Don't Fear the Rip-off: Travesty and Roll Out at 10:32 AM

There is another world.

Under the glitzy, gajillion dollar hollywood super-blockbuster, but over the current of indie documentaries about dying of dyphteria in New Equatorial Guinea, it lies. Tiptoing the line between riding a recognizable product's coat-tales, and just straight up infringing them, knowing full well WB execs don't usually walk into Always 99.

In this world, you get shit like this.

The T-Bots Coloring activity book. Unafraid of any legal proceeding from Hasbro (after all, the concept of shape-shifting androids has already been copied several times without much consequence.)  the distributors burst right in. This is how you do it. Catch the confused step parents right before they can ask which one is Bumblebee.

But you may have some questions, seeing this cover. What exactly is inside? How do they expect kids to know what colors their ravenously plagiarized  characters are? Are there even characters in this? Why don't we let Schoolzone.com fill us in?

Take on the world with “T” Bots Morphing Robots. Give your child a pair of coloring books with a fun techno-twist. They offer a great break from more focused learning activities, plus, perforated, tear-out pages make for on-the-go coloring action and easy-to-display masterpieces

You got all that? This is a break from more focused activities, like eating paste and staring at their own noses. Don't be asking no dumb questions and buy or get out! Also, haha, you already bought it. But if you must know, this is what 55 Cents to 4 bucks get you...

Give me your face! Mine sort of sucks.

I call this guys Bestimus Primo. Presumably the leader of the T-Bots, Bestimus is clearly wondering about where Shia Lebouf  Michael Arangano is gone off to. Say what you will about him having a little Cylon in him, but they sure where commited to ripping of Transformer's motiff of them actually transforming into things, with the details like the wheels intact.(although with no actuall transformation as far as I could see) The could have just gone with some random, Transformer-ish robots and called it a day.

Of course, they gotta have some alternate forms, too. Otherwise it doesn't work.

The turbines are for flying, as penguins are known to do.

Yes! A Robot Penguin. We're clearly skipping right past Beastwars into Transmetals, because Iceborg here would not fool anyone if he apeared at your local zoo, trying to tap dance his way into freedom.

My skimming through the book showed me plenty of pages which uncluded animal forms, including a robot wasp and a robot whale.  Those things have happened, and probably could happen, respectively. But in all honestly, how do you color that? Do you color it off-color, like the kind of bad Waspinator knock off it presumably is? Is the robot whale the color of an actual whale?  

One thing's  for sure: the Tbots has trimmed a lot of the more obvious violence of the original, and instead opted more for characters posing and never doing anything more specific than that. While the parents are probably a little relieved that no one is getting his exaust port blown to pieces, perhaps you need to look at the other cover.

"Only one of my arms is guns...I'm such a failiure..."

"Gunblebee" here isn't to become your pet.  He's coming out of the war explosions with his hand out asking if you're perhaps join him in his dance with death. The T-Bot! It's exactly what meets the eyes!