Transformers Hall of Fame
From Transformers Wiki
Starting in 2010, Hasbro began honoring important characters and creators from the long history of the franchise. Each year, Hasbro selects Transformers brand creators to be added into the Transformers Hall of Fame. Initially, Hasbro would also select several characters for induction, with an additional character selected by fan vote. Starting in 2013, all characters inducted into the Hall of Fame are selected by fan vote. The new candidates are inducted into the Hall of Fame during a ceremony taking place at that year's BotCon. After the demise of BotCon, the Hall of Fame was organized within Hasbro's participation in the convention scene; 2017's Hall of Fame results were announced at that year's HasCon. With no HasCon scheduled in 2018, that year's HoF results were announced at Hasbro's Transformers panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
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Current members
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- *Fan nomination
Individual Hall of Fame events
For details of each induction, click on the appropriate link below.
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Nomination process
During the lead-up to BotCon, select Transformers fan sites are given the opportunity to poll their members for Transformer candidates to be entered into the Hall of Fame. The voting process varies by site, with some opting for a straight vote, and others using a method of nominating then voting. Once each site has its list of candidates, the lists are sent to Hasbro who tally them together using a weighted points system and produce the final list of nominees.
For the first five events, short profiles for the five nominees were placed on the Hasbro website, along with a poll. Fans got one vote per day until the poll is closed, and the winner remained a mystery until the big reveal. Later events typically held the vote on the official Transformers Facebook page and Instagram, with votes made by adding a comment containing a hashtag, though a side effect of this is that the vote is public and the winner can be determined by anyone who cares to tally the votes themselves. The one exception was 2015, in which the vote was done via a poll in the official Transformers mobile app. 2019-2020, the poll was held on SurveyMonkey, and since 2021 the voting has been done via Google docs survey.
Hall of Fame Ceremony
From 2010 through 2012 a semi-formal dinner was held one night during BotCon to induct new Hall of Fame members. The awards for the human recipients were given out first, with each getting testimonials and a video showcasing their work before being presented with a statuette of Optimus Prime holding aloft the Matrix of Leadership in a stylized burst of power. This was followed by the robot inductees, each of which received a video montage set to a popular hit. The final fan choice nominees likewise received their own montages, in the lead-up to the announcement of the winner of the fan choice poll.
For 2013 and 2014, the ceremony itself was scrapped, with the poll winners instead of being announced during the Hasbro panel. In 2015, however, the Hall of Fame event was merged with the Awards Dinner as a segment of that evening's events, bringing back some of the ceremonial formality of the Hall of Fame's first three years. Since the demise of BotCon, the Hall of Fame announcement has been made during HasCon or whichever other convention Hasbro participates in.
Notes
- The "characters" in the Hall of Fame are not "characters" in the same sense as in this wiki. They are more like "character names, and the cross-continuity character concepts behind them". For example, the "Optimus Prime" in the Hall of Fame is considered to encompass all the major Optimus Primes from all continuities — "Generation 1", Robots in Disguise, the Unicron Trilogy, the live-action movies, Animated, Prime, and others, all considered as "one character". The Hasbro-provided bios for Hall of Fame members and nominees are thus generic in spots (describing any of the characters of that name fairly well) while mentioning specific elements from the current "Aligned" continuity in others. This deliberate ambiguity is alternately fascinating and maddening, particularly when it's applied to characters who do not otherwise exist in the Aligned-verse. However, it is possible for two characters with the same name to be elected, provided they are fundamentally different characters, as opposed to variations on the same character. For example, in 2012, Megatron from Beast Wars was nominated for the Hall of Fame because he is a separate character named after the original Megatron (who is already in the Hall of Fame). Thus, Silverbolt (the Aerialbot) from Generation 1, and Silverbolt (the Fuzor) from Beast Wars, could be separately nominated, and could even go up against each other for voting in the same year.
- In later years, Hasbro turned to themed Hall of Fame inductions, starting with a "Generation 1" season 1-themed year in 2019, Prime in 2020, Beast Wars season 1 in 2021, Animated season 1 in 2022 with full cast lists eligible for both and the Thirteen Primes in 2024. The unwitting result is that characters who were already inducted into the Hall of Fame (by either the narrowest to the broadest of strokes) were allowed to get in potentially a second time, though none have yet done so.
