A very respectful and reasonable response I must say! And no, I never got a "true fan" aura about any of your posts here, so you're good. There's more than one way of looking at any piece of fiction, Transformers or otherwise.

So just a few responses and thoughts of mine...

Well, maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually enjoy the idea that Transformers have appeared in Earth's past. Not in every instance, but in many.

First and, personally speaking, foremost, is that I have always been fascinated by the geologic past, prehistory, history, and extinctions. I love paleontology, geology, archaeology, and historical mysteries. I don't subscribe to "Ancient Astronaut" theories, but I still love watching Ancient Aliens and love the idea of it being present in fiction.

Humans in recent centuries did not always know about dinosaurs and other extinct groups of organisms. We didn't always know about ancient civilizations like Urartu or the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley, and it wasn't until the Rosetta Stone was discovered that archaeologists could decipher ancient Egyptian. It was only a couple decades ago where feathered non-avian dinosaurs were definitely proven to exist, and only this last decade that the colors of dinosaurs have been figured out in special cases. Denisovans, who are only known from fragments of bone and a few teeth and the genetic material within, were only discovered this decade. Homo floresiensis, the "Hobbit" of Indonesia, was only described last decade. More ancient humans and animals remain undiscovered. There are ancient languages whose alphabets are still undecipherable, and some who have been lost to time entirely. There are ruins that still haven't been discovered, and fossils in the ground that have yet to reveal lost species and ancient ecosystems. Humans are constantly learning about their origins and their planet and their universe. That the Transformers also are constantly discovering their history even in the present day also makes sense.

And there's a huge precedence for it in the Transformers brand. Beast Wars on ancient Earth. The Ark crashing millions of years ago. Etcetera.

Not to mention, in the original cartoon, the living Autobots don't encounter the Quintessons until 2005. They don't learn that the Quints were their creators until Rodimus ventures into the Matrix. So even in the source material itself, there was plenty of things the Autobots didn't know about their own past. In that sense, the movies greatly reflect the source material.

In the case of the movies, the robots who came to ancient Earth weren't even the same robots that came to Earth in modern times. It would have been one thing if Optimus Prime and Megatron and Bumblebee and Starscream were on Earth with dinosaurs. THAT would have been stupid. It's quite another when you have the Dynasty of Primes in the Pleistocene and Creators visiting the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous. And in the case of the latter, they aren't even Transformers, but a different race of aliens entirely, and Earth was merely one of thousands of planets they visited.

Plus, humans ourselves have visited distant lands in the distant past while leaving little to no evidence. Columbus and Leif Ericson are famous for visiting the New World, but there's evidence of other cross-Atlantic and cross-Pacific voyages. Evidence of chickens and sweet potatoes in South America indicates that the Polynesians at some point made it across before Columbus. There are likewise ancient Egyptian mummies with cocaine, which originates form the New World. So if humans as maritime explorers have traveled between the Americas and Old World in expeditions that have since been forgotten, I don't see why different alien races, factions, and individuals capable of interstellar flight couldn't also have visited our planet. Since the Transformers and Creators are interstellar voyagers, it makes sense there would have been some ancient travel to many different planets.

Now the Unicron thing I'm not too fond of, because we go from Earth being merely one of thousands of worlds bombed by the Creators to seemingly being one of two planets in the universe that matter again.

But overall, ancient Primes being in prehistoric Egypt and the Creators turning the dinosaurs into metal is right down my ally.

Keep in mind I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a different point of view so much as explaining mine. Like I said, there's more than one way of looking at things.

​

Well, you just gave Alice as an example, and Alice is a Pretender who can mimic the appearance and texture of human skin, hair, and soft tissues as well as human-made fabric. Furthermore, Transformers with human vehicle alternate modes need to replicate the appearance of rubber, glass, and often leather or other soft material.

Alice is still metallic; her appearance and textures merely mimic those of human beings.

Likewise, the tires of a Transformer merely mimic the appearance and texture of rubber. They still are actually made of metal, which actually explains how the robots, Ironhide in DotM as an example, can be seen getting blasted by explosions and weaponry and still drive without getting flat tires. Hence another example of why I think Transformium actually solves many problems!

And the thing, is none of the Transformers we see are programmed to transform into plastic toys, nor do any of them scan plastic toys. You see what I mean? I'm sure a small Cybertronian could have scanned a MLP doll, mimicked the plastic appearance of a MLP doll, and transformed into that if they really wanted to, just like Alice was able to transform into a human being that looked just like a female human.

​

Well, to be fair we don't see Galvatron get scratched to begin with. Healing implies that someone or something was damaged enough to begin with to require healing. I'd say if Galvatron's body had huge chunks of metal blown out of it, or he had his metal "brains" blown out, and he then broke up into cubes to transform into a truck, and then transforms into a robot and appears as if nothing happened, then that would have been re-healing. But we don't see that. Galvatron withstands the explosion and transforms in order to pursue Optimus.

​

Well, from what we see visually, I never saw Bumblebee's unexplained new ability in TLK as being related to the cube transformations. If anything, I saw it as being much more similar to Headmasters, where the heads detach but still function. Except Bumblebee's parts don't transform into smaller robots (That would be totally insane if they all did though), and it's all of Bee's body parts that can function while being detached and not just the head. Since Cogman is also mentioned as being a Headmaster, but we never see him do that, I wonder if that was something originally meant to tie into that?

Although I can totally see where you're coming from, too.

Anyway, I'm glad we can have areas of agreement, while also having different perspectives.