Frankly, there’s probably not a lot we can say to sway you when it comes to seeing or not seeing Transformers: Age of Extinction this weekend. You should already know whether or not you’re a fan of Michael Bay’s particular brand of Kool-Aid — and now that I think about it, a grinning mug full of sugar-water bursting illogically through a brick wall is a fairly concise metaphor for Bay’s Transformers franchise in the first place. They should just go ahead and slap “Oh yeah!” on all of the posters. But assuming Age of Extinction is not on your to-do list, and assuming Snowpiercer isn’t playing anywhere near you, we’ve got seven superior alternatives to pouring Bay’s digital excess into your eye holes.

Since the Transformers movies are based on a cartoon and thus, at least theoretically, they should be suitable for all ages, we’re including a variety of different choices here, all of them involving robots in one way or another. And to hear GFR’s Nick tell it, you could marathon all of these in a row and it’d still seem shorter than sitting through Age of Extinction. Hit the jump for all our picks!

Before Michael Bay dazzled audiences with three live-action Transformers movies (and a fourth one on its way), toy company Hasbro and Japanese animation studio Toei Animation made Transformers: The Movie in 1986. It was a darker take on the original animated series and served as a traumatic shock to young children across the country.

Recently, the good people at Transfomers fansite The SpaceBridge unearthed the original storyboards for another beloved Autobot’s vicious death scene. Ultra Magnus was trying to open the Matrix of Leadership to defeat his enemies, but it was also his undoing as Galvatron commanded the villainous Sweeps to execute him. While the movie version is still pretty brutal, the original storyboards suggest it was restrained by comparison. Watch the storyboard video below and see the difference.