25 years of transforming fun

[Dominic]

25 years.

That is older than many of the guys at this forum.

Obviously, the hobby did not begin for all of us in 1984, or even at the same point in '84. But, hey, everyone else is looking back at the hobby, so we may as well.


I know that I normally seen as, well, something of a complainer about the hobby. My board rank should probably be something like "Captain Complainiac" or something.

But, at the end fo the day, I do like "Transformers".

Even some of the worst episodes of the old cartoon had a certain charm to them. (As rough as it was, "Starscream's Brigade" is one of my favorites.)

The really amazing thing is how little about the hobby I actually recall. I have even forgotten what episode of the cartoon I first saw. I might have been the first episode, but I am not sure. Either way, that first episode blew my mind. That scene with 2 Autobots, (Bumblebee and Wheeljack), desperately fleeing two Decepticons, (likely Thundercracker and Skywarp), had my 6 year old imagination from the first blink of Wheeljack's ears. Once I realized the cartoon was on every afternoon, I made a point of being near a TV. (This is not really that impressive, considering that I was not the busiest kid around. But, ya know.)

As much as I love the comics, (old and new), now, it was the better part of a year before I discovered TF as a comic. Before TF, I had a few scattered issues of Marvel's "Star" comics, and maybe a superhero comic or 2. My first TF comics haul consisted of 2 collected editions, (issues 1-3 and 4-6), as well as issues 7 and 8. Issue 9 soon followed....and then....nothing. (I do not even know if there was a comic shop near me at the time, and I only got to the bookstore on occasion back then.)

And, of course, there were the toys. My first Autobot was, (if I recall), Windcharger. To this day, I cannot explain why I picked Windcharger. But, for some reason, I was drawn to the red car that transformed by flipping upwards. (Windcharger came packaged with a blue Mini-spy that ended up fighting alongside the Autobots long before the Decepticon rub-sigil wore off.) Soundwave and the tapes, (especially the animals), were easy favorites.

Toys like Soundwave or Optimus Prime or Jetfire or Red Alert were so cool that I was able to forgive Hasbro for toys like Ratchet or Megatron. (I did not transform Ratchet much.) Despite the less than stellar toy, Ratchet became one of my enduring favorites after "Way of the Warrior" in issue 8 of the old comics. Many older fans probably remember that bargain comics pack that had part of "Man of Iron" in it. (Maybe that pack had the whole "Man of Iron" story. I cannot remember.)

As an aside, I was never anti-"Beast Wars", but I always did think the fans who got into "Transformers" with the beast-era where a bit cheated by the lack of a comic book. Sure, they had toys and a cartoon. But, they never really had the simple pleasure of a lazy Sunday afternoon spent reading TF comics.

As much as I decry people constantly looking back and only enjoying the past tense of the hobby, every so often, it is good to stop and remember how and why it all started.


Dom
-wonders if they will ever make "Encore" Mini-spies.

[Onslaught Six]

That last line of yours actually does remind me of why I do love Transformers in the first place. And that's its insane mythos.

When I was growing up, I had maybe four or five "Transformers," and about half of those were actually Gobots. Off the top of my head, I somehow ended up in possession of an incomplete Powermaster Optimus Prime (With, for some reason, Knok as a Powermaster), Cosmos and Wheelie, and the Gobots Spay-C and Pathfinder. I also have the most clear memories of purchasing a G2 Bonecrusher carded at a flea market in the early 90s, likely when the toy was still on shelves, and being amazed at his cardback and the notion of collecting all six Constructicons to form Devastator. I even remember opening him down in the living room of this very house that I now live in (which belonged to my grandparents at the time). Incidentally, all these toys are accounted for in some shape or form with the exception of Bonecrusher, who I have no idea what happened to, but I still have his neutered launcher, fist and drill--which are now being used by Classics Devastator.

