“Further resistance is not only futile… it’s stupid!”

Justin’s rating: Is MST3K’s Tom Servo a GoBot in exile? That’s my fan theory!

Justin’s review: When the transforming robots craze was at its peak in the mid-80s, I was smitten just as much as my friends. We all wanted Transformers, but those (at the time) die-cast metal toys were pricy and a Christmas-or-birthday gift. But that didn’t mean I was left devoid of pretend things that changed into other pretend things.

In fact, one of my favorite memories was going to swim class on Saturday mornings, after which my parents would take me to a drug store. And there they usually bought me a GoBot toy to add to my collection. Sure, they were smaller, plastic, and less articulated… but they were robots that transformed, and that’s all I cared about. So I have some fondness for the clunky dorkiness of GoBots, even if the entire line of figures looks like it was churned out by an overworked artist during a single lunch break.

GoBots had its own smaller animation empire, funded by Tonka, that ran two seasons in 1984 and 85. This was then followed by the first — and only — theatrical release in 1986 called GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords. This was really the last gasp of the franchise having any sort of impact on pop culture… and it wasn’t that impactful. But hey, I haven’t seen it, and I feel that I owe this viewing to all of those GoBots that made my childhood Saturdays feel more special.

With Roddy McDowall and  Margot Kidder  bringing a bit of star name recognition to the proceedings, Battle of the Rock Lords tried to be a little bit grander in scope than the cartoons series. It’s no Transformers: The Movie, though.

Kidder and McDowall play a couple of fleeing robots who crashland into the not-at-all-Death-Star-looking GoBotron looking for help. On their planet, some big bad rock lord is conquering all of the regions and snapping up enough “power scepters” to activate an ultimate weapon. So without any confirmation as to the veracity of these claims, the Guardians (good bots) assemble to help, while the Renegades (bad bots) make a play for the scepters for their own arsenal.

There are also a couple of human mascots who hang out with the Guardians so that kids had a point of fantasy. That was pretty common with such cartoons. Do you have a drab life in suburbia? You can always daydream that space robots will adopt you for intergalactic adventures!

Unlike the Transformers movie, which came out a few months after this and boasted a huge jump in quality, the GoBots film looks pretty much like any episode of the TV show. There wasn’t a whole lot of extra work and design done to sell new toys, as the “rock” robots look like meatballs that pop open to reveal robotic parts. Come to think of it, I had one of those as well.

It’s also such a Hanna Barbara production with too many closeups (so they didn’t have to animate the rest of the character), overblown music, and cheap-looking action sequences. Another trait that seems to bind a lot of these cartoons around is the trend of every line of dialogue being declarative exclamations. “You’ll never win!” “Nugget, you’re worth your weight in gold!” “A restraining bolt will keep them quiet!” and so on. I guess that writers assumed that if there wasn’t an exclamation mark at the end of every quote, kids back then would tune out.

I’m not surprised that this film did so poorly at the box office. There’s no truly epic tale unfolding here, and the lumpy rock robots boast zero cool factor. There are also no Weird Al songs, which should’ve come standard with any ’80s animated film in my opinion.

Battle of the Rock Lords ultimately makes a lousy case that this was an overlooked franchise rather than a somewhat lazy one that should consider itself lucky to have produced as much animation as it did.

Intermission!

• Enjoy the thrills of watching robots construct some sort of space platform!
• GoBotron looks like the Death Star. Tell me I’m wrong.
• All GoBots can fly, even if they’re cars
• I always thought it was funny that the robots flew spaceships, even though they could fly on their own
• His name is “Marbles?” That’s unfortunate. Maybe not as much as being named “Nugget.”
• Magmar has a mohawk, which I can respect
• I like how you can see the GoBots’ faces even when they’re in vehicle form