is a British children's book publisher. They released a series of small, hardcover TF storybooks. These books came with audio tapes where a narrator read the book for you. The entire series was scanned by Derik Smith. I've compiled the scanned images into PDFs for convenience, but you can also look at the folder listings to see the JPG files.

I also have audio for every book! Some came from Derik and others from a collection shared by Andy Turnbull. The quality and file size of the MP3s varies a lot--they were clearly enocoded by various people and methods over the years.

For a bunch of the books, the audio files I was given were separate "side 1" and "side 2" MP3s. I combined them into single full-length files, so at the midway point in the story you'll hear the intro music again to indicate the beginning of the second side.

Autobots' Lightning Strike: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Megatron's Fight for Power: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Autobots Fight Back: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Laserbeak's Fury: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Galvatron's Air Attack: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Decepticon Hideout: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Decepticons at the Pole: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Autobots Strike Oil: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Autobot Hostage: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Decepticons Underground: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)
Transformers: The Movie: (folder), (PDF), (MP3)

Find Your Fate, Jr.

Often referred to just as "Find Your Fate", these are technically, according to the books themselves, from the "Find Your Fate, Jr." line. The "Sr." FYF books were almost like a one-player game of Basic D&D. Books of this type were also published under the brand names "Pick-A- Path", "Choose Your Own Adventure", and (in the UK) "Young Corgi Adventures". Basically you start off by reading a few pages of setup, and then the book asks you what you want to do next. Depending on what you choose, it tells you to turn to a certain page, and you continue reading from there to see what the consequences of your choice are. This branching story continues until you save the day or, more frequently, foolishly lead the Autobots to their doom. The artwork in the FYFbooks usually leans very heavily towards the toy designs.

Here are links to interactive HTML versions of a few FYF books! Unless otherwise noted, they include transcriptions of the text, links that allow you to "play", and scans of the artwork that was interspersed through the books. Some of these books are available in multiple places now. How exciting! Cybertronian Alliance currently has the first seven books up, and will be posting the others sometime soon.

Book #1: Dinobots Strike Back
- This book is set roughly in season two of the original cartoon series. Interesting notes: the Autobot's ship is named as "The Ark" (this was its name in the comic, but it was never mentioned in the cartoon). One of the Constructicons is named "Gravedigger". Based on the artwork it appears to be Long Haul, but this was in fact an early name for Scavenger. This is also one of those rare books which uses Mirage's original tech spec ability to create illusions instead of inivisibility. The author seems to be under the impression that Skids is a red compact car rather than a blue van, and that Seaspray is a destroyer rather than a hovercraft. (He also seems to be enormous, based on the way he is utilized.)
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
- Hosted here, scans and HTML by Derik Smith.
Book #2: Battle Drive
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
Book #3: Attack of the Insecticons
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
- Hosted at Insecticons.com, prepared by Wayward.
Book #4: Earthquake
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
Book #5: Desert Flight
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
- There used to be an incomplete version of this book on Crazysteve's site, which had wonderful photos of Crazysteve's toys taken all around the city of Tuscon to illustrate the story. His site is down now, but, at some point I'll get him to send me the photos. ^_^
Book #6: Decepticon Poison
- Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.
- Images hosted here, at a slightly larger size than the Alliance's. These copies of the illustrations were scanned by Anthony Brucale of TFU.info.
Book #7: Autobot Alert!

Hosted at Cybertronian Alliance.

Book #8: Project Brain Drain
Book #9: The Invisibility Factor

Young Corgi Adventures

These books are exactly the same idea as the FYF books above. They were published in the UK, however, whearas FYF is North American. The art in these books is a lot more primitive.

There are currently two Corgi adventures available, thanks to the efforts of Derik Smith:

Peril from the Stars - Features characters from early in the series.
Desert of Danger - Targetmasters and Headmasters!

Marvel Sticker Adventures

Another of the many series published by Marvel Books, each page in a Sticker Adventure is laid out like a black and white comic book panel with a narration box and speech balloons. The books come with a set of stickers which you place directly on the page in the appropriate spot. You are instructed to color in the rest of the pictures, which look basically like coloring book art. The color stickers consist of such fascinating items as Sparkplug's upper body, the front surface of Prime's left upper arm, and lots and lots of forearms and heads.

