In the beginning, the war was divided into two sides, the villainous Decepticons and the heroic Autobots.
And what was an understanding was that Decepticons could fly while the Autobots could not and never the two shall meet. That is in the cartoon medium and in the toy form as the Autobots were primarily cars while the Decepticons were mostly planes.
In season 1 of Transformers, we are introduced to Skyfire.
Skyfire was one of Starscream’s closest and dearest friends. They manage to become lost from each other while on prehistoric Earth eons before the arc. Millions of years later, the Decepticons found Skyfire, encased in a block of ice, and revived him. Later on, he ends up siding with the Autobots.
As for the toy, he was named Jetfire and was a repaint of a Macross VF-1S Super Valkyrie plane. This is why the cartoon is different from the toy release. Takara was none too pleased with a cartoon that had 99% of their action figures promoting a non-Takara toy. So the animators changed him up and his name was changed to Skyfire (I am guessing since he no longer looked like Jetfire to just change the name anyway).
Personally, I think Jetfire was a better name and a much cooler looking figure. In addition this marks the start of Hasbro making an aggressive integration of non-Takara Transforming Robotic figures into the realm of the Transformers. We will, in future episodes, go over the others.
Starting with the second wave of G1 figures, there would now be equal opportunity robots in disguise.
That’s it for this week. Hit up the Pop Culture Network forums and thanks for reading.
‘Till all are one!”