Polyband

From Transformers Wiki

Polyband is a German home video distribution company that released a handful of episodes of the Generation 1 Transformers cartoon on VHS in 1987.

Dubbing

Polyband was also responsible for the German dub of all 39 dubbed Generation 1 episodes. Originally, Transformers wasn't supposed to air on German television, so Polyband only dubbed 6 episodes, which they released on VHS in 1987. When RTLPlus, a German TV station, acquired the license to the series, they hired Polyband to dub more episodes. Rather strangely, instead of dubbing the show starting with episode 1, they started with episodes 4 and 5, and after that they jumped straight into season 2 to dub four more episodes, and then jumped into season 3.

You might think that RTLPlus must have noticed this, but they didn't: When Transformers started to air on their channel, they started the broadcast with "Nightmare Planet", followed by both parts of "The Return of Optimus Prime", and then all three parts of "The Rebirth". They then finally showed the six dubbed episodes from season 1 and 2, as well as one more episode from season 3. Based on the episodes shown, RTLPlus appeared to have organized the episodes in that order to give the impression that there were two separate wars against the Decepticons: Optimus Prime fighting them on Earth after he was resurrected, and Rodimus Prime fighting them in outer space and on Cybertron.

Almost all the voice actors involved in the dubbing process swapped roles every other episode. Some characters like Soundwave got four different voice actors, while Air Raid got five, and Astrotrain even got six. The characters' original names were kept for the most part, but as was the practice in many german dubs back then, were spelled in a rather broken english/german accent. Laserbeak occasionally became Laserbreak in some episodes.

It is possible that Polyband dubbed more than just those 39 episodes, as some potential evidence had been found found over the years:

The German Panini sticker album, which was released in 1989, featured German episode titles to most season 1 episodes.
According to an interview posted on the now-defunct TheTransformers.de Fanpage, Willi Röbke stated that in his role as Optimus Prime, he dubbed many more episodes instead of the ten which were aired. Sadly, no known copies of the interview have survived.
In 2007 some fans contacted TV-Loonland, the rightsholder of the german dub back then, if they had any informations about how many episodes of the series were dubbed. According to TV-Loonland all 98 episodes of the series as well as all 52 episode of the Generation 2 series (of which only 26 were aired in Germany) were dubbed german.

As it has now been more than 20 years since the series premiered in Germany and the show has never re-aired, no conclusive evidence can unfortunately be found.