TaleSpin was inspired by old adventure movies. The whole tiki-bar culture, scruffy cargo pilot thing was a vibe back then. Transformers has a much weirder cycl

TaleSpin was inspired by old adventure movies. The whole tiki-bar culture, scruffy cargo pilot thing was a vibe back then. Transformers has a much weirder cycle. They were a collection of different transforming toy lines from Japan that U.S. companies wanted to sell to children here. They divvied them up based on criteria: road vehicles largely became good guys, weapons and planes largely became bad guys. They wrote some comics around a concept of a giant war, made some animated films as a sort of pilot, and went to town. Jetfire (IIRC) is actually a Macross figure. Gundam is Gundam. I think that's just a Japanese series that is also popular in the U.S.