And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have a photograph of the original Autobot Transformer, rolled out in 1958 by the Ford Motor Company. Hopes were initially high that this venture would pull in a younger cohort of automobile buyers, and Ford turned to some of it’s junior executives to formulate a marketing campaign. This group of Mustangs, as they called themselves, came up with the name Atomic Optimus Prime for their new Autobotic creation. However, when that proposal passed through a higher level committee comprised of more seasoned executives, it was thought that a simpler and less ethnic-sounding name for the sentient self-configuring modular robotic lifeform would appeal to a wider range of the auto buying public. So they amended the name to Edsel.
