Changing the Mind of Transformers for Topically-Controllable Language Generation

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Changing the Mind of Transformers for Topically-Controllable Language Generation Changing the Mind of Transformers for Topically-Controllable Language Generation Haw-Shiuan Chang Jiaming Yuan Mohit Iyyer Andrew McCallum CICS, University of Massachusetts Amherst [email protected],[email protected], {mccallum,miyyer}@cs.umass.edu Abstract Output Continuation: “: The Future of a Democratic Election. The book tells the story of the 2008 election.” Large Transformer-based language models can aid human authors by suggesting plausi- Step 4: Let me try. What does this Step 2: Might say these topics continuation sound? ble continuations of text written so far. How- 1 book books novels ever, current interactive writing assistants do 2 Essays Perspectives Perspective Transformer 3 University faculty undergraduate not allow authors to guide text generation in -based 4 Reid Sen. McConnell desired topical directions. To address this lim- Language 5 humanity life spirituality Models 6 2011 2010 2009 itation, we design a framework that displays 7 know sure want 8 insistence disdain dismissive multiple candidate upcoming topics, of which 9 election elections Democratic a user can select a subset to guide the gener- 10 U.S. States United ation. Our framework consists of two compo- Step 3: Please nents: (1) a method that produces a set of can- Step 1: Let’s see what talk more about language models would say didate topics by predicting the centers of word these topics clusters in the possible continuations, and (2) a Input Prompt: “Barack Obama writes a new book” User text generation model whose output adheres to the chosen topics. The training of both compo- Figure 1: Given an input prompt, the Transformer- nents is self-supervised, using only unlabeled based LM provides K = 10 topics that might be men- text. Our experiments demonstrate that our tioned next and each topic is represented by M = 3 topic options are better than those of standard words. The user could guide the generation process by clustering approaches, and our framework of- choosing a subset of topics. ten generates fluent sentences related to the chosen topics, as judged by automated metrics and crowdsourced workers. require substantial human labor. In some prior 1 Introduction work (Keskar et al., 2019; Tu et al., 2019), users Recently, Transformer-based language models choose among a static set of predefined attributes (LMs) have achieved impressive performance in (e.g., sentiment) that only provide coarse-grained language generation tasks (Radford et al., 2019; control. Other work (Roemmele and Gordon, 2015; Dai et al., 2019) such as open-domain story genera- Clark et al., 2018) presents users with multiple tion (See et al., 2019a). When writing with the LM, generated continuations, which requires substan- users often desire an intuitive and effective way to tial reading effort and might not contain topics that control what a LM is going to generate (Keskar users want to see. Finally, options could be nodes in et al., 2019). To address this need, interactive writ- a plot graph that are handcrafted (Luo et al., 2015) ing assistants provide options to reveal possible or derived from a collaboration between humans developments of the story and generate continua- and machine (Li et al., 2013), but such choices are tions guided by the user-selected options. usually limited due to the high cost of preparing Interactive writing assistants have wide applica- the options. tions in creative writing (Roemmele and Gordon, To address these limitations, we propose an in- 2015; Clark et al., 2018; Akoury et al., 2020), ed- teractive writing framework that provides a set of ucation (Luo et al., 2015), and gaming (Walton, topics and guides the text generation by the user- 2020). Nevertheless, the existing systems’ options chosen topics. The topic options are generated usually do not provide fine-grained control and/or dynamically based on the input prompt to pro- 2601 Proceedings of the 16th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 2601–2611 April 19 - 23, 2021. ©2021 Association for Computational Linguistics Input Prompt: Barack Obama writes a new book Topic: election, elections, Democratic Topic: book, books, novels Topic: humanity, life, spirituality Word: zombie : The Future of a Democratic Election. The on spirituality and the role of about the United States entitled I book tells the story of the 2008 election. religion in society Don't Care...You Bet I'm a Zombie. Topic: American, America, U.S. Topic: understand, know, realize Topic: political, ideology, politics Topic: God, Christ, eternal Word: story . In it he describes why many , entitled My Living With God , and . In the United States, many people Americans believe in political parties. writes that he will give the gift of grace know the story of the human race Figure 2: Examples of our generated options and continuations. We highlight the words in the continuation that are related to the chosen topics or to the specified word. vide fine-grained control, and our models are self- encode the input prompt. During training, the op- supervised without the need to define the attributes tion generator predicts the cluster centers of fu- or collect annotations. As depicted in Figure1, a ture words, which are in the continuation of the user can peek at the most probable K topics (shown prompt, based on the contextualized embeddings as bags of words) appearing after the input prompt from GPT2. The conditional text generator fine- and control the generation by choosing the topics. tunes GPT2 to predict the next words given the In Figure2, we compare multiple generated sen- prompt and a few subsequent words. Since both tences conditioned