Bumblebee and Powerglide investigate some strange energy waves detected by Teletraan I. The two find an island which is populated by dinosaurs, but they don't stay on it for long before returning to the Autobot base. At the base, Wheeljack tries to have the Dinobots show off their new finesse, but the demonstration goes awry when the Dinobots start stumbling around and wrecking the place. Optimus Prime thinks the Dinobots are too big to train here, so Bumblebee suggests they go to the island he and Powerglide found. Optimus agrees, so the Dinobots follow Powerglide.

They arrive at the island, where Spike gets into trouble with some of the real dinosaurs. After being saved a couple of times, he and Powerglide leave, allowing the Dinobots to begin training. However the Decepticons are aware of what the Dinobots are up to, and Laserbeak has observed where they've gone. Megatron is also interested in the island itself, believing it is a great source of energy. The Decepticons go to Dinobot Island and begin filling up energon cubes, although Starscream worries about how unstable the island is.

Spike and Bumblebee come across a time warp, as a barbarian riding a wooly mammoth comes out of it! Meanwhile, the Dinobots become aware that the Decepticons are on their island and go to confront them. But Megatron rounds up the real dinosaurs and has them charge towards the Dinobots, causing the group to all fall into a tar pit. Megatron laughs and bids them farewell...

-SCRIPT DIFFERENCES: Click here for details.

-This episode (and its next part) introduce several new characters who had toys on the shelves for 1985. And by "introduce" I mean "put them in without explanation and just pretend they've been there from the beginning". In this episode, the Autobots get Grapple, Hoist, Blaster, Red Alert, Tracks and Smokescreen, the majority of these characters have no lines or do anything (in some cases, even move!). The Decepticons do even worse, getting Blitzwing, Thrust and Ramjet, all of whom say nothing. This is one of my few problems with this season -putting in new characters left, right and center with, for the most part, absolutely no explanation to how they got there. And a few episodes later, the audience is expected to believe all these new characters have always been there. It's strange because the first season usually gave the new characters explanations to where they came from. Things do get better in that regard later on this season.

-Part of me thinks the new characters might not have originally been in this story at all. If you took them all out it'd make next to no difference, as the main part of the story is about the Dinobots, and the majority of the dialogue is spoken by first season characters. Perhaps Hasbro stepped in and requested the new characters were added to show them off as their toys were hitting the shelves. I also wonder if originally this episode wasn't a two parter, but was turned into one to give the new characters a chance to shine (as some of them do end up doing things in the next part).

-Bumblebee talking about the time when the Dinobots were constructed is a very rare moment where previous episodes are referenced. S.O.S. Dinobots, War of the Dinobots and Dinobot Island were all written by the same person: Donald F. Glut.

-Thrust and Ramjet keep their cones up on their heads in robot mode, whilst the instructions on their toys tell you to pull them down. Presumably this was done to differentiate these characters from Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp.

Errors

-When Grimlock transforms back to robot mode, his head is colored gray instead of black.
-Megatron's chest Decepticon insignia is colored red instead of purple during this shot.