Mkall wrote:I came to a realisation a few days ago that I may have fewer collecting days ahead of me than behind me. By that I mean I believe I'll cease collecting as soon as I have a nearly completed G1 cast done up in the Generations styling. To that end I went through all of the old G1 Catalogs to see what I'm missing and what I considered "necessary" vs. "nice to have."
It came down to me needing roughly 50 figures - mainly combiners and -masters. Everything from the Pretender, Micromaster, and Actionmaster lands in the "nice to have" category. It's kind of crazy that I'm at this stage in my head.
I'm kind of in the same boat here, I pretty much have almost all of the past and current Classics-Generations figures based on G1, just waiting on newer releases.
This could turn into a long story, but whatever, this is the place for it right?
I was a big fan of the show as a kid, in fact I think I rented the same "Desertion of the Dinobots" VHS from the videostore around the corner at least several dozen times over my childhood up until the age of 9, when I moved. So the G1 characters have a special spot in my heart. Never saw more than a dozen episodes or so from memory, and not many of the post TFTM episodes that I can recall, so I don't have much attachment to the newer characters.
Had a few of the toys, not many from G1, as I grew up in the 90s, mostly reissues, or the late G1/G2 dudes (actually found my Thunderclash a couple of months ago,) so I had no real attachment to those characters, just enjoyed the conversion.
Fast forward almost a couple of decades, I found a box set of the original series at work, bought it, and immersed myself in my childhood again. Then along came the movies, which I enjoyed for the entertainment factor. I'd also admire all the transformers figures on the pegs at work, but I never chose to buy at that point.
Until randomly on eBay, I come across a reissue of G1 Optimus Prime, and bought it. Was strangely disappointed tbh, I guess I expected more based on my nostalgia coated memories of the figure I had as a child.
Then along game the Fall of Cybertron game. Short, and not an especially great game, it was still fun, in the Transformers universe, and had some pretty awesome character designs. So when I walked past Soundwave and his Disc minions at the local retailer, well, they came home with me. I then collected the entire FOC range, plus a number of the WFC figures, and then the Takara versions of most of them as well. (I'm a sucker for shiny.)
My first non-FOC figure was Takara United Warpath I think, I enjoyed playing as him in WFC (which I bought after FOC, go figure.)
I eventually got the FOC prequel comics by IDW on the Comixology app, followed by the related Prime (FOC sequel comics) and enjoyed them. After seeing a lot of positive feedback on their G1 universe comics, I picked up the first few collections of RID and MTMTE (again on the app) and really enjoyed the storylines, though was a little confused at some of the setting, so I went back, and slowly but surely, got all the -ation, spotlight, AHM and ongoing comics, actually, ALL of their G1 related comics.
Throughout this period, my collecting objective changed to a more G1 themed ideal. So I started collecting a good deal of the Classics, Universe, Generations, United and Henkei lines, occasionally doubling up if I got what I felt was a "superior" deco of a character later on, i.e. United Warpath mentioned above was "replaced" by Hasbro's Generations Warpath, RTS Perceptor and Gen. Kup were replaced by their Asia Exclusive Generations counterparts and so on.
Spotted throughout this are a few "intruders" from other lines, either because I like the figure, IDW have repurposed the design in their G1 universe (ROTF Lockdown and Prime Vehicons) or I've repurposed them for whatever reason (Arms Micron Wildrider as G1 Wildrider.)
Which leads me back to my original statement, there's not many characters out there that have been released in the classics-verse that I don't have. I'm now waiting mostly on upcoming combiners (which tbh, I did not expect to happen after FOC Bruticus) and a number of the minibots.
Now I know I haven't really answered the question of "Why?" - but to be brutally honest, I don't quite know... I guess I just wanted to. Which is enough for me