RandomFerret posted:

Oh, that's the record that was put aboard the Voyager 2 space probe. See, Beast Wars was supposed to take place in the same continuity as the original cartoon, and it turns out that Megatron hijacked the message of peace and welcoming that NASA put on there and embedded a hologram telling the Decepticons where to find Earth, which had rich deposits of raw crystalised energon. Never mind that the Voyager probes launched in 1977, when all the autobots and decepticons were in stasis inside a volcano. Also never mind that everybody on Cybertron already knew where Earth was and in fact the two planets had embassies in the animated movie. Apparently all these functionally immortal robots just forgot all about it in less than one generation.

Okay, so a hundred years later the war is over, cybertron is at peace, and there are no more autobots and decepticons. Now there's an energy crisis that prompts everybody to start making themselves smaller, so now they all turn into animals instead of cool things like giant tanks and poo poo. Tensions are simmering because of the crisis, and that's when Voyager 2 just happens to pass by cybertron. It is discovered by the leader of a small terrorist cell who decodes the message and, realizing what it means, changes his name to Megatron in order to make the timeline more confusing sell more toys honour the original decepticon cause.

The terrorists declare themselves to be Predacons because hasbro already had that name trademarked in the 80s and go to attack Earth. There was only one ship close enough to chase after them, so there's where the good guys in the toyline come from, but when they get near earth oh poo poo there's a technobabble time wave and they crash land on earth millions of years in the past. This fact is the big reveal in the season 2 finale, even though they're clearly surrounded by earth animals the whole time. They scan the surrounding life, the Maximals (good guys) all turn into different mammals because of the previously established rule that the good guys have to turn into lame things like cargo trucks and volkswagens and the Predacons all turn into dinosaurs and giant bugs. Megatron turns into a purple tyrannosaurus with a green belly because the designers were big Barney the dinosaur fans. Eventually the guy that turns into a velociraptor switches sides and steals the gold record even though it's now useless and then dies quoting shakespeare, making him everybody's favourite character.

What I'm saying is transformers already had a dark, gritty CGI animated series with complex storylines back in 1996, and it was loving stupid.