And then Beast Wars happened. I distinctly remember seeing a wall of the red, rocky-bubbled original releases in a department store once during a glance and not being interested, having no idea what they were. I received Ultra Optimus Primal as a Christmas gift from my grandmother in what inexplicably has to be 1996 (because I've found a tape of 1997 and it's not there, and he was likely gone by 1998) and have another memory of my father buying me a complete loose Polar Claw, with box and all paperwork, from a flea market during one summer--probably 1997. '97 was the year we moved to the house where I would spend nearly the rest of my teenage years, and that same Christmas, I received a Magnaboss. Being a child, I lost most of the pieces at different points, but found a good lot of them later. (I also had my grandmother buy me a sealed Magnaboss some years later as a birthday gift, which I opened, and then I destroyed the back of the box in an accident some time later. A sad incident.)

It wasn't until Beast Wars started airing on Fox Kids that I took notice of the show. At the time, Pokemon was the Big Freaking Thing, and it was basically all I cared about. At the time, though, the cartoon was exclusively airing on WB--a network that my satellite service didn't provide. So I sorta took to watching Digimon as a poor man's substitute. (It turns out that the Digimon anime was better than the Pokemon anime, if only slightly, but that's neither here or there.) And then one day after Digimon, there was this show called Beast Wars on. It was CGI and it was a bunch of animals walking around talking. There was a rhino and a monkey and a rat and a dinosaur, and it seemed alright. I kept watching it.

And then lasers started shooting and they all turned into robots and started kicking each other's asses. This was awesome. And that one guy looked really really familiar, where the hell had I seen him before? Oh, that's right, I 'owned that toy.' That gorilla toy I had that inexplicably turned into a robot of some kind. That's what this was from! Holy shit!

After that, I was hooked. I started watching it every day. But it never really occured to me to use the Internet to look into it. Which was weird, in retrospect, but hey. I ended up with a smattering of toys from it--some show, some non-show, but they were all generally kickass, and the show was good. So what the hell, I kept it up.

In what is probably a really weird move, FK started airing Beast Machines eps on weekends while BW would air in concurrent reruns during the week. (I remember seeing commercials for early BM eps and wondering if it was even 'connected' to BW, or if this was some new show I shouldn't bother trying to watch.) BM's show didn't really grab me too much at the time--the concept was alright, and the Vehicons were great, but it just wasn't geared towards me, and that (more than anything else) is likely why BM Failed Miserably. Watching it back now, it's become one of my favourite series, but it definitely wasn't geared to children. I kept buying the toys, though. The Maximals were generally weird and oddball and I didn't get many of them for this reason, but the other reason was that the Vehicons were just so damn 'cool.' Deluxe Jetstorm is still, bar none, one of the best toys the Transformers line has ever put out.

And then I stopped. I dunno what it was--maybe it was the disinterest in the show, or maybe it was other interests taking priority, but I just plain stopped caring. And, though history says otherwise, something inside me says that there was this enormous gap between The End Of Beast Machines and The Beginning Of RID.

Here's where something gets confusing for me. I remember this distinct moment of walking into a Toys R Us with my family on a trip somewhere, going to the aisle, and seeing a ton of RID stuff and having a moment of Holy Shit, Transformers Are Back. I *also* have this distinct experience of seeking information about the "original Transformers" who showed up in Agenda during BW, because I wanted to write a fanfic or something about them I think, and actually Finding Ben's Site. I'm not sure which event happened first, but they definitely happened around the same time. The first RID toy I bought was Armorhide, the blue Brawl repaint. I didn't know he was a repaint of a toy from 1986 at the time. He was cheap--I was given a $5 limit, I believe, or perhaps I bought him with my own money and that was all I had--and he wasn't a car like the Spychangers. He was a 'tank,' and that was cool, and I grabbed him up. And I opened him and played with him and something about him was 'awesome.' It was 2001, and I was maybe 11 at the time, but something was really awesomely fun about this toy. I had to have more.