Return to Cybertron - See the scans individually or on one page.
Although this book has an 84 copyright, all the characters are pretty much drawn on-model. There are a few generics, though, who remind me of the designs in "Decepticon Patrol". The book opens with Prime himself working on a new spaceship (didn't know he was an engineer), a ship which the page caption refers to as being "mysterious". ??? Anyway, apparently the Ark crashed "centuries" ago, "before Earth was inhabited". Soundwave makes shocking surprise appearances on page eight and the last page (although he apparently has red fists and carries a different gun in this universe). There is also a last-page reference to Prime's "power pack". Those in the know will recognize that "power pack" is the term used for the Matrix in the Hong Kong dubs of the Japanese "Headmasters" cartoon. Coincidence? Well, yes, but I feel like making a big deal of it because it even makes sense in context. These scans were provided by Derik Smith.
Revenge of the Decepticons - See the scans individually or on one page.
Again, there are some weird looking interpretations of the characters, but they are mostly in their final models. On page two, the speech balloons are way off target. Don't let that throw you. For a second, I was really hoping the deformed Huffer was Cliffjumper, but alas. Anyway, other good bits -- Prime refers to Sparkplug as "Mr. Sparkplug", Sunstreaker is red (possibly an artifact of the old tech spec mixup between him and Sideswipe, but there are enough other color errors that it seems unlikely), Ravage is larger than usual (but not "Decepticon Patrol" large) and single-handedly steals the Autobot's entire supply of oil barrels, and the great line, "Even the mighty Brawn is weak!" Scans provided by Derik Smith.
Battle on the Junk Planet - See the scans individually or on one page.
A year-three sticker adventure! As is the case with many 1986 books, this appears to be set in a strange mid-movie or parallel universe movie timeframe. The story here involves Blur, Perceptor, and Arcee crashing on Junk and meeting the Junkions for the first time, complete with Hot Rod and Kup interrupting the fight with a Quint spiral ship and using the universal greeting. The art is more or less accurate, although Arcee looks odd. The caption on page ten reads, confusingly, "But Wreck-Gar becomes his motorcycle and his motorcycle transforms into Wreck-Gar!" The Springer sticker on page two is terrifying. Unlike the 1984 books, the colors in this one are pretty much accurate. Scans provided, again, by Derik Smith. Sadly, one of the stickers is placed incorrectly, and another appears to be missing completely.

Other Books

A few odd men out, these are books which I have only have one or two of.

'The Battle for Planet Earth' audio adventures. Produced by Pickwick International for Great Britain. There are four adventures in this pack. Derik sent the files. You can read the information from the package if you like. These mp3s are 3-4 megs each. The stories are:
- Terror of Mount Sheela
- Bumblebee to the Rescue
- Menace at the Dam
- Espionage!!!!! (yes, with five exclamation points)

Battle Beneath The Ice - See the scans individually or on one page.
This is a regular storybook published by Young Corgi, in contrast to their Adventure books, found above. This book was sent by Derik Smith. It has painted artwork which is incredibly toy-accurate, and is set sometime between G1 Season Two and the movie. Hot Rod and the Aerialbots are prominently featured.

The Deadly Paradise - See the scans individually or on one page.
This book was published in the UK by a company called St. Michael. I had never even heard of a series of TF books from them until this one arrived in my email inbox. In the message that Derik attached the book to, he said something along the lines of, "this book really disturbs me". It is, indeed, very weird. The artwork is a bizarre, deformed, hybird of toy and box art. It's really odd. For example, on the first page where Sideswipe is in a human councilroom, on trial, he is holding his gun out as if aiming over everyone's heads at a Decepticon. The book has an unusually grumpy Optimus Prime, hordes of semi-sentient cannon fodder, and the mysterious Madame Cee's pig machines which don't look like pigs. The fate of Earth may well be decided on Carob Island!

Transformers Sticker Book (which is actually a find-your-fate sort of thing which happens to have stickers) - See the scans individually or on one page.
Another St. Michael product. These scans were sent by Hotmissile. The stickers seem to be pretty much unrelated to the rest of the book, except that there are a few scenes included for you to place your reusable stickers on. (They are similar to Colorforms, if you remember those.) Otherwise, this is more or less like a Find Your Fate book. The major difference is that when you begin reading, you choose between character stats of strength, speed, and intelligance. Your stats sometimes dictate which page you turn to, rather than it being up to your free will. Also, many of the pages have more than one block of text marked with sci-fi themed icons. You normally only read one block at a time, as if they were different pages. It is a movie-era story, which means it has Hot Rod rather than Rodimus, but also has Cyclonus and Ultra Magnus as the Autobot leader. In the story, you are mysteriously transported to an alien world where the Autobots' ship has crashed, and there are Decepticons in pursuit. The art is stark black and white; while the artist clearly had toys or model sheets to work from, he has taken a lot of stylistic liberties. Ratchet appears in toy form on pages 6, 11, 18. There's also an awesome Galvatron silhouette on page 19. Like "Return to Cybertron", this book uses the term "power pack", although it can't be mistaken as a synonym for "Matrix" this time.

