Remember This Transformers PSA With Red Alert About Bike Reflectors?

Compared to the likes of Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Star Wars, and even The Visionaries – the toy line of my youth that I loved most was Hasbro’s The Transformers. A lot of that has to do with the amazing work that went into the characters by way of Marvel Comics – in particular Jim Shooter, Dennis O’Neil, and most importantly Bob Budiansky – who it has been said provided most of the names for the Generation One characters as well as their back stories, etc. The goal was to sell toys and a lot of them… and it most assuredly worked but with the combination of the toys themselves and the animated series in addition to the Marvel Comics books – everyone involved created something that has lasted through the years. I was most definitely attracted to the idea of cars and planes that could transform into both the heroic Autobots and villainous Decepticons – the toys really were fantastic to play with after all. But if I am being honest it was thanks to all the other media that made me such a fan of the property… and I still consider myself a big fan. Which is why I was a little curious as to when I stumbled on this public service announcement on YouTube this morning – because I never missed an episode of the syndicated animated series… but I do not remember this Transformers PSA with Red Alert about the importance of using bike reflectors.

Now I do recall the PSA’s that were featured at the end of some of the G.I. Joe episodes – in fact, you might be interested to know there were 35 of them produced and aired between 1985 until 1987. Furthermore if you watched that Transformers PSA with Red Alert you might have noticed that it ended the same as the G.I. Joe versions – you see they used the same scripts although the animation was obviously quite different.

So after doing a little digging online, thanks to The Transformers Wiki – it turns out that five public service announcements were created for the second season of the animated series… but never aired. Which would obviously explain why I had never seen this Transformers PSA with Red Alert or the other four featuring Bumblebee, Seaspray, Powerglide, and Tracks. Obviously only the Autobots would be interested in the safety of Human children… although you can’t help but imagine what kind of PSA ads the Decepticons would come up with, right?