After that, I started watching the cartoon, which was both anime-styled (which was interesting considering this was the same time I started to really watch and discover anime 'as anime' and not just Moar Cartoons) and good-natured *fun.* For as much as some people don't like it, RID was at the least competently written, if not superbly done. The toys were good, the cartoon ruled, and everything was right with the world. It was at this point that I discovered Mega-Octane, leader of the current Combaticons, was actually the fifth repaint of a guy named Onslaught--considering Dolrailer and Mega-Octane were distinctly different decos. It was at this point that I had deduced they must all be seperate guys and, in a fit of genius, there surely would be a sixth guy.

My fan character would be the sixth guy. The Sixth in the Line of Onslaught, Onslaught Six would be an uber-powerful warlord who desired to conquer not just his own universe, but every universe in existance. He could timetravel and fly through space and go to different dimensions and all this other stupid shit. He was horribly Godmodded and overpowered and I knew it, and I loved every minute of it.

I've faded in and out slightly of TF, but I've met my best friend in the entire world through this hobby, and amassed a lot of plastic over the way. I sat through three horrible cartoons, a really good one, dozens of toys good and bad, an entire series of bad comics (Screw Dreamwave--those were bad comics), and a watchable movie. And now we're at what is most likely the apex of Transformers--things are 'great' now, with all the material being created now. It's a great time to be a TF fan and I hope it stays this good. Like those Star Wars guys have it.

[Dominic]

A few parts of the above post almost brought a tear to my eye.

So, did anyone here get in with Armada?

Dom

[donosaur]

I did! Sort of. Being born in 1984, Transformers were around but not exactly aimed at me. I remember having some G2 toys and an army of micromasters, but they all disappeared sometime during my childhood. Then in late highschool the RiD toys made me realize that Transformers were still around, so by the time I tried "getting back in" to the franchise it was the Armada years. I was... somewhat disappointed, but some internet research made me realize what was going on (I had no idea the franchise had been reinvented so many times). For the most part, everything since Armada has been a steady improvement, toy wise, and the fiction has just sorta "been there", up until the movie and Animated, which have me pretty well engrossed. I have never gotten into the comics.

[Dominic]

Odd that Don, the artst, never got into the comics, while O6, the guy who got into the hobby when there were no comics, is so into them now.

Just like I still kind of think the guys who started off during the beast-era got screwed (for a lack of comics), part of me was a bit jealous of the kids starting off during the Unicron Trilogy. Cartoons aside, that seemed like a great jumping on point.

Now, the comics are priority for me. But, there have been a few points, (late Unicron trilogy for example), when the toys were the focus.


So, anyone else gona pst here?


Dom- remembers transforming Digimon toys.

[andersonh1]

Well, Dom's read this elsewhere, but the rest of you haven't, so here goes.

Transformers wasn't originally a hobby for me at all. I was 13 back in 1984 when they first appeared, and it didn't take long for me and my two younger brothers to get sucked in. Transformers replaced Star Wars as our favorite toys, and we were soon asking for Transformers for birthdays and Christmas and any other time we could. Between the three of us we racked up about 20 apience, and we'd have great battles in my room, all the while trying our best to imitate the character voices from the cartoon, which we watched after school every day. I remember it running back to back with GI Joe, and I always wondered why Cobra Commander had Starscream's voice. <_<

Of course, like all kids we grew out of it. I think the last Transformers figure I bought was Powermaster Optimus Prime, and then K-Mart Legends Starscream, mainly because I was in the store for something else and saw the characters on the shelf, and remembered that I had been pretty fond of them a few years earlier. But I had pretty much quit buying and playing with Transformers by 86/87, not long after the movie (which my dad wouldn't let us go see, much to my chagrin).

I never threw the toys away or gave them away. I inherited my middle brother's collection of about 30 figures when he moved away from home. But all my figures sat in a box in my closet for years and remained nothing but fond memories. Until Beast Wars came along...

Beast Wars turned me into a collector. I went to college at 25, and after a few years discovered the Beast Wars show. I started watching it mainly for the novelty of seeing Transformers on TV again, and for the CGI. I came to really enjoy the show, and one day decided to check out the current Transformers on the shelf. I can't remember which one I finally bit the bullet on and bought... either Transmetal Tarantulus or Megatron... but that started the ball rolling. Counting my old G1 figures, I may have had about 50 Transformers at that time, mainly worn out and played with childhood figures. I have over 300 today. Yikes.

