Peter Cullen Made Me Love Transformers

The video above is probably one you haven’t seen before, unless you were there on the day Paramount gave some of us journos a free private tour to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first Michael Bay Transformers movie. The grand finale of the tour was in a special Transformers warehouse, where we were greeted by Peter Cullen himself. Sticking to professionalism, I didn’t try to meet him or get a photo op; rather, I just stood there and listened, And thanks to Julia filming the whole thing, now you can too.

It might surprise many of you to know this, but I was not a Transformers toy guy. I might have been, had they not been prohibitively expensive. In Ireland, I could save my allowance for three weeks to buy a Star Wars or Action Force figure; five weeks for a Masters of the Universe. But Transformers? We’re talking 10-15 weeks. They were at a premium, while Robo Machines, a.k.a. Gobots, were five pounds for an authentic one, and three for the same figure in bootleg packaging. They also had the bonus of being easier to transform, with fewer accessories to get in the way, or “cheat” the transformation.

My dad once tried to bribe me to choose French and German as my electives in school, by offering me an expensive Robo-Machine that cost fifteen pounds — it was a Volkswagen Beetle toy called Bug Bite that I thought was really cool. I agreed to the bribe, then felt so depressed about it that my dad relented and let me pick woodwork and German. This despite the fact that I had originally wanted to attend said school for its reputation in teaching commerce — my parents, both academic and artsy types, didn’t emphasize that, but in hindsight I absolutely fucking should have taken commerce. If I ever have a kid, I want them to learn two things most of all: how to talk to people, and how to run a business. Both things I suck at, but I consider to be portals to success in most other areas.

Anyway, I loved my Bug Bite toy, but unlike Skeletor, he was not a gateway drug. if you knew a kid back then who had a Transformer, chances are he (always he) just had one. If any kid in Ireland actually collected them, you knew a parent was rich.

In the year or so after my father left the country before I did, and Ireland gained two new TV channels from continental Europe, which was a huge deal, I was home alone a lot. On the honor system, I was only supposed to watch TV shows that were agreed upon by my mother; in reality, when she wasn’t there, I’d watch anything — the new channels played a lot of music videos and American toy-based cartoons, like G.I. Joe and Transformers.

Cartoons had lots of terrible voice acting then, most noticeable to people like me who were international and could imitate accents easily. Horrible fake British and Australian accents abounded on these cartoons, largely to conceal the fact that actors were playing multiple roles to save the show money.

Somehow, Optimus Prime transcended that. I watched the cartoons, not particularly wanting to buy any of the toys — the scale changes between them all as toys really bothered me, but the cartoon cheated on all of that, and thus created better adventures than I could replicate at home. But subtly, Optimus was working on me. I never saw the movie — nobody I knew gave a shit about it, nor would have taken me, and honestly, I figured it was gonna be crappy TV-quality stuff. But when the cartoons I was watching suddenly skipped ahead in time, went to outer space, and had all new characters, I was shocked. Then they did one where Optimus was brought back from the dead (what? when did that happen? I wondered) only to sacrifice himself again, and I genuinely felt sad. I tried to talk to my parents about it, but they didn’t get it. The stupid toy commercial cartoons couldn’t possibly have any artistic merit. My dad once told me that despite my liking the toys, cartoons based on them were not good, and in my head, I thought of the boring TV docu-shows about art that he watched, and suspected he only liked them for the paintings, not the quality of the show. How was that different?

The truth is Optimus Prime worked for me because Peter Cullen did. Cullen took seriously his role as a hero and a good guy, and was inspired by his military brother. His voice was a combination of John Wayne and a more serious Adam West Batman — you knew he was a hero and a friend to kids just by hearing it. When I see videos these days of guys like Hank Azaria or Rob Paulsen doing their wacky cartoon voices, they somehow come off insufferably smug to me, or maybe it’s just that those are the characters coming through. Watch when Peter does his voices in the video above. There’s gravitas there — he’s an actor taking a role seriously, never thinking in the moment that he’s playing a toy car.

I was a fan of the Transformers movies from the getgo, as I really wanted to see the transformations happen on screen. They allowed me to finally become a Transformers collector, as I picked up the movie toys (I had previously bought some of the “Alternators,” a subline that looked like real, high-end toy cars). Cullen returned as Optimus, much to everyone’s delight, though as the series progressed, he revealed himself as a different Optimus, one with increasing PTSD and a willingness to kill. If Cullen disagreed with this, he never let on, as he was always a consummate working actor who played the part as directed (and refused to work for lower, nonunion play on the Netflix CG cartoon, so they hired an impersonator).

Transformers came back into theaters around the same time as Rocky Balboa brought Rocky back for a sixth movie. When one of the worst editors I’ve ever had reluctantly let me pitch pieces for the year-end issue (under pressure from her boss who was a friend of mine), I said that I wanted to talk to Peter Cullen about the return to movies of old-fashioned good guys. She declined the pitch with the comment, “How do you know he would talk about that?” Well, fucking duh, first of all I’d ask him, and second of all, it’s pretty much Optimus Prime’s defining characteristic. But there went my shot at interviewing him.

There have been other Optimus Primes, most recently Chris Hemsworth (whom I dubbed “Thor then meets the eye” in my review of Transformers One), but almost all fall to imitating Cullen, because they have no choice. He’s definitive in a way few other cartoon voices are — the only one comparable, I think, is Chris Latta, who voiced Starscream and Cobra Commander. Frank Welker, who played Megatron, is more of a chameleon, and was replaced in the live-action movies initially by Hugo Weaving, with only a fraction of the outcry that was already happening when it even seemed like Cullen might not be brought back.

Think about it — every He-Man cartoon has had a different lead voice actor, and they’ve all done their own take. Duke in the various G.I. Joe shows. Lion-O in ThunderCats. There’s a wide range there. But Optimus has — I tear up as I correct myself to say “had” — one voice. One that stood, and one that just today fell.

Hasbro is rereleasing The Transformers: The Movie in theaters this year, under the banner of an “Apology Tour,” apologizing for killing off Optimus Prime, which they originally thought would just get kids to buy more toys, and instead traumatized them, because even the Hasbro executives apparently thought, like my parents, that no kid could reasonably have an emotional investment in a silly toy commercial cartoon. (Remember that line in Masters of the Universe 2026: “Ram Man IS historical!” That was us. Make a T-shirt of that line already!).

Now the irony is that when the “apology” rerelease happens, Optimus’ death will hit even harder…because the real Optimus actually is dead. Once upon a time, Hasbro made a joke of it by having Optimus die and come back in every subsequent Transformers continuity. Robot trucks are immortal, but people aren’t.

I have the Robosen auto-transforming Optimus that talks to me in Peter Cullen’s voice. In that sense, he lives in my house.

I took a picture of the last movie Optimus (which, I know, I know, it was Hemsworth, but the character is Cullen forever regardless) next to a Christopher Reeve action figure today, with the caption, “Trust me. You’ll be remembered” Those semi-imaginary good guys are hard to find, but they stick with you. Even for me, who discovered the cartoons at 13, older than I should have been to like them (I was a bit emotionally stunted by divorce, I think).

Here’s hoping the next generations have someone who will deserve the Matrix of Leadership. We need more good guys.

Till all are one.

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