Unofficial guidebooks

For a property as successful and enduring as Transformers franchise, there have been surprisingly few officially-licensed publications that catalogued the history and diversity of the franchise--and even fewer in English. Fans and publishers in the toy collecting industry have attempted to fill this gap over the years with unofficial works of varying scope, production quality, and accuracy.

BotCon Legends
A high quality fanzine written and published by Fumihiko Akiyama in 2004, with input from Jon Hartman, Karl Hartman, and others. Written in both Japanese and English. It covers the official convention from 1994 to 2004 in both the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and includes guest interviews, event and panel summaries, and picture spreads of the events themselves and their exclusive merchandise. Its glossy, magazine-quality photo galleries are especially notable for their emphasis on the unproduced toys and concept art displayed at various conventions over the years. It is, however, worth noting that the book excludes OTFCC 2003 and 2004.

Lee's Toy Review
This magazine has published several pull-out photo guides of various American Transformer series over the years.