Ah, coloring books. The inescapable literature of our childhoods. Printed on the cheapest possible newsprint, filled with amateur line art, coloring books were shameless promotional tools put out by the major media to indoctrinate us kids into the world of conspicuous consumption, while reinforcing the social pressure to conform: "Stay within the lines. The lines are our friend," as a car commercial of the 90's would express this.

Many coloring books consist simply of a few pictures and possibly some mazes and word search puzzles to convince parents of their "educational value." Other coloring books are somewhat more ambitious, tying the pictures and puzzles together with the semblance of a plot, perhaps to give the children some reason to hold on to the books after they had scribbled on all the pages. These stories often were slapdash affairs with plot holes you could drive a truck through, but nobody expected high literature from disposable activity books for small children anyway.

The 1980's Transformers coloring books, published by Marvel Comics, are prime examples of this. Most of them were slapped together in the very beginning of the franchise's run, even before the TV show and comic book series came out. The character models are inconsistent between the coloring book and the animated cartoon and even between pages of the same coloring book. The human boy character is given various names (Spike, Butch, Buster) and drawn as different ages in different books. Even the personalities of many Transformers are vastly different from how they were portrayed in later media. For example, in Forest Rescue Mission, Laserbeak is described as "cowardly" and Starscream "loves to follow orders!" The plots were very simple, but were incredibly goofy at the same time. In The Autobot Smasher, part of the plot involves the Autobot Gears selling potatoes at market for gas money. In Search for Treasure Under The Sea, Megatron lives in a house in the suburbs (!) and hatches a plot to salvage sunken treasure (which is Klondike gold dust or pirate doubloons depending on what page you're on.)

Needless to say, these coloring books provide endless opportunities for humor. We found the Transformers coloring books on an archive someone had made of them online. (He must have found them as funny as we do!) We also found that the stories made a lot more sense if we "fixed" the text a bit. By "interpreting" the subtext somewhat, we discovered that the pictures were telling a completely different story than the one "the man" imposed on them back in 1984. (Okay, so we completely rewrote them with silly jokes. Whatever.) At any rate, enjoy!

The Transformers Discuss Public Lands Use Policy

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