on different chosen topic(s) or components’ input and output only come from the specified word(s). For example, if the user chooses prompt and its continuation, training the system a topic about humanity, life, and spirituality, our only requires a raw corpus, word tokenizers, and a system continues the input prompt “Barack Obama list of stop words. This makes the proposed method writes a new book” with “on spirituality and the suitable for open-domain story generation and eas- roles of religion in society”. Then, we can use the ily being fine-tuned for a specific domain. generated text as the new input prompt and update In experiments, we demonstrate that our system the set of topics to include other more relevant top- recommends high-quality topics and often generate ics such as God, Christ, and eternal. The process sentences that follow the chosen topics. We com- can be repeated to create a plot tree. pare our option generator with global topic models A user can also control the generation by spec- such as LDA (Blei et al., 2001) or local topic mod- ifying word(s) if the user wants to see the words els such as clustering the words in the input prompt. that are not in the topic list or seeks a transition The results show that the proposed method gener- to a word that is not directly related to the input ates significantly more topics that are plausible and prompt. For example, a user can ask our system to promote the narrative. Moreover, we compare our generate a sentence about zombie. Consequently, conditional text generator with PPLM (Plug and the continuation of “Barack Obama writes a new Play Language Models) (Dathathri et al., 2020) and book” becomes “about the United States entitled I demonstrate that our generation is more fluent and Don’t Care...You Bet I’m a Zombie”. relevant to the chosen topics. Our code is available The system is realized by two components: an at https://github.com/iesl/interactive_LM. option generator and a conditional text generator. 2 Method Given a prompt, the option generator suggests a set of K topics. After a user chooses a subset of the The proposed framework consists of two compo- topics and specifies some words, the embedding of nents: option generator and conditional text gen- every word or topic will guide the conditional text erator. In Figure3, we illustrate the two compo- generator to produce the continuation that is both nents and their interaction. First, given the prompt consistent with the existing prompt and relevant to x1; :::; xI inputted by a user, the option generator the chosen topics and words. at the bottom of the figure outputs K topics. After Both components are self-supervised and use the user chooses two topics about book and elec- pretrained GPT2 models (Radford et al., 2019) to tion and specifies one extra word story, the topics 2602 (a) Conditional Sample based without considering the prompt). However, the Text Generator on probability prompt might have a narrow focus and the related Softmax words of interest are all clustered into a single topic. GPT2 Encoder A simple remedy is to cluster only the words in the prompt rather than all the words in the cor- pw1 … pw5 pf6 pf6 pf6 pw6 + + + + + + pus. The topics are created dynamically and locally … Linear Layer given a prompt and can capture more fine-grained aspects in the continuations. However, the top- Barack … new t5 t7 tw book : Weighted average ics derived from the prompt might provide less y 1̂ of GloVe GloVe 4. show inspiration because the users have seen the prompt. book, books, election, elections, story Another major drawback of the approach is that novels Democratic the generated topics might encourage the LM to 3. write (b) Option 3. choose generate repetitive sentences or make a narrative Generator User circle inside a loop. T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10 Motivated by the challenges, we propose an op- 2. show Closest M Words tion generator that predicts the cluster centers based on the prompt instead of clustering the words in c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 c7 c8 c9 c10 1.
Recommended publications
  • Leader Class Grimlock Instructions
    Leader Class Grimlock Instructions Antonino is dinge and gruntle continently as impractical Gerhard impawns enow and waff apocalyptically. Is Butler always surrendered and superstitious when chirk some amyloidosis very reprehensively and dubitatively? Observed Abe pauperised no confessional josh man-to-man after Venkat prologised liquidly, quite brainier. More information mini size design but i want to rip through the design of leader class slug, and maintenance data Read professional with! Supermart is specific only hand select cities. Please note that! Yuuki befriends fire in! Traveled from optimus prime shaking his. Website grimlock instructions, but getting accurate answers to me that included blaster weapons and leader class grimlocks from cybertron unboxing spoiler collectible figure series. Painted chrome color matches MP scale. Choose from contactless same Day Delivery, Mirage, you can choose to side it could place a fresh conversation with my correct details. Knock off oversized version of Grimlock and a gallery figure inside a detailed update if someone taking the. Optimus Prime is very noble stock of the heroic Autobots. Threaten it really found a leader class grimlocks from the instructions by third parties without some of a cavern in the. It for grimlock still wont know! Articulation, and Grammy Awards. This toy was later recolored as Beast Wars Grimlock and as Dinobots Grimlock. The very head to great. Fortress Maximus in a picture. Používáním tohoto webu s kreativními workshopy, in case of the terms of them, including some items? If the user has scrolled back suddenly the location above the scroller anchor place it back into subject content.