I started collecting Beast Wars, then Beast Machines, and then I discovered Ebay, and the fact that G1 figures could be found there, along with boxes. I still remember the first one I bought... G1 Sideswipe complete with box and accessories. I felt like I'd walked in the store like I did when I was a kid and saw those red boxes with the grid everywhere. And they were everywhere back then, not just at TRU or K-Mart, but the local 5 and 10c store, TG and Y, Sky City (both long gone now and out of business), even some grocery stores had them in the tiny toy section. Soon after Ebay I went to Botcon and discovered the Japanese reissues, which allowed me to get minty new versions of those old figures.

Collecting for me is often indulgence in nostalgia, though I'm impressed by how much better the modern figures are than the originals, at least when it comes to engineering and posability. The recent Universe line has been what I've wanted for years: modern remakes of the characters I remember as a kid.

This is a fun hobby. It's a nice distraction from everyday life of work and bills, and lets me have a little fun and socialize with others on the web who enjoy it as well.

[Onslaught Six]

This is a fun hobby. It's a nice distraction from everyday life of work and bills, and lets me have a little fun and socialize with others on the web who enjoy it as well.

Yes. And above all, that's why I'm still in it. In fact, I think it's part of that desire to keep things pure and fun as to why I've evolved to the way I do collect. Animated toys do not interest me very much--I bought a few, they were sucky, so I stopped (with the exception of later picking up Shockwave because, come on, it's Shockwave), and that's the end of it. And it's great that the hobby has so much going on right now that that kind of thing is 'possible.' Don't like Animated? You don't have to watch it or buy it, because there's Universe toys. Don't like the movie fiction? Well, there's the All Hail Megatron books and Coda coming up, and surely after that the universe is going to continue. And even last year there were the BW comics to appease that fragment of the fanbase--granted, those were *horrible,* but that's besides the point.

Odd that Don, the artst, never got into the comics, while O6, the guy who got into the hobby when there were no comics, is so into them now.

I don't think you ever knew this, but in the mid-90s during the big explosion of Marvel animated stuff, I started legit getting into comic books. The first comic book I ever bought was one of the issues from that arc in the mid-90s where Venom goes on trial. I bought it from a convenience store that was next to a place I used to rent NES games from, across the street from my grandparents' house. For a while I was big on just getting them and reading them and seeing stuff happen. It was the 90s, of course, so there was a lot of weird stuff going on and I didn't fully comprehend a lot of it, but there were sometimes some inneresting stories in there. I also used to go to flea markets and the like and find comic dealers and just buy cheap stuff. 20 comics for $5? Sounds like a deal to me.

I stopped when the comics industry started folding into itself and I got greater interest in other things--Pokemon, of course, and also TF. My getting into TF comics actually coincides, if anything else, more with me actually having access to the stuff. I only started buying anything comics-related again last year, and I actually started with manga, but then I bought The Dark Knight Returns because, hey, I'd never read it, and that just brought back a whole other side. The fact that Atomic Robo started coming out, and TF comics are actually starting to become really really good, are all factors that got my interest back in the first place. So the pieces were always there, it just took a while for it to come together.

[138 Scourge]

Good lord, it's been that long already.

I've been in it, more or less, the whole time. I remember going into TG&Y, or Gibbons, or some old store like that which no longer exists and finding the Transformer endcap they had. l picked out a Windcharger, and my brother was drawn to Brawn. They seemed neat enough, but on the ride home I realized, "Hey, this guy has a lil' card with his personality and stuff".

True Fact: That about did it for He-Man.

