First off, the disclaimer: I love Transformers, enough so that I hold myself back from talking about them at least 4 out of 5 times I think of them. You don't want to be THAT guy, trust me. The thing that's most alluring about them is, of course, the toys. When I was a kid and I got a GI Joe, I got a little figure that could punch people, hold a gun, and drive a vehicle. If I was lucky, he could also fire a spring-loaded plastic projectile. When I got a Transformer, it could do all of that (except for driving a vehicle, although that wasn't unheard of) but it could also fold up like a piece of origami into a truck or a jet. It was kind of like a puzzle, even though I always read the instructions, I still marvel at the engineering of it all. Now, Transformers have been around for over 30 years, and just like any other fictional property with that much history, you can find a lot of stuff that's surprisingly good. At the moment, we're kind of in a hayday for comic
*contains no actual guidance for surviving a pipebomb explosion.