When the Transformers first appeared on television, I was eight years old and let me tell you, neither myself nor my friends were decieved about it being a 22-minute toy commercial. We knew it all too well. And we loved it. For a child, there is something exhilarating about seeing the toys you play with interacting on-screen. It's validating and exciting. We knew they were trying to sell us toys. Whenever we saw a new character appear we would wait with baited breath for it to appear on toy shelves. And vice versa. The cartoon taught us the characters' personalities. It gave us a springboard for our own story-telling. Far from stunting our imaginations, the marketing fueled them. This may not have been Hasbro's intentions, but who cares? I'm not saying Transformers made us better people, but I'll tell you something, we all wanted to be Optimus Prime when we grew up. And that's a good thing.