Martin and Roland

Martin and Roland are two humans (species-wise) from the cartoon portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

That's Roland on the left, Martin on the right, Elise Presser in the middle, and you looking at this image and feeling very gross about it.

Martin and Roland are two teenagers who are destined to give Humanity a bad name...well, a worse name, anyway.

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon

Voice actor: Townsend Coleman (Martin, English), Michael Sheehan (Roland, English), Keiichi Nanba (Martin, Japanese), Takurō Kitagawa (Roland, Japanese), François Leccia (Martin and Roland, European French), Ricardo Schnetzer (Roland, Brazilian Portuguese)

When we first met the future serial killers, Martin and Roland thought it would be a good idea to turn a laser up to maximum power during Mr. Robbins's demonstration of it in class at Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School. Instead of expelling them and doing us all a favor, Mr. Robbins assigned the two sociopaths to win the science fair with Elise Presser.

The three ended up building B.O.T., but they made the mistake of letting Elise put something that they found in the junkyard in it. This turned out to be the personality component of the Combaticon Brawl, who proceeded to go on a rampage. The three teens called in the Protectobots, but instead got the Autobots Ironhide, Gears, and Bumblebee. Brawl-B.O.T. proceeded to give the three Autobots a hard time. While waiting outside, Martin and Roland decided it would be a good idea to go into the dilapidated building the Autobots had chased B.O.T. into, inadvertently allowing B.O.T. to escape the trapped elevator he had been stuck in, which allowed Swindle to steal Brawl's personality component back.

The three then used recovered bits of B.O.T. and completely bogus science to learn of the Decepticons' plan to use their new orbital-disruptor cannon on Autobot headquarters, then ran to the Autobot base to warn them. During the battle, the three kids used Teletraan I and B.O.T. to destroy the Decepticons' orbit disruptor cannon, destroying their homemade bot in the process. Elise decided that they could build a new one with whatever junk was lying around the Autobot base... at which point Martin and Roland gagged her and dragged her away. More importantly, however, their subsequent success or failure at the science fair, which was to determine the ultimate outcome of their high-school careers, remains unclear. B.O.T.

Unite Warriors

Martin, Roland and Elise grew up to become scientists and build a new robot, B.O.T. II, which they tried to use to infiltrate the Combaticons' illegal arms trading operation. Shopping at the Dark Bazaar!

Notes

• Given their constant wisecracking, the names of these psychopaths-in-training may refer to the classic comedy duo Rowan & Martin (just as their high school is named after another comedic TV personality). Or, for a more literal reference, there's the professional fisherman Roland Martin, though he seems less thematic.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Martin (マーティン Mātin), Roland (ローランド Rōrando)