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Before they were Transformers together, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker met on Mighty Man and Yukk
A beautiful friendship had a very strange beginning.
Optimus Prime and Megatron aren't friends, but they are certainly a duo of sorts, battling through cartoons, video games, and movies over the years. Their relationship is so intense it often threatens to tear the galaxy apart, but part of the magic that brought these Transformers to life was the longstanding friendship of their voice actors, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker.
Cullen and Welker first worked together on Mighty Man and Yukk, where Cullen voiced Mighty Man and Welker voiced Yukk the dog. Mighty Man and Yukk is a Ruby-Spears cartoon that was originally a segment on The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. Mighty Man was the alter ego of millionaire Brandon Brewster, who used the Mighty Gun to shrink himself to a few inches tall, but with the power of super strength and flight. Yukk was his friend, and the world's ugliest dog who had to hide his face under a miniature doghouse. It is an odd cartoon, but a funny one focused on an odd couple friendship and teamwork.
While it was their first time working together, Cullen later said in an interview with Collider that they had met many times because Welker used to go to hockey games and Cullen worked the hot dog stand at the stadium.
Unbeknownst to Welker, he was already a fan of Cullen's voice work, saying to Collider, "I was a big fan of Peter's. I used to watch him on the Sonny and Cher show when he did that little character up front...the little man in the ball and those sound effects. I thought, whoever this is, I'm going to retire, he's just too good."
Following Mighty Man and Yukk, both voice actors worked together on The Kwicky Koala Show, The Smurfs, and Pac-Man. Then, in 1984, Cullen and Welker were cast in Transformers as Optimus Prime and Megatron. Both actors would voice those characters as well as other Transformers for nearly forty years.
Linked through their iconic characters in Transformers, Welker and Cullen became something of a package deal, appearing in over twenty other animated works together.