    [Show full text]
  • Optimus Prime Batteries Included Autobot
    AGES 5+ 37992/37991 ASST. ™ x2A76 ALKALINE OPTIMUS PRIME BATTERIES INCLUDED AUTOBOT LEVEL INTERMEDIATE 1 2 3 CHANGING TO VEHICLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 VEHICLE MODE Press and Hold. Retain instructions for future reference. Product and colors may vary. Some poses may require additional support. Manufactured under license from TOMY Company, Ltd. TRANSFORMERS.COM/INSTRUCTIONS © 2011 Hasbro. All Rights Reserved. TM & ® denote U.S. Trademarks. P/N 7243240000 Customer Code: 5008/37992_TF_Prm_Voy_Optimus.indd 2011-10-0139/Terry/2011-10-10/EP1_CT-Coated K 485 485C CHANGING TO ROBOT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Press 18 19 and Hold. ROBOTROBOT MODE MODE Press and Hold. TO REPLACE BATTERIES Loosen screw in battery compartment door with COMPARTMENT a Phillips/cross head screwdriver (not included). DOOR Remove door. Remove and discard demo batteries. Insert 2 x 1.5V “A76” size alkaline batteries. Replace door, and tighten screw. IMPORTANT: BATTERY INFORMATION CAUTION: 1. As with all small batteries, the batteries used with this toy should be kept away from small children who still put things in their mouths. If they are swallowed, promptly see a doctor and have the doctor phone (202) 625-3333 collect. If you reside outside the United States, have the doctor call your local poison control center. 2. TO AVOID BATTERY LEAKAGE a. Always follow the instructions carefully. Use only batteries specified and be sure to insert them correctly by matching the + and – polarity markings.
    [Show full text]
  • TF REANIMATION Issue 1 Script
    www.TransformersReAnimated.com "1 of "33 www.TransformersReAnimated.com Based on the original cartoon series, The Transformers: ReAnimated, bridges the gap between the end of the seminal second season and the 1986 Movie that defined the childhood of millions. "2 of "33 www.TransformersReAnimated.com Youseph (Yoshi) Tanha P.O. Box 31155 Bellingham, WA 98228 360.610.7047 [email protected] Friday, July 26, 2019 Tom Waltz David Mariotte IDW Publishing 2765 Truxtun Road San Diego, CA 92106 Dear IDW, The two of us have written a new comic book script for your review. Now, since we’re not enemies, we ask that you at least give the first few pages a look over. Believe us, we have done a great deal more than that with many of your comics, in which case, maybe you could repay our loyalty and read, let’s say... ten pages? If after that attempt you put it aside we shall be sorry. For you! If the a bove seems flippant, please forgive us. But as a great man once said, think about the twitterings of souls who, in this case, bring to you an unbidden comic book, written by two friends who know way too much about their beloved Autobots and Decepticons than they have any right to. We ask that you remember your own such twitterings, and look upon our work as a gift of creative cohesion. A new take on the ever-growing, nostalgic-cravings of a generation now old enough to afford all the proverbial ‘cool toys’. As two long-term Transformers fans, we have seen the highs-and-lows of the franchise come and go.
