More o’ the same here, with this second of many discs featuring the newest series of Transformers® in Transformers: Armada®. Again we are presented generously with but three episodes on a DVD 5 (single layered, single sided) disc. Because so many of these discs are pretty much exactly the same, I’ll give out differing information over the full series. Plus, you’ll get a new cartoon in each review. Wow! How can you not come back and pay nothing to look at each of these reviews?

Whilst I was a pre-teen (as they call them these days) through mid-teens Transformers® were the ‘in’ thing, I never actually got to own one. All my friends had them and they would bring them to school, so I’d play with them then. I noticed that toward the end of the craze (when they started bringing in the ‘new’ Transformers® like the Insecticons™ and the Constructicons™) much of the design was the same and some robots just looked too much like the vehicle they transformed into. I figured this was a bunch of tired designers making every car ever made into a robot and using the same base template to create them. Fair enough, but they looked a little shonky. Particularly when the robots had tires all stuck to them in various places. And also, while I think of it and beyond the idea of a distant planet having robots shaped like Earth cars, why did they have fully upholstered interiors? There aren’t any people on Cybertron™. Who were they upholstering for?

Maybe it was just to pamper themselves, like wearing sexy lingerie under my clothes. Under women’s clothes, I mean. Women, like women wearing sexy lingerie under their clothes. Heh. So, how about those Transformers®? I hear good things, this could be their year...

Anyhow, again we are presented with three episodes, like I said, with many and varied adventures bound to thrill little boys everywhere (and no doubt some of the geekier animators I know).

• Episode One: Comrades sees the Miniconsâ„¢ working with the Autobotsâ„¢ trying desperately to save them from the Decepticonsâ„¢.
• Episode Two: Soldier has the Transformers® whizzing off to the South Poleâ„¢ to find some more Miniconsâ„¢.
• Episode Three: Jungle is the coolest episode yet when Decepticonâ„¢ StarScreamâ„¢ goes hard at the Autobotsâ„¢ in a robotic mental state to get a Minicomâ„¢ of his own. (Obviously he missed the 30-second toy advertisement that opens each of these discs).

It’s big and colourful and full of heroics from robots the size of dumptrucks beating sparks out of each other, so why wouldn’t any boy (and some girls) love this?

Delicious colours are the highlight of this animated series, without doubt. God knows it’s not scripting. The animation itself is cheaply produced, but has been accomplished pretty well for being on a budget. Some digital animation works its way in occasionally and is also nice, but the traditional hand-drawn nightmares are the winner here. (And nightmares for so many straight lines in each frame. Who’d wanna draw that?). There are also occasional instances of aliasing on this disc that didn’t appear on Volume One.

The New Transformers: Flash Dump

Dialogue is all clear and cheesy with plenty of hip (five years ago) slang between the Earth kids. There’s no lip synch, but the reasons for that are in the review of Transformers: Armada Volume One. Sound effects are a little heavy at times, but suitable to the battle scenes and are pretty cool. Music is naturally suited to the show, but not something you’d step over robotic grandmothers to own.

There are no extras included, but the TV ad for the toys that opens the disc. A free Transformer® might have been a nice touch, or perhaps a DVD cover that turns into a case of beer. However...

If you were once a kid, and you liked Transformers™, you’ll probably hate them by now, but your kids will probably love them. The colour’s great, the action furious and the discs are happily devoid of extras that’ll keep the kids using the DVD when you really want to watch Best of Spaghetti Wrestling or Men in Black Lingerie or whatever.