It all started with Inhumanoids. A vague memory of the monster TFs led me to scour the internet for a show whose name I'd long forgotten. While searching, I found transform.to, the TSA, The Process and this whole bizarre corner of the world.
But Inhumanoids. What a crazy show. I think I must have been around 4 when I first saw it, and I think it must have done weird things to anyone who witnessed it at a formative age. You have a giant dinosaur skeleton monster (with the voice of Cobra Commander/Starscream), going around turning things into more skeleton monsters. He nabs the token female* of the show, imprisons her in
his ribcage, then lets her out long enough to make her a giant skeleton monster too.
TMNT was a big influence, too. Catwoman from Channel 6, of course, but it really started with that awesomely animated intro showing the Turtles and Splinter transform every single episode. The ratrot episode of Captain Planet. Teen Wolf. The movie, yes, but the cartoon shaped my TF preferences in a very specific way. I think that's why the Captain Planet TF is one of my all-time favorites. The way her hand moves as it transforms is reminiscent of the stock footage used every time cartoon Scott "wolfed out."
Teen Wolf was also my first exposure to sanitized, tame TF. The first time I saw someone turn into a monster and not do monstrous things. In the cartoon, Scott's little sister was the only one in the family to be passed over by the curse, and she wanted very much not to be. He also had a hot cousin who was cursed, treating me to my first female werewolf. In this universe, being a bizarre freak of nature was cool. Most people treated Scott and his family like lepers, but that's the rule of cool: you're cool because you stand out from the crowd, who can only ever pretend to have what you have.
Now there's a ton of stuff like Teen Wolf, some of which I find appealing. I've always been more of a traditionalist, though. Monsters being monsters, the tragedy of the Wolfman, whose curse can only end with his death. I prefer TFs that are forced, frequently recur (were-style), and are eventually reversed to restore the status quo.
It's safe to say I owe those preferences in large part to the many cartoons I watched at a young age, where transforming into something else was rarely seen as a good thing and was almost always dealt with like any other conflict, resolved in thirty minutes or less. Even in TMNT, with its frequent permanent mutations, a mutant was clearly not human and couldn't fit into normal society. I used to dream of living with the Turtles, but I was never sure I wanted to be one. I'd rather be me (and be with April
) than be this strange creature with its foreign biology.
*Or the token woman, I should say, since this was back when cartoons often featured adult characters instead of making up bizarre excuses for everyone to be a kid as though kids can only relate to others of their kind. I miss 80's April.