Transformers Press-Out Battlefield - See commentary and info, or just look at scans as a webpage or as a PDF
Published by Purnell in 1987, this is an odd storybook with punch-out figures and scenery at the end so you can re-enact the story. The art is by the same Ian Craddock as the St. Michael sticker book, above. Images provided by Rik-ochet.

STARS Tech-Spec manual - This short pamphlet was included with the STARS membership and playset if you ordered it from Hasbro Direct. It contains some background info on the Transformers story, a diagram of the STARS playset, and bios for a seemingly random (and small) selection of characters.

Energon birthday cards - See the scans individually.
Okay, so these aren't books, but they're neat and this seems like a decent place to put them. Three birthday cards branded with Transformers Energon were released in 2004. I found these at a K-Mart in the toy department near the TFs. There are three cards, and I've scanned the insides and outsides of each. The files are named after the character who appears on the front of the card.

About the archive

This site is focused mainly on Generation 1 material, spanning the years 1984-1986, although you'll see a smattering of other stuff here as well. I'm a fan of the entire brand, not just G1, but I don't expect to end up posting very much from outside of G1 here. Why is that?

those are the years that "mean" the most to me personally because I was a kid then
those years have the most interesting/weird book material because everything was being figured out on-the-fly and in parallel
with the oldest material, I am least likely to be stepping on any toes or running afoul of copyright enforcement

Many fans have contributed to this archive through its lifetime and every individual book credits the person who provided it, unless it was myself. The largest other than me are:

"Derik Smith" who personally scanned a huge amount of stuff early in this site's lifetime.
walruslaw of the TF Raw archive who has shared with me a lot of files that he's collected over the years, although their original sources are mostly not known anymore.
Arvegtor who has also amassed an impressive digital library. Arvegtor shares his collection on MEGA-- go ahead and browse it! It's much more complete than my site and in a lot of ways it's easier to navigate, but there is no commentary or context for the files. Like walruslaw's collection, the people who made these files are mostly unknown to Arvegtor.

Because so many people have contributed, spanning so many years, there's not a lot of uniformity in the images. Size, scan quality, image processing, and the like are different from book to book. (The web pages I've written are pretty varied in layout and style as well, for the same reason!)

When it comes to transcribing text (for non-scanned bits) I try to be as faithful as I can. So, for example, I try to preserve the typos. There's really no way for you, the reader, to know whether a typo you see is my fault or the author's fault, but hopefully that won't upset you too much!

If you have access to books (physical or digital) that aren't here, please consider reaching out to me and sharing!

