In 1984 the American toy company Hasbro and the Japanese toy company Takara Tomy teamed up on a new toy line. The premise of the new toy line was to have toys that could transform between two forms—one would be a humanoid robot and the other would be (at least initially) a motor vehicle of some kind. In addition to the toy line, a comic book series and a Saturday morning cartoon series were commissioned from Marvel Studios. The new franchise, Transformers, was a smash hit and had a profound influence on the lives of millions of children worldwide.
The first generation of transformers was released in several waves from 1984 through 1990. In successive generations, some of the transformers were redesigned. The most drastic redesign came in 2007 with the release of the live-action film, Transformers. Given that the design of a transformer is mutable, I have not put much effort in staying true to a particular appearance.
This set depicts the autobots released in 1988.
Sparkabots
Triggerbots
Cassettes
Small Targetmasters
Small Headmasters
Powermasters
Powermaster Leader
Powermaster Mercenary
Six Changer
Pretenders
Pretender Beasts
Pretender Vehicle
Other
These illustrations were drawn using Stable Diffusion 2.1.