Jim Shooter explains the convoluted origin of the Transformers:
In 1983, a toy company approached Marvel Comics seeking development of a toy property for comics, animation and other entertainment. The toys in question were cars and other vehicles that could be opened and unfolded into ROBOTS. Very cool.
The toy company was KNICKERBOCKER TOYS. They called their toy property, based on technology licensed from a Japanese company, the “MYSTERIONS.”
Marvel Comics was their second choice as a creative services provider. They had gone to DC Comics first. The executive who approached us showed us what DC had created for them. It was a comic book. He only had photocopies. I don’t believe the thing was ever printed.
It was awful.
[...]
So, we made a deal and began work. I wrote the back story and the treatment for the first story. They loved it.The plan was for us to publish comics and for our studio, Marvel Productions, to produce a number of animated half-hours — six, I think. I forget. We would launch just before the pre-sale of the toys. Then follow it up in the spring when the initial wave of low price point items shipped. The usual.
We were asked to come to a meeting at Knickerbocker’s offices out in the wilds of Jersey somewhere.
[...]
The next day we learned that, just before our meeting, Hasbro had announced that it was acquiring Knickerbocker. Shakeup, indeed.The deal with Knickerbocker fell victim to the takeover by Hasbro. The Hollywood term for similar events is “turnaround.” Projects begun by previous administrations are automatically put into turnaround, that is, on hold — usually permanently.
[...]
Some months later, the Hasbro exec who was Marvel’s main contact, Bob Prupis, came to my office. He pulled a few toy vehicles out of his bag and proceeded to open and unfold them into ROBOTS.They were bigger and much more complex than the Mysterions. Different Japanese technology, same general idea.
Hasbro, he said, had the rights to the technology and toys based upon it. The problem, he said was story. He said that the Japanese storyline associated with the toys wasn’t useful. Japanese kids, apparently, don’t require much justification. Cars become robots, robots become cars. Well, of course they do. What do you mean, “why?”
(P.S. To this day I’ve never read or seen any of the Japanese storyline.)
American kids, he thought would like to know why. Did I think we could develop this toy concept for comics, animation and other entertainment the way we developed G.I. JOE?
Sure.
I didn’t mention the Mysterons, but, hey, if I could do it once, I figured I could do it again. I had to wonder, though, whether the Knickerbocker Mysterions somehow inspired Hasbro’s acquisition of the Transformers toys and technology.
Following the success of G.I. JOE, these toy developments had become a regular thing.
Marc Miyake has this to add:
As for the Japanese storylines associated with the Transformers before they became the Transformers, I can assure you they were detailed with logic behind the transformations: e.g., the transforming cassette tapes and so on were part of a boy’s secret arsenal against an alien invasion. And the transforming cars were supposed to fool alien invaders who would otherwise shoot at obvious military vehicles. I speak and read Japanese, and I spent my youth reading the backstories in the catalogs for Takara’s Microman and Diaclone lines. These backstories were expanded upon in spinoff manga: e.g., Yoshihiro Moritou’s Microman which ran in Japan’s TV Magazine for years. It would have been easy to fuse the backstories and adapt this existing material for the US market. (I spent 7th and 8th grade figuring out how to do that!) But for whatever reason, Hasbro didn’t like the Japanese backstories, and the Transformers backstory you created has endured 27 years, eclipsing the originals even in Japan itself.