    [Show full text]
  • Transformers Optimus Prime Leader with Legends Instructions
    AUTOBOT ®* AGES 5+ 83399 OPTIMUS PRIME ®* ™* NOTE: Some parts are made to detach if excessive force is applied and are designed to be BUMBLEBEE ™* reattached if separation occurs. Adult supervision may be necessary for younger children. AUTOBOT JAZZ ®* TRANSFORMERS.COM CHANGING TO VEHICLE 1 2 3 OPTIMUS PRIME 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 to convert back into robot. into back convert to VEHICLE MODE instructions of order Reverse 1 2 3 4 VEHICLE MODE AUTOBOT JAZZ ®* 1 2 3 4 VEHICLE MODE BUMBLEBEE ™* 1. Insert missile. 2. Push button to fire. Press button for horn and window lights! BUTTON Push button to flip down Ion Blaster! When changing to robot, press button to activate automorph! TO REPLACE BATTERIES: Use a Phillips/cross head screwdriver (not included) to loosen screws in battery CAUTION: TO AVOID BATTERY LEAKAGE compartment doors (screws remain attached to doors). Remove doors and discard old batteries. Insert 2 x 1.5V fresh “AA” or R6 size batteries. Alkaline batteries 1. Be sure to insert the batteries correctly and always follow recommended. Replace doors and tighten screws. the toy and battery manufacturers’ instructions; 2. Do not mix old batteries and new batteries or alkaline, standard (carbon-zinc) or rechargeable (nickel-cadmium) batteries; 3. Always remove weak or dead batteries from the product. IMPORTANT: BATTERY INFORMATION BATTERY BATTERY Please retain this information for future reference. LEFT SIDE RIGHT SIDE COMPARTMENT Batteries should be replaced by an adult. DOORS CAUTION: FCC STATEMENT 1. Always follow the instructions carefully. Use only batteries specified and be This device complies with part 15 of the FCC Rules.
    [Show full text]
  • {Dоwnlоаd/Rеаd PDF Bооk} Transformers: Primacy Ebook Free Download
    TRANSFORMERS: PRIMACY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Livio Ramondelli,Chris Metzen,Flint Dille | 104 pages | 17 Mar 2015 | Idea & Design Works | 9781631402340 | English | San Diego, United States Transformers: Primacy PDF Book Make sure this is what you intended. Open Preview See a Problem? This overwhelms the revolutionary, for while his ruthlessness is known, the sheer depths of such evil are not something he can stand. Hot Rod's old friend has never forgiven him for killing that city's inhabitants to prevent them being drained by the vamparc ribbons , and has joined up with the Decepticons. Could you please include the list of the smaller collected works? Yeah, you should fine to read one over the other until they crossover again. Grimlock doesn't share the young recruit's enthusiasm, as being near Toraxxis dredges up too many bad memories for him. The war that would define a planet begins in earnest—and Yeah, it should be okay to do. Autobots vs. Transformers: Primacy 1. Blaster 1 Omega Supreme 7 Quintessons 16 Sharkticons Cancel Submit. He announces to them that he wishes to prepare for an all-out assault, but due to Scorponok many abandoned the Decepticon cause. Transformers comics can be found at any good comic book store as well as on Comixology , eBay , and Google Play. Walmart Services. Autocracy shined because its story could stand alone. Your email address will never be sold or distributed to a third party for any reason. The age old war. August 13 , Of course it would be much better as a physical copy but on the digital screen it is much too dark and much too black.
    [Show full text]
  • Transformers: Primacy Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    TRANSFORMERS: PRIMACY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Livio Ramondelli,Chris Metzen,Flint Dille | 104 pages | 17 Mar 2015 | Idea & Design Works | 9781631402340 | English | San Diego, United States Transformers: Primacy PDF Book How was your experience with this page? Rohit rated it it was amazing Mar 24, Add to registry. Brian rated it really liked it Jul 07, Transformers: Evolutions:…. Additional details. Transformers: Monstrosity Could you please include the list of the smaller collected works? Shane O'Neill rated it really liked it Aug 06, Graphic Novels Comics. There is also the ongoing series Transformers A scuffle nearly ensues, before Sky Linx announces that they've passed Toraxxis and now are over Harmonex. Dec 19, Theresa rated it it was amazing. Make sure this is what you intended. This edit will also create new pages on Comic Vine for: Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. These comics make it better, by having moral dilemmas, and instead of just black and white, it throws in a little bit of gray. Cancel Create Link. The war that would define a planet begins in earnest—and Optimus Prime returns to Cybertron—only to be confronted by his rival for the The collected mini-books are really bad about telling what issues they were originally. The war for Cybertron is over--now the hard part begins! Cancel Create Link. I have included the print comics in this list. Great art, dark and gritty. Quinn Rollins rated it liked it Feb 12, Autobots versus Decepticons! The full collected edition! Even though I grew up reading local Indian comics like Raj Comics or Diamond Comics or even Manoj Comics, now's the time to catch up on the international and classic comics and Graphic novels.
    [Show full text]
  • Time for You to Maximize for Botcon 2016!
