My mother knows Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, as well as remembering Rattrap and Cheetor from ages back.
My sister only knows Optimus Prime, but she often has "the one with the..." names for the others, for example, Megatron is "the one that was frozen", Blackout is "the Hecaclopter" (she's 21 By the way) and Jazz is "the one that talks like a black person". I always laugh when she says that last one.

 

What I do is tie my family and friends to chairs and make them watch all the movies with me, and I point out all the main characters. Then I give a test to all of them and if they pass then they are free to go.  

 

Nothing wrong with having taste.  

My father liked the cars when he saw the first movie, especially the Camaro. He has a photo album filled with all of his past cars and trucks. He was also fascinated by my TFs and how they transformed. But I doubt he remembers their names.

My best friend knew nothing of Transformers. I just showed her the first Transformers movie last week and that was her first exposure to them.

 

My Dad:

"First one was okay."

"Second one was rubbish, it didn't make sense and I couldn't tell whether they were good or bad."

"I'll watch the third one when it come out on DVD."

 

See, I think that is going to be the issue with introducing a new villain (since Megatron and SS are "dead"). Most non-fans recognize OP, Bee, and Megs. Now, with Megs out the picture, you really want bandwagon fans to develop an emotional attachment to Lord Straxus or Scourge or etc, etc.

That's going to be the difficulty in the next films. Bad guys are just as much of the story as the good guys.

 

dad knows bumblebee...

way to go hasbro

 

my 2 year old brother knows bumblebee but since he cant pronounce he says bublbee

 

Mom knows all of Prime.

 

My mom can name all the first movie Autobots, Jetfire Skids/Mudflap, Megatron, Starscream, Sentinel Prime, and Wheelie. Ironhide and Ratchet are her favorites.

 

my dad can recognise Optimus and Bumblebee

 

My dad kinda watched G1 so he recognises Optimus.

 

None of my family or family friends know any characters, they know Optimus, but not his face (and by that I mean the entire commentary through DOTM was, "Is that Optimus, did Optimus just die? No? Is that one Optimus?? Still no? Oh, no Optimus Died! What, that's not him?"  ). I had to pass around my leader Ironhide to explain that it was not Optimus Prime that got rusted in DOTM, but in fact, "the grumpy black pickup truck". I've begun referring to the toys I'm looking for by colour and car brand, not by name. My school friends know only of Bumblebee and Optimus.

 

My dad knows Bumblebee, Ironhide, Optimus simply because he's a mechanic and sports car fanatic so he automatically likes most of the Autobots and recognizes them because of their alt modes.

My mom on the other hand can name just about as many as I can, G1 to now. I had two older brothers who both liked TF so she knew all about them before I came along and then like my brothers before me liked them as well. She even knows all the words to The Touch and Dare. Best childhood memory ever was seeing the 86 TF movie for the first time and turning around slowly when my mom was naming all the characters and singing the songs.

 

My sister knows Bumblebee, Optimus and Starscream somehow, and a surprising number of students in my year know who Optimus and Bee are too

 

My mum knows prime and bb .. And that's bout it
In dotm she didn't know who sentinel was from one scene to the next (not because of "bad memory" but cos they apparently all look the same ) an kept asking me "who's that now ?" I think it got confusing wen he went from that brown colour from the moon and then straight to the red without seeing him change into a firetruck

And no one in my family can tell the decepticons apart cos they are mostly all silver/grey