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For those of you have small children at home like me, especially boys, can you share how you explain to them your collection and your rules on it? Because at the end of the day, these collectibles are toys meant to be played with and it might be an unnecessary torture to the kids to keep seeing toys that they cannot play with like the rest of their other toys.

Thanks.

In my experience, not from my own children but from my younger brothers, you can explain it to them as much as you like, the only way to protect your collection from them is to lock the room they are in. Because they will absolutely ignore what you say and play with them as much and as brutally as they like.

They simply don't understand or care.

Use tasers. Easier to use, they save time and are FUN. Condition 'em.

RhA wrote:Use tasers. Easier to use, they save time and are FUN. Condition 'em.

Or buy a boa constrictor named Bob and let it roam the room freely.

RhA wrote:Use tasers. Easier to use, they save time and are FUN. Condition 'em.

Or buy a boa constrictor named Bob and let it roam the room freely.

njb902 wrote:

RhA wrote:Use tasers. Easier to use, they save time and are FUN. Condition 'em.

Or buy a boa constrictor named Bob and let it roam the room freely.

One approach does not exclude another.

Most of my collection is in storage as I don't have the room. The figures I do have on display are in our room and my kids general aren't allowed in it unless they're supervised.

The biggest thing for me was to get them interested in collecting as soon as possible. My youngest is only 18 months old so isn't really interested in them yet. However my five year old has had his own TFs since he was 3. He started off with Rescue bots then quickly moved on to Prime legion and commander class figures, then when he was 5 I introduced him to Voyagers and Deluxes. I've even donated some of my original G1 toys to add to his collection.

I've never hidden my collection away, and when he has asked about it I've always tried to educate him as much as possible. I think as a result he's learnt to respect my collection just as much as he appreciates his own.

This is a really good question. I've taken the opposite approach with my 4 year old daughter, since all kids are interested in toys. I've essentially inundated her with them, which probably doesn't surprise many of you considering how massive my collection is. She has always been around Transformers toys since she was little so it just isn't a thing to her. She asks lots of questions about them ... what's their name? Are they friends with Megatron or Optimus Prime (until she figured out the Autobot and Decepticon symbols on them). We still just call them good guys and bad guys mostly. Once in a while I refer to them by their respective factions.

I guess it is different because she's a girl though to the extent that she mostly has a ton of My Little Ponies and Disney Princess/Barbie dolls (and all 6 of the original Rescue Bots) so there is a very clear line in the sand between what are her toys and what are my toys. I imagine with a young boy that the line in the sand would be a little harder to draw if he was into Transformers as well.

Once in a while when I'm doing a massive gallery push and I have a bunch of Transformers in our living room that I've transformed, I'll let her "play" with a couple of them with her dolls. It's probably a much more gentle play than boys playing with toys because a lot of it is "talking", going to "Ponyville" or the Disney Princess Castle or finding out about rainbows or something along those lines. One of my favorite memories of my daughter in the past 6 months was letting her play with my SDCC 2013 Titans (Grimlock, Bumblebee, Megatron, Optimus Prime, and Soundwave). Her ponies were trying to teach Megatron about the "friendship of magic". She kept doing this cute little mean bad guy voice saying over and over "I'm a bad guy". It was really cute.

My wife is probably more concerned when she sees a Transformer sitting out than I am. I always assure her that I wouldn't leave something really valuable out. If she broke TFP RID Optimus Prime, it'd suck, but it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world because he's a common recent figure that'd be easy to replace.

My Transformers are my kids. My daughter? She's just another one in a long line of people I have to protect my real children from!