by sol magnus » Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:00 pm
- Motto: "This is the most beautiful thing in the entire universe. Ok, give me the bomb."
- Weapon: Laser Rifle
Somewhat amazed there are no lifers in this thread, or at least lifers circa 1984.
I have been in love with the very concept of Transformers since 1984. If Star Wars and G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero! were life changers, Transformers for whatever reason was the ultimate in that regard. From the initial Marvel Comics commercial to the toyline advertisements, Hasbro had a genius marketing campaign that cut right to the heart of me and kids all over the world just like me.
I've been collecting Transformers since the initial line, in 1984, starting with Soundwave. My mom was opposed to buying me a Megatron, and we had budgets, so it took a long time before I got an Optimus Prime...like 1988, but I had many others along the way - and along with the kids I played with in my neighborhood, virtually everything from 1984-1985. When I was a kid, though, I couldn't have everything with three sisters.
As adulthood set in, I started getting back into it around 1997 when I was in Pittsburgh, PA. I was able to get my hands on pretty much any G1 Transformer you could name, sometimes with the box or even unopened. This was right before the nostalgia wave hit. I amassed a dream collection of G1 Transformers including Fortress Maximus that was beyond anything I could have imagined as a kid. Being a broke college student, I ended up having to sell that collection, only to rebuild it to a lesser degree after that. Some of those pieces I still have, but they're boxed away and it's nothing spectacular.
2000 rolls around, and Car Robots comes out just as I return home from Pittsburgh with a shiny new high paying job. So, in 2000 I bought an entire collection (well, most of it anyway) of Car Robots over the mail, piece by piece. Then Hasbro released them (albeit less quality) in 2001, and I had the first opportunity to have a Robot Mode/ Alt Mode displayed collection, and I took it. Also, Heroes of Cybertron starting coming out (the Japanese blind ones in 2000) and the first repros started to hit. Personal opinion: Repros destroyed vintage Transformers collecting. Because I either had, or once owned 85% of American G1, I never had any interest in the old stuff being rehashed via reproduction, I always wanted new stuff based on current engineering. Yes. The old, classic characters, updated for modern audiences.
In 2002 I would get my wish with Transformers Classics. I got all the first run and started cherrypicking the second (I did not get Galvatron, and there were weird new characters I didn't buy although they were cool - Dropshot springs to mind, but he wasn't the only one) and subsequent runs, but I ended up with a pretty large CHUG collection by 2010.
Takara revealed MP-10 Convoy and introduced the idea of scale into the Masterpiece line and unlike the guy who's signature says "not caring about scale since 1984 - just like Hasbro", they had me at "scale". It had never been done before - not really. We could argue there is some sense of scale in CHUG, but not a direct mandate. I loved the idea of having a bunch of staggered figures on my shelf that approximated an appropriate look in terms of size, and I was looking to SAVE money, because I was buying 70% of whatever Hasbro was making for CHUG. Based on the release cycle of MAsterpiece at the time, one quarterly plus whatever convention figure, I determined I could spend less money on Transformers overall, and get a really nice (actually superb) collection to display by getting hero versions of my favorite characters. Pre-MP 20, you could get deals on Masterpiece figures, not paying full price for non-knockoff versions. So I did where I could, but this was well after I started collecting in earnest. However, like many of us, I can't do things halfway, so my Masterpiece collection got out of hand.
Backing up a bit, to finance my Masterpiece collection along with paying some bills that got behind, I sold off my CHUG, Car Robots and Beast Wars to make all that happen. I don't regret doing it. I was upgrading and being financially responsible even - however, Takara eventually started to outstrip the release cycle, and I was still the same Transformers addict I'd been since I was a kid, so it spiralled out of control. That's not to say I don't miss MANY of those toys I sold to get the Masterpiece figures.
I ended up selling about 60% of my Masterpiece figures a few years later, around MP-40's release to pay bills again, and of course, Generations was getting better and better over the years. I still kept up with what was coming out, and even bought a few along the way (Thrilling 30 Springer, CW Ultra Magnus, Titans Return Galvatron, PotP Optimus Prime and Jazz). I should mention I was buying Cyberverse version of Transformers prime and Robots in Disguise guys with the eventual intent on passing them to my son, but I never did. They're all sitting in a box. Should probably do something about that.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does my shelf, so when Hasbro announced WFC: Siege, stated they were going back to Cybertron, it was a trilogy, and they were going to scale the figures, I saw the opportunity to get a line with a finite release. Hasbro of course managed to put out 50+ figures for Siege alone and I bought almost all of them (of course). I'm trying to be a bit more selective with Earthrise, but - I'm really not. Now, I even have to buy some of them twice, because my 7 year old son wants them now, too. Fun times.
'Til All Are One.