I got a Sideswipe for Christmas later that year, and found out there was a cartoon a little while after that. All well and good, very cool show, when all of a sudden the show comes on with these robots that turn into DINOSAURS? Man, that was most everything I loved in one concept. Beautiful. Dinobot episodes were always a bonus. So I kept collecting these toys, mostly the mini-cars because they were easy to get, occasionally I'd be able to pick up one of the bigger toys for birthdays or Christmas or whatnot, and stayed pretty well hooked. Caught the movie opening day, that was fun. A little shocked by Optimus' death, but I wasn't one of those kids that freaked on out over it. To be honest, I was a little disappointed when he returned...although, I did think the "Dark Awakening" episode was hilarious. I've always been a lil' warped, I guess. Oh, man, and the movie brought out such awesome new designs and characters...

Still, they kinda tested my patience with the Nebulans and the Pretenders. And, at that point, I was losing interest in the comics. I mean, I picked up issue 50 like anyone would, but slaughtering every character I really liked, and leaving just the organic-component TFs? I dunno, that's a little wonky. Hell, they even took out the Predacons and Seacons, I loved those guys (only combiner teams I was able to pick up all of at that point, y'see). Yeah, my enthusiasm kinda fell off. Still, even after that point, I picked up all the Monstructor guys, though I'm hard pressed to say why at the time (I would now, of course, they cool, but I can't imagine why I did then).

Then, y'know, the usual. Went on to high school, got more interested in other types of comics, the show stopped happening. At one point my mom gave away all my TFs (groan...again, friggin' Monstructor...), but I wasn't too chagrined. Then my interest came back when a friend of mine handed me a Simon Furman TF comic. I can't recall which one right off, but this had to be junior year of high school, I think, and it was before the Unicron story, so..73, 74? The artwork (good ol' Wildman-Baskerville team) was gorgeous, and the story was more than "Well, Skullcruncher's softening-up gun oughtta show 'em, eh Mindwipe" or the like that the end of Budiansky's run had going. And 75? With that gorgeous Geoff Senior artwork? Oh, man. It was on again. My buddy and I drew a stack of TFs, redesigning the hell out of a lot of 'em, but generally having a great time.

Even so, I largely skipped G2. The recolors didn't appeal to me at the time, outside of the Constructicons, and, say, Jazz's new design. The comic, I loved the hell outta, but I had a hard time finding it. Plus, probably that whole "Trying to meet girls" thing. That kinda got in the way of my high-school toy collecting. Sigh.

So, fast-forward to, what, '96? I'm watching TV really late at night...well, early in the morning, yay insomnia, when I see a "Transformers: Beast Wars" cartoon. I thinks "Huh...what's this now?" It was okay, the CGI wasn't really my thing but I could deal with it. Mainly, I didn't care for the fact that it didn't seem to be connected at all to the old show. Until I caught "Posession", and, well...then I got more interested. Then, kinda out-of-sequence, I caught some of season two and got more hooked. Finally, I head out to the toy stores, determined to find orginal Rattrap. Didn't work so well, but I figured I could just get the one toy, and settled for TM Rattrap. But...they had this other one, this scorpion with a cobra head tail. Hadn't seen him on the show, but figured "Hey, that's just cool". Finally, I picked up that Airrazor with the tape in it, and caught the whole "Aftermath/Coming of the Fuzors" thing and was just completely in. I wound up with a fairly substantial BW collection, really, and would get up at 6:30 every morning to catch the show. You have no idea how hard that was at the time.

Loved all of Beast Wars, and thought Beast Machines was great, but it was hard for me to catch sometimes...I still haven't seen the second BM season, f'rinstance. When RID started, though, I kinda lost interest again for awhile. I had a lot going on, and it didn't help that my collection was lost to a move out of a place owned by Kansas City, Missouri's "Slumlord of the Year". Not kidding, there, the landlord really won that title.

Dreamwave helped drag me back in with their first G1 series, even though that was just, y'know, okay. Okay at best. But, they intrigued me with their Armada ads, so eventually I broke down and picked up Armada Cyclonus, where my current collection started. Man, he's a fun little toy. Here and there I picked up a couple more toys, like, I found Gigatron and Transquito and TRU on clearance for ten and three dollars, respectively, and like that. It was research on what this "Transformers: Universe" thing was that led me to Ben's site and online fandom gatherings, which, I guess brings us up to now in this rambling tale. Between hunting the clearance sales and finding the Vintage Stock stores with secondhand TFs, I was able to pick up a lot of the Unicron trilogy toys, fill in some of those Beast era toys, and pick up a few of my ol' G1 guys again fairly cheap. And man, that Cybertron show, enjoying the hell out of that probably got me all the way back in.

