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
The Robotic Workshop released for Apple, Atari, and IBM computers. The Robotic Workshop The Robotic Workshop was a toy kit, much like Lego Mindstorms, that allowed users to build and program robots using a home computer. Access Software announced The Robotic Workshop in the January 1987 issue of "Ahoy!" magazine. A review later appeared in the May 1988 issue of Compute! magazine. The kit included over 50 Capsela parts, including two motors, gears, wheels, and sensors. It also included an electronic control unit that plugged into the user port of a , an instruction manual with 50 tutorial projects, and special programming software