Thank you Peter, I agree with you entirely.
I've heard of the Transformer analogy, too, but I don't think I've ever had it used on me at Mass. The version I'm more familiar with uses Transformers as an analogy for the confection of the Eucharist itself, which is even less suitable than the one you laid out, Peter. I suspect that the people who are particularly likely to be tempted to use it are the ones who have forgotten their Latin and Thomistic ontology, or never learned it in the first place.
Latin, because we have a special word "transubstantiation" owing to the fact that "transform" is simply inadequate. If you know what the Eucharist is, you would only dare to use the word "transform" if you weren't thinking about what is meant by form and substance and were using the word as it is sometimes used colloquially in English to mean any kind of change whatever. Aquinas also, because to use that analogy you have to forget about the difference between form generally speaking and substantial form or essence.
Here's the gist:
When a Transformer transforms, it merely rearranges its configuration. Its form changes, but what it actually is does not change. If it was Optimus Prime before the transformation, it is Optimus Prime afterwards, too. Some of the parts have shifted around so that it now shaped like a truck and functions as such rather than like a gigantic humanoid robot, but the substance, that is, the answer to the question "What is it?" is still the same: Optimus Prime.
The Eucharist is almost the exact contrary, because unlike the robot it has the exact same outward appearance before and after the transubstantiation happens, but the answer to the question "What is it?" is different - before the consecration the answer would be "bread and wine," and after the answer would be "the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus" (albeit under the appearances of bread and wine).
Although the analogy may seem appealing because the one is a "robot in disguise," while the other is the Lord "in disguise," so to speak, that is about where the similarity ends. Although the Eucharist is definitely "More Than Meets The Eye," I think that if you wanted to bring Transformers into it at all, maybe it would be more instructive to contrast them in the way I did above rather than to compare them.
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