Even though recent events have made me slow down my collecting, because, y'know, money, I'm still pretty well in. Like has been said, it's a fun hobby, it brings us cool lil' toys and occasionally some good fiction, gave me a reason to get online and meet a lot of cool people, and y'know, just a good time. I'll likely stick with it for awhile this time. I better, because, cripes, this current collection, this thing's HUGE.

[Dominic]

One thing I count myself luck on is that my parents never threw out/gave away large numbers of my toys.

The one time I got out of TF (when it was on the shelves) was post issue 50, which was my first exposure to big stupid hype event comics. Like Scourge, I got back in with the Furman run on the comic. I did not mind the Headmasters and such, but the "only wholly inorganic TFs died" thing bugged the heck out of me for sheer transparency.

Dom

[onslaught86]

Storytime, kids! It's great reading all of your..origins, really is. Like some kind of sourcebook, but for us. Heh.



Alrighty, lessee now. This is going to be Really Really Long, and I expect lots of TLDR responses. Yet I'll drag up all the major memories associated with my being a Transformers collector, and see if I can convey a little of the why and how behind it.



Transformers was something I was always sort of aware of. As some of you may be aware, I spent ten years of my life without television reception, instead watching videos and movies and things my grandmother had taped for me. I did manage to get in a good year of TV, though, from age two to three, and in that time I watched the likes of TMNT, Toxic Crusaders, Captain Planet, and TF. I'm unsure whether they screened G2 with the space cube here, as they certainly released it on VHS, but I'm pretty sure it was just G1 on repeats. Significantly, we also got TFTM split into cartoon episode-sized chunks, as I distinctly recall seeing a few early episodes and the first half of the movie.

My first Transformer was a small white car that my grandfather gave me. It was unclaimed lost property from the school he was principal of at the time, and looking back, it was most likely the Minibot Tailgate. I didn't like him much because his legs didn't move in robot mode, so he mainly stayed in car mode with my Matchbox vehicles. It wouldn't be until a few years later that I'd get my first brand new TF, courtesy of my father, one afternoon after watching TF at his place - G2 Laser Rod Sizzle was the one, and he impressed the utter hell out of me. He had spades of articulation, a snazzy hot rod vehicle mode, and a badass sword that lit up. Plus, he was a Decepticon, and I've always found the bad guys just a bit cooler, since they've got more freedom to move than hero characters.
In my mind, I somehow associated Sizzle with the Stunticons, since their origin episode was among the early ones I'd seen. His bio and the silly story blurb from the G2 packaging captured my imagination. As I lacked a Megatron, Sizzle had officially killed him and assumed command of the Decepticons.

Later on, I would receive G2 Sideswipe as a gift. I'd hoped he'd have leg articulation, going by his boxart, and was pretty disappointed by him in comparison to Sizzle. The vehicle mode and diecast helped make up for it, as did his chunky G2 launcher, which I tried in vain to mount on his shoulder like that damned boxart. When I first saw G1 Sideswipe years later, I assumed he was the mysterious Sunstreaker that Sideswipe's bio had referenced, and whom I had never been able to find on shelves. This was my first spring-loaded missile launcher, and I loved it so, even when the peg broke off.

Transformers always seemed a vast and almost unapproachable franchise, simply due to its scope and years of precedence. Friends of mine had other TFs I played with, including the mighty impressive Skyquake, and the less impressive G2 Bumblebee. I also remember kids coming to school with Hosehead and G2 Prime, and still have a picture I drew of Hosehead in a schoolbook. There was a note to indicate that, despite my drawing Lug next to him, this was not physically possible.