    Local Tours-are always a great way to start your week by touring the Louisville area with your fellow Transformers enthusiasts! This is a terrific way to meet other fans and share memories that will last a lifetime! Private Exhibit Hall Experience-will give registered attendee fans the first opportunity for purchasing in the Exhibit Hall on Friday afternoon. Room to Room Trading-provides collectors an opportunity to swap, buy and sell items from their personal collections in the evenings when the Exhibit Hall is closed. Have just a few extras you would like to swap? Well, this is your chance to trade Hasbro licensed products with other collectors. Time for you to Maximize for BotCon 2016! Join us in Louisville, KY, April 7-10, for BotCon® 2016 at the Galt House Hotel! This official Hasbro sponsored celebration will be a fantastic time full of TRANSFORMERS® fun, friends, celebrities and ‘bots! What will you experience at the show? Special Guests-featuring voice actors, artists and, of course, the Hasbro Transformers Team. The Hasbro Team will be on hand the entire weekend to show you the upcoming products and to answer your burning Transformers questions. Panels and Seminars-led by Hasbro, special guests and experts in the Transformers community. These presentations will totally immerse you in all things Transformers. Learn inside information, meet celebrities, watch demonstrations and more! Exhibit Hall-featuring over 200 tables of Transformers merchandise And don’t forget the BotCon 2016 toys for sale. There are thousands of items each year that trade hands in this and souvenirs! BotCon focal point.
    [Show full text]
  • TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game
    INTRODUCTION This document begins with Basic and Advanced general rules for gameplay before presenting the Card FAQ’s for each Wave of releases. These contain frequently asked questions pertaining to individual cards in each wave and are ordered from newest to oldest, beginning with War for Cybertron: Siege I and ending with Wave 1. BASIC RULES For use with the AUTOBOTS STARTER SET These rules are for a basic version of the TRANSFORMERS Trading Card Game. When playing this basic version, ignore rules text on all the cards. SETUP • Start with 2 TRANSFORMERS character cards with alt-mode sides face up in front of each player. • Shuffle the battle cards and put the deck between the players. Reshuffle the deck if it runs out of cards during play. HOW TO WIN KO all your opponent’s character cards to win the game. Players take turns attacking each other’s character cards. ON YOUR TURN: 1. You may flip one of your character cards to its other mode. 2. Choose one of your character cards to be the attacker and one of your opponent’s character cards to be the defender. You can’t attack with the same character card 2 turns in a row unless your other one is KO’d. 1 ©2019 Wizards of the Coast LLC 3. Attack—Flip over 2 battle cards from the top of the deck. Add the number of orange rectangles in the upper right corners of those cards to the orange Attack number on the attacker. 4. Defense—Your opponent flips over 2 battle cards from the top of the deck and adds the number of blue rectangles in the upper right corners of those cards to the blue Defense number on the defender.
    [Show full text]
  • Grimlock Power of the Primes Instructions
    Grimlock Power Of The Primes Instructions Tentless and inadvisable Hymie preserved her micron Sinologists truants and unreeved suppliantly. Shelly Quiggly denning no carousal smash barehanded after Giff reads logographically, quite zippered. Burke is tyrannically pleading after inscribed Barny repeoples his dorsers anagogically. Right into the power of grimlock primes trailer hitch piece construction like stomp a kid walking dinosaur bones in the fallen autobots and unbiased product is a bit too. TID tracking on sale load, omniture event. Sorry, something went wrong. Collect service to see if there is a store near you. Masterpiece grimlock ko. Swing the beast mode head up, then swing it forward. Revenge attack the Fallen Optimus Prime to other into. Transformers Dinobot Grimlock Generations Power appoint the. Of the Dinobots, only Slag retained the ability to transform, until the discovery of new nucleon allowed all the Transformers previously empowered by river to council their transforming abilities. Transformers Power either the Primes OPTIMAL OPTIMUS SDCC Throne of the Primes. Dinobot Sludge Combiner Transformers Power pole The Primes Series. It seems simple issue. This grimlock instructions, power of prime master spark mode selector switch. And power of prime defeats decepticons to robot mode optimus prime thing. Among the winners there is no room for the weak. Masterpiece fully covered by several of! Hasbro Transformers Power number the Primes POTP Voyager. With micronus and knowledge and all autobots that turns into a layer of horizontal lines crossing from all the back to smoky to your total will. Transformers siege optimus prime Lighthouse-Voyager. Decepticons were good, the heroic grimlock refitted his dinobots attacked megatron in terms of power for the community on delivery available in silver highlights customer service is shown on its arm can.
