NTFA - Transformers Armada

The Autobots and Decepticons battle for control on their home planet Cybertron. A signal reaches them from another world, revealing the existence of the Mini-Cons. This lost race of Transformers has awakened after centuries of hibernation on the planet Earth. The Autobots and Decepticons follow the signal to Earth, each one hoping to be the first to find the legendary Mini-Cons - whoever partners with them gains powerful new abilities! The fate of the Earth and the universe depends on who controls these small machines! Will it be the heroic Autobots or the evil Decepticons?

2002 saw the biggest push for Transformers since 1986. There were three new toylines, a series with PVC figures, a new cartoon, several new comics, posters, calendars, books, DVDs and videotapes, playing cards, possibly one or two computer games, and much more.

The center point of this huge push was Armada, a toyline with an exciting new gimmick that added great play value to the toys. The new Mini-Cons can be described as a combination of many previous Transformer gimmicks: Almost as small as Micromasters, all of them can transform from robot to vehicle on their own, and like the Targetmasters and Powermasters they can attach to the larger Transformers to provide extra firepower or unlock one or more hidden features. Some of them combine to form larger robots or weapons, some of them are triple changers, and in one particular case two opposing Mini-Cons can even control the allegiance of the larger Transformer they combine with!
Many of the larger Transformer figures come with sound effects and sometimes even speech, the very largest figures can hold 10 or more Mini-Cons, and Optimus Prime's trailer is IR-controlled so that it transforms automatically when you transform the cab portion of the vehicle!

The toyline was accompanied by a cel-animated cartoon, produced by Aeon. It debuted in August 2002, and will eventually span 52 episodes. An ongoing Armada comic book is published by Dreamwave Productions, and the first issue was released in July 2002.

Armada in the Nordic Countries
In the Nordic Countries the Armada figures started showing up in the toystores in January 2003, the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Transformers fans also got new comics, and in Sweden and Finland the cartoon was dubbed and broadcasted on television!

This page was created by Lars Eriksson, groundsplitter@ntfa.net.
The last revision was made on Sunday, September 7, 2003