The only other TF I had from that era was Go-Bot Firecracker, whose size and scale with Matchbox cars made him a neat addition, and certainly a neat gimmick to bust out when other kids had cooler-looking toy cars. But, by and large, I did not have that many Transformers as a kid. I lived in the country, far away from toystores, and only got toys when I could pester a relative into buying me one while I was staying with them. My early obsession was dinosaurs, and I was fixated with Jurassic Park, reading the book over twenty times when i was six. Surprising, then, that Beast Wars and the Dinobots didn't grab me.

Speaking of Beast Wars, I actually hated it when it first aired. Saw the premiere while staying with my grandmother, and it was so cheesy and shitty and lame. aNd We ShAlL cAlL iT tEh BeEsT wOrZ!!! I suffered through the first three episodes, and dismissed it entirely as a show. However, I did pick up Snapper. After Laser Rod Sizzle's awesome swivel jointing, i found Snapper's ball joints to be crappy and cheap, and disliked him. Pulled him apart and put him back together several times over the years. Sizzle died a timely death, his O-ring waist exploding during a final battle with Sideswipe. I used to twist the O-ring to make him slash with his sword, a great action feature while it lasted. Alas, poor Sizzle.

Later, during a sale, I bought Injector, who was fun - but not very Transformersy. Also got Transmetal II Dinobot, a figure that looked much cooler than he played, thanks to odd jointing and bad proportions. Beast Wars was a bit of a write-off for me at the time. I do recall wanting Ultra Primal, but bought other things instead. Didn't like Megatron's asymmetry, I was a big stickler for this as a kid. Didn't even like toy trucks with writing down the side, since it was the other way on the opposite side. The rex head hand also put me off, it just didn't seem practical. Almost bought Waspinator too, but went for Lego in the end. I did have this notion that there was a cool BW comic continuity out there, thanks to seeing the Megalligator/Convobat pack, and realising the techspecs and blurbs didn't match the show.

It wasn't until Beast Machines that I'd get back into the swing of things. Saw Scavenger on the shelves when buying Star Wars figures, since I'd never given up toys, and just bought everything I could afford and liked. Scav looked neat, sure, yet on the back of his card I saw something far cooler - Mega Tankorr. Went and got Tankorr shortly after, and hot damn, he was the best toy I'd bought in an age. The kickass tank mode! The light-up eye! The missile launcher! The spinny saws! The kickass one-eyed faceplated robot with big deathclaw hands and awesome articulation! Everything I'd loved about Transformers was back, and I was hooked.

Went and bought every Vehicon I could get my hands on, then started buying the Maximals. Also bought up clearanced Beast Wars stock, including Optimal Optimus and Tripredacus, then Torca and Skyshadow. At the same time, I started asking my friends for their old TFs, and bought up a few. This was to be the beginning of a tradition. Among those early acquisitions were G2 Megatron and Prime, and in trade for some random bits 'n' bobs, a blue Decepticon truck.

I'd picked up a few Toyfare issues, including one with a spotlight on Transformers. This contained a toy list showing every US and UK release up until current, which was then Beast Machines. Suddenly I had scope and scale and reference, and I studied me the hell out of that list. Distinctly recall testing myself on it, pop-quizzing the names of the Seacons. Without the resources online being anywhere near what they are today, it was much harder to ID toys without the same references. I spent hours studying toy lists, looking at grainy pictures over dial-up, and downloading scripts and soundbytes from the episodes. Read through the likes of Fred's Variant Site, and CrazySteve's Scrambled City.

Thanks to that issue of Toyfare and the 1986 copystamp, I identified one of the figures I'd not had a name for before. That blue truck was none other than Onslaught, and suddenly all his mysterious pegs and holes made sense. I discovered he combined into Bruticus, and a whole world of interest poured open to me. Thanks to Tankorr and Onslaught, I gave up collecting toys in general, and started with Transformers as a focus.

Wow. That's so much crap, I'ma have to continue tomorrow. It's 3am!

Coming soon: Part Two. Featuring RID, IkonBoard, floppy discs, downloading TFTM over dial-up, and How I Met O6!