GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords

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The video cassette cover for the movie

GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords was an animated movie based on the Gobots toy and TV franchise. This movie was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions (the same company responsible for the Challenge of the GoBots series) and released in 1986. It featured the first appearance of the Rock Lords who were given their own toyline after the movie. It featured the guest voices of Margot Kidder, Telly Savalas and Roddy McDowell.

The film performed poorly, pulling in about $US1.5 million domestically. When released in Australia, only a few independent cinemas carried the film, rather than the major chains.

Several critics (Leonard Maltin amongst them) have suggested that Transformers the Movie was made to "cash in" on the release of the film. While Battle of the Rock Lords was released six months before 'Transformers the Movie, the latter film had been in production for the better part of two years, well before Battle of the Rock Lords began production.

It is possible that Battle of the Rock Lords was originally intended to be produced for Television, and the decision to release it cinematically was only made late in production. Evidence to support this theory includes the poor quality of the animation (roughly on par with the animation of the Gobots cartoon), the "normal" sized picture (as opposed to a cinema-quality wide screen) and the presence of fades during several scenes that would suggest placement of advertisement breaks.