I think they can, especially since there has been a series of some sort in the US and/or Japan series on going since 1996. Here is the track record:The Transformers (1984-1987 season 1-4 in the US)Japan's cotinuation of G1:Transformers: Headmasters (1987)Masterforce (1988)Victory (1989)Zone (1990)Beast Wars: Transformers (1996-1998)Japan's continuation of Beast Wars:Beast Wars Second (1998)Beats Wars Neo (1999)Beast Machines (1999-2000)Transformers: Robots In Disguise (2001)Armada (2002-2003)Energon (2004-2005)Cybertron (2005-2006)Animated (2007-present)This also includes two movies with a third on the way:Transformers: The Movie (1986)Transformers (2007)Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009)They might not as long running and continuous as the Simpson but to me the franchise has a good case for being one of longest running series with all of its incarnations.
Not to downplay Transformers or their cultural impact on the world- but I'm going to disagree. Certainly Transformers is a world renown series, and has stayed active for an exceptionaly long time in a variety of different itterations- but I wouldn't QUITE go so far as to say it is one of the longest running although it is certainly more than most). I am assuming we are just talking about animated series too (since well, this is the animated section) because in the broad scope of ALL TV, then Transformers can't even light a candle to stuff like the Today Show or Sports Center which have both been going on for decades and have tens of thousands of episodes. But even if we are just looking at animated features, I would point to Sazae-san. That same series has been running since the 1960s and has thousands of episodes- and is still ongoing If we are looking at number of variations and types of shows, I'd say Mickey Mouse. He has countless movies and short films, and more than a few lengthy series that have been showing up for decades and decades still to come. And even if we are talking about animated series about robots- Gundam still has Transformers beat. It's been going on since ths 70s and has around twelve 25+ episode series, with dozens of specials and movies, and more than a handful of OAVs that range from a few episode on up to 13 or more. (absurd Gundam graph: anidb /perl-bin/animedb.pl?sho ) So yes, Transformers is quite exceptional- but there are just too many giants out there for me to consider it to be one of the longest.
