1986: The Role of Language and Gender in The Transformers

Joan E. Aitken tackles a complex issue in October of 1986 with her paper titled The Role of Language and Gender in The Transformers: An Analysis of Messages in Cartoons for Children Now this isn’t light and entertaining reading, but for anyone interested in how a segment of the adult population viewed the Transformers cartoons back in the eighties this is definitely a paper you must read.

“Although Transformer toys have given children a creative and modern puzzle form, the extension of “The Transformers” into a television series has negative associations for children.”

Aitken’s paper is 36-pages and available in its entirety at archive.org in a variety of formats, including both text (which was poorly scanned and loaded with errors) and a downloadable PDF.

I’m still reading this over, and likely will need multiple readings before I completely absorb the information, but before I forget that this exists I want to leave this post at battlegrip.com where we can easily find the info in the future.

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