Damn. That's an almost exact copy of Grendizer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendizer

It wasn't so much a transformation as it was a journey.

Changing into his uniform took less time than the transformation, but that's only because the professor helped.

For the love of God, if you're going to run your robot on DOS, have an autoexec.bat.

Needlessly elaborate? This was the awesome part!

Man, fucking 70s and 80s. Every cartoon was just a half hour long commercial for some product. "Crystal Lite will save mankind" my ass.

fuck this show, earth already has a super truck robot protecting it and his name is optimus prime

also if the father's voice is programmed into the robot, why does it still have a spooky ghost effect?

I like that the transformation to robot involves him driving a separate super-car up to the truck, driving the car INTO the truck, and then being bodily lifted out of the car and into the truck cabin. It's like the entire thing was an elaborate "fuck you" to Knight Rider.

And now the final command! Dynamo.. Battle.. Turd!!

Alien robots are NOT information.

I'd still bet on Voltron. Better transformation sequence too.

Character design!

Jewfro guy on the right in the opening minutes.

It's the Taco Town of transformation sequences.

DYNAMO BATTLE TURD!

"Okay, son, now to throw a punch, simply type the first 19 digits of pi into the control panel. Then say 'PUNCH THROWING ACTION NOOOOOOOW!' with your right hand extended. To throw another punch, you'll need to sing the command. To kick, release the valve-clamps in the primary thruster relay. This will cause the robot to split into 27 different cars, then fly to the moon where they will be reassembled at our secret moonbase. That signifies that Dynamo is in kick mode. Then just fly back to your prior location and kick the enemy. You'll have to perform these steps again backwards before you can punch again."

so I suppose a quick scramble against a surprise attack is a "not gonna happen" type of scenario here

"NO TIME TO WASTE"

You know I was half expecting that ATV to just crash into the ocean

This happens in every episode, right?

I haven't even gotten to the transformation yet. All my stars are for "I, uh, made it with your late father".

"We're building a what? A road? For a robot truck to pop out of the water?"
"Out of a dragon's mouth, yes."
"Christ..."
"The sweet ramp needs to get done by next week, too."