FULL UPDATES LOG

2023-Aug: Ongoing updates to viewing options and commentary in the coloring book section including... Bumblebee To The Rescue!, Decepticon Patrol, The Deadly Fuel Shortage, Summertime Coloring Book.
2023-Aug-06: Marvel hardcover book The Autobots' Secret Weapon has been refreshed with a notes page, new HTML, and PDF/CBZ options for reading.
2023-Jul-25: Marvel hardcover book Battle For Earth has been refreshed with a notes page, new HTML, and PDF/CBZ options for reading.
2023-Jul-21: Added new viewing options for When Continents Collide, as well as an MP3 of the audio, as opposed to the RealMedia audio file that was the only option beforehand. Also did a LOT of behind-the-scenes work.
2023-Jan-28: Expect some gradual updates to coloring book pages and files over the coming weeks. I won't be logging every single change, but today I updated the HTML for Search for Treasure Under the Sea as well as replacing my old low-quality scans with better donated images. There are now CBR and PDF options for that book as well. I plan to do similar work for other coloring books, probably one or two at a time.
2023-Jan-01: No new content right now, but I've added cover thumbnails for the coloring books on the main page! This is the beginning of me reworking the site into a post-2000 style that no longer assumes everyone's internet access comes through a dialup modem and a desktop computer. More images and a flexible layout to improve the experience on mobile browsers.
Previous updates...
2023-Jan-28: Expect some gradual updates to coloring book pages and files over the coming weeks. I won't be logging every single change, but today I updated the HTML for Search for Treasure Under the Sea as well as replacing my old low-quality scans with better donated images. There are now CBR and PDF options for that book as well. I plan to do similar work for other coloring books, probably one or two at a time.
2023-Jan-01: no new content right now, but I've started reworking the index page into a post-1998 style that no longer assumes everyone's internet access comes through a dialup modem
2022-Nov-13: Marvel coloring book "The Invasion of the Decepticon Camp" is now available.
2021-Jun-13: Replaced page 7 of Press-Out Battlefield with a new image with better cropping. Had to edit it somewhat to make it mostly-match the other pages. :)
2021-Jun-12: "Transformers Press-Out Battlefield" is now available, a storybook with punch-out diorama published in 1987 by Purnell.
2020-Jul-02: Marvel coloring book "A Message From Outer Space" is now available.
2020-Jun-29: Marvel coloring book "Bumblebee's Dangerous Mission" is now available.
2020-Apr-06: All Ladybird books are now available again, years after the green-ranger archive of them disappeared. Thanks to Andy Turnbull for sharing an audio archive and my finally realizing I had the scans saved in a dusty corner of an old hard drive.
2020-Apr-02: I've added audio for the Big Looker / Kid Stuff "Battle for Cybertron. Andy Turnbull posted an audio collection recently which I am working my way through.
2016-Nov-25: Ten years since the last update, I have added scans of the Marvel hardcover storybook, The Autobots' Secret Weapon, graciously sent by Shawn Murphy. Check out his YouTube channel where he posts looks at lots of pop culture items including some old Transformers material!
2006-Nov-09: It's my great pleasure to present to the world Complete Go-Bots Power!, a coloring book created by David Willis for OTFCC 2003 that was approved by Hasbro, but never produced.
2006-Oct-29: Derik and I have cooperated to provide a new recording of "Attack of the Decepticons". Matt Kruger pointed out that the old one had some odd "skips" in it.
2006-Oct-16: Derik sent scans of a hardcover Marvel storybook called "Battle For Earth".
2006-Sep-18: Added four audio-only adventures, a higher-quality Satellite of Doom recording, and noted that Cybertron Alliance put up a new FYF book. Also added scans of the old STARS tech-spec manual.
2006-May-09: Revised the Find Your Fate section links, now including more books hosted at Cybertronian Alliance. Will probably make another minor update soon, as somebody sent me scans of "Wheelie, Wild Boy of Quintesson".
2005-Sep-18: Added an audio-only Kid Stuff adventure called "Attack of the Decepticons", and the coloring book "Lost Treasure of Cybertron".
2005-Feb-14: Happy Valentine's Day! A gift to you from me and Derik: Forest Rescue Mission.
2004-Dec-13: Added three books contributed by an anonymous donor: coloring books "Bumblebee to the Rescue!" and the "Super Activity Book", and Big Looker "Car Show Blow Up".
2004-Dec-06: Created "Sticker Adventure" section, added sticker adventures "Revenge of the Decepticons" and "Battle on the Junk Planet", and the St. Michael reusable role-playing adventure sticker activity book...
2004-Nov-20: Added the coloring book, "Battle at Oil Valley".
2004-Jun-25: Added audio for Kid Stuff book "Jaws of Terror", and Ladybird books "Autobots Fight Back" and "Autobots' Lightning Strike".
2003-Oct-14: A major update! Four Kid Stuff books have been added: "Satellite of Doom", "When Continents Collide", "Storms of Destruction", and "Jaws of Terror". Satellite, Continents, and Storms come with their accompanying audio recordings, and the recording for "Slaves of the Insecticons" has also been added! Also, overhauls to the writeups for "Battle for Cybertron", "Decepticon Hijack", and "The Great Car Rally", and other misc. tweaks and reorganiations.
2003-Sep-25: Marvel Sticker Adventure, "Return to Cybertron", has been added to the coloring books section. Also expanded the write-up for G2 coloring book, "Dinobots vs Constructicons".
2003-Aug-20: Big Looker books "Battle for Cybertron" and "Decepticon Hijack"
2003-Aug-14: Generation 2 coloring books "Autobots' Advantage" and "Dinobots vs Constructicons"