The Transformers (TV series) out of the gate. Japanese designer Shōhei Kohara was responsible for creating the earliest character models for the Transformers cast, greatly humanising the toy designs to create more approachable robot characters for the comic and cartoon. His designs were subsequently simplified by Floro Dery, who went on to become the lead designer for the series, creating many more concepts and designs in the future. The three-part pilot miniseries (retroactively titled "More than Meets the Eye") first aired in the United States in September 1984. The story follows Optimus Prime's heroic Autobots and Megatron's evil Decepticons as they leave their metallic
Transformers: The Headmasters Transformers: The Headmasters Initially, Takara, the Japanese producers of the "Transformers" toyline, imported the American "Transformers" cartoon series from 1985 to 1986. When the series came to an end with the three-part miniseries "The Rebirth" in 1987, however, Takara decided to continue the series themselves, declining to import "The Rebirth" and instead creating a full-length 35-episode spin-off series, "Transformers: The Headmasters" (two additional clips episodes were produced after the fact for direct-to-video release). Supplanting "The Rebirth"'s position in Japanese continuity, "The Headmasters" occurred one year after "The Return of Optimus Prime", introducing the title characters to the Transformers universe in