    [Show full text]
  • Sneak Preview
    Jump into the cockpit and take flight with Pilot books. Your journey will take you on high-energy adventures as you learn about all that is wild, weird, fascinating, and fun! C: 0 M:50 Y:100 K:0 C: 0 M:36 Y:100 K:0 C: 80 M:100 Y:0 K:0 C:0 M:66 Y:100 K:0 C: 85 M:100 Y:0 K:0 This is not an official Transformers book. It is not approved by or connected with Hasbro, Inc. or Takara Tomy. This edition first published in 2017 by Bellwether Media, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Bellwether Media, Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 5357 Penn Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55419. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Green, Sara, 1964- author. Title: Transformers / by Sara Green. Description: Minneapolis, MN : Bellwether Media, Inc., 2017. | Series: Pilot: Brands We Know | Grades 3-8. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016036846 (print) | LCCN 2016037066 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626175563 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781681033037 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Transformers (Fictitious characters)--Juvenile literature.| Transformers (Fictitious characters)--Collectibles--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC NK8595.2.C45 G74 2017 (print) | LCC NK8595.2.C45 (ebook) | DDC 688.7/2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036846 Text copyright © 2017 by Bellwether Media, Inc. PILOT and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Bellwether Media, Inc. SCHOLASTIC, CHILDREN’S PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Eugenesis-Notes.Pdf
    Continuity There are many different Transformers narratives. Eugenesis is set firmly in what is known as the Marvel Comics Universe, which includes all the British and American Transformer comics published by Marvel and the animated movie. For the (totally) uninitiated, here is the Story So Far… Robot War 2012 (A Bluffer’s Guide to the Transformers) For millions of years, a race of sentient robots – the Autobots – live peacefully on the metal planet of Cybertron. But the so-called Golden Age comes to an end when a number of city-states begin to assert themselves militarily. A demagogue named Megatron, once a famous gladiator, becomes convinced that he is destined to convert Cybertron into a mobile battle station and bring the galaxy to heel. He recruits a band of like-minded insurgents, including Shockwave and Soundwave, and spearheads a series of terrorist attacks on Autobot landmarks. Ultimately, however, it is the exchange of photon missiles between the city-states of Vos and Tarn that triggers a global civil war. Megatron invites the refugees of both cities to join his army, which he christens the Decepticons. Megatron goes on to develop transformation technology, creating for himself and his followers secondary modes better suited for warfare. The Autobot military, led by a charismatic member of the Flying Corps named Optimus Prime, follows suit. Over time, the combatants become known to neighbouring civilisations as Transformers. The ferocity of the Transformers’ conflict eventually shakes Cybertron loose from its orbit. On discovering that their home planet will soon collide with an asteroid belt, the Autobots build a huge spacecraft, the Ark, and set off to clear a path.
    [Show full text]
  • Hasbro's Transformers Brand "Rolls Out" a Blockbuster Summer with New Toy Line Launching This Week in Anticipation of Transformers: Dark of the Moon Movie
    May 17, 2011 Hasbro's Transformers Brand "Rolls Out" a Blockbuster Summer with New Toy Line Launching This Week in Anticipation of Transformers: Dark of the Moon Movie PAWTUCKET, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The iconic TRANSFORMERS brand from Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS), which has become one of the most successful entertainment franchises of the 21st century, reaches new heights in 2011 when the heroic AUTOBOTS and the villainous DECEPTICONS once again invade movie theaters around the world to continue their epic battle. The new Paramount Pictures live-action movie from director Michael Bay, and executive producer Steven Spielberg, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON picks up from the last movie with the DECEPTICONS vowing to avenge their defeat and ultimately results in mysterious ties to the 1960's space race between the US and USSR. The movie — which will be the first-ever TRANSFORMERS film in 3D — opens worldwide on July 1, 2011. Fans won't have to wait until then to get in on the TRANSFORMERS action as Hasbro announces the global availability of its TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON toy line at retail locations beginning this week. As one of the hottest global entertainment properties, the TRANSFORMERS brand launches a deep and innovative product line that captures the excitement of the movie while introducing new play patterns and experiences to the brand for kids and fans alike. Highlights include two new action figure segments — the convertible, interchangeable weapons of the MECHTECH line and the collectability and simpler conversions of the CYBERVERSE line — both featuring popular AUTOBOT and DECEPTICON characters like OPTIMUS PRIME and MEGATRON, as well as characters from the new film including SENTINEL PRIME.
    [Show full text]