Launched in 1984, the Transformers toyline was promoted through both a comic book by Marvel Comics and an animated series produced by Sunbow Productions. Although the comic outlived the animated series by a number of years, it was the animated series that truly captured the hearts and minds of children worldwide more so than any other piece of Transformers media from its twenty year history. With the original show's conclusion in 1987, original series exclusive to Japan were created which ran until 1990, and the franchise was later reimagined with the CGI Beast Wars in the late 1990s. The current run of cartoons have been co-productions between America and Japan.