Forget Charlene giving Skids a soap-down, forget Sludge gazing longingly at Joy Meadows and forget Cindy’s smouldering infatuation with Ultra Magnus because “Recipe for Disaster” brings the reader honest-to-gosh 1:1 scale Transformer/Non-Transformer romance!

The Mecannibals, as their clever, clever name suggests, are what you might call robophages; robots who eat robots. Transformers are robots. So a story in which the Mecannibals meet the Transformers is just bound to have hilarious consequences.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that human characters in Transformers are, in most cases, violently prejudiced against Transformers whether Decepticon or Autobot.

“Pretender to the Throne” attempts two things: a, to lay the foundations of Optimus Prime’s much-awaited return and b, to introduce the Pretenders. It succeeded, yes. It wasn’t a good story, no.