Hello boys and girl,

I’ve always wondered— has there ever been a total list of how many transformers there are? As a Transformers fan in school, people would commonly ask me, “how many transformers are there?”, probably expecting me to say something like 27. However, there are wayyyy more than that, as we all know. But how many more?

For simplicity, it would probably be best to imagine we are counting all the characters in a G1-esque universe, but then adding in some non-G1 characters that were exclusive to other things such as RiD and the Unicron Trilogy, assuming that they might have their own counterparts in this universe. So basically count all the G1 characters, but then count the new characters from newer shows who haven’t had previous versions of themselves. Armada Optimus would not be counted as another different guy from G1 Optimus, because they are both representative of the same character, but Lugnut would be a new character because he did not appear in G1 but we could just assume he might have a counterpart in this universe.

I’d also count nameslaps as separate characters, because fuck you, “KIIiIcKKkeRrr!!!!!1!!” is not Ironhide. Plus he was Roadbuster in Japan. This leads me to wonder if he was meant to be Superlink’s version of G1 Roadbuster, or if they just slapped that name on him. If he is not meant to be a new interpretation of Roadbuster, then I’d just count him as being a new guy with the same name. It is definitely clear, though, that Energon Downshift is really meant to be Wheeljack, and he was Wheeljack in Superlink, so I’d count him as the same guy as G1 Wheeljack.

In the original Japanese media itself, though, there have also been nameslaps. Armada “Wheeljack” is named Rampage in Micron Legend, but Rampage is also a name that has been used before. I’d count him as a new, separate character, not meant to be a new version of G1 Wheeljack or Rampage.

Cybertron and RiD are both messes when it comes to if they are separate universes, so I’d go with the original production intent, having Cybertron be in the Unicron Trilogy. I’m not sure if this affects any of the characters though, as most of them would still overlap with their counterparts in the previous two series anyways. I have no idea what would make sense for Car Robots/RiD, because they are, I guess, all distinct G1 characters in the Japanese version? But on the wiki it says they were retconned into G1, so before that were characters like Fire Convoy considered to be new versions of G1 guys like Optimus Prime? Or were they always meant to be totally different? The wiki also says that they were considered to be dimensional travelers or something and they arrived in the Japanese G1 timeline, but does that mean they are from another universe or just another time in that same timeline? If they are from another universe you could assume Fire Convoy to be an alternate Optimus, but if it was just time travel it would make him a totally separate transformer who comes from the future and just kinda looks like the legendary “Convoy” from the past.

Based on these incredibly messy rules, I have no clue where to begin. So I guess first I’d have to figure out what exactly Car Robots is. But other than that, the main overall question is: how many unique transformers character concepts are there in the franchise?

 

Too many to count. There are well over 50 distinct characters in the G1 cartoon alone.

If you’re looking for character concepts, that number is much lower.

 

Well, I can name over 150 from just the G1 toyline in under 20 minutes according to this one online quiz, so I would assume that it is far more than that. Plus the quiz only has characters that had toys, so no Arcee, Scrounge, etc.

 

I just did a quick count and the G1 toyline alone provides 449 characters.

 

Don’t know but there’s a lot of them

 

I just got a book containing every Transformer from the G1 toyline. Granted, a few of them were re-releases of the same character (e.g., Targetmaster Kup), but it was still at LEAST 270 pages long and contained so many characters it made my brain hurt. I'd estimate that there had to be AT LEAST 300 of them just from that one toyline (although probably only a quarter of them ever really got to do anything.)

 

I'd say impossible to count. How far down do you differentiate the characters? When you say Optimus Prime, do you mean all characters named him? Or do you count each incarnation differently?

 

Not to mention headmasters targetmasters and power masters all of which are two characters in one (Three for double targetmasters) plus titan characters who have smaller bonded characters like for example Metroplex who was bonded to sixgun who formed his weapons slammer who formed part of his city mode and scamper who... err lived in Metroplex I guess?

 

I meant all characters named Optimus Prime would be counted as one, because they all have the same role. However, other character who share the same name as each other, like Armada "Wheeljack" and G1 Wheeljack but are in no way related would count as separate, because the Armada version is not in any way based on Wheeljack.

 

Let's just say there's a gazillion bajillion and call it a day.

 

Based on the same character maybe but they are certainly not the same character

I say one thing that might be an interesting little project

 

Yes I know, I mean they both represent the same character archetype.

Kind of like in IDW how there are multiple characters with the same name that are based on different uses of the name (like IDW having a Knock Out based on the Prime version and one based the G1 micromaster), I would count name slapped characters separate. But IDW doesn’t have an Armada Optimus, an Animated Optimus, etc. alongside its G1 Optimus This is obviously because they are all meant to be a version of the red guy everyone knows.

But yes, this could certainly be a very interesting project. The biggest issues would likely be trying to count all the extremely obscure characters like those Legends manga cassettes and convention exclusive background characters and trying to determine if certain characters are meant to be based off others.

 

I ran out of fingers after ten

 

There are hella Transformers.
Does this count the same version of characters from different continuities like G1 Optimus, Idw Optimus, and movie Optimus for example?

 

IDW also threw one of the G2 Seekers and Actionmaster Thundercracker into a background pic as separate but unnamed characters to the other Seekers.

With repurposing, G2 Sidewipe counts as 3 characters:

G1/2 Sideswipe
A clone
Young protoform who Arcee named Sideswipe given his resemblance to G1 Sideswipe who had died at that point in IDW.

Same with G2 Hero Megatron:

G1/2 Megatron
Archforce
Beast Wars Megatron

IDW also made it so CW Ultra Magnus with Minimus Ambus is a separate character to the original Ultra Magnus who can be portayed by Siege Magnus.

In the Japanese Manga, there are two Overlords who can combine.

Beast Wars The Ascending counted Japanese versions of the same toy as separate characters such as Apache and B'Boom.

The Japanese Micromasters were very distinct versions from the US versions, with most of the Decepticons recast as Autobots and some repainted.

The Brainmasters were called Motorvators in Europe with different names and colour schemes.

There are two ways you can count them: toys or characters.

Emirate Xaaron is a well known character who's never had a toy. Spanner is another comic only character without a toy.

And let's not forget the Army builders such as Scourge, Fasttrack, Refraktor, Movie Dirt Boss, the Insecticons, the Seacon limbs, the Junkions, Hot Link, Sunstreaker, Steve, Fixit, the Firecons and the Machine Wars cast among others.

Headmasters and Powerasters in Japan count as one character but two characters in the West.

Somebody call Rung!!

 

OP has explained this twice now

 

There's so many that it's gonna be pretty much impossible to get an exact number. But that being the case, I am curious that if we were able to somehow get an exact number, would it be in the hundreds, thousands, TENS OF THOUSANDS?

 

Sometimes I don't pay attention >_<

 

I think if you want to get some idea, you could just go to TFU.info and count per series (they do list different versions of characters, so one has to watch out for that).

But even just glossing over the list makes clear there are more than I'm willing to count.

 

While we're at it, let's count up every member on TFW2005 by name!