The Energon Pub

Greetings All,

As many of you no doubt know, my son and I are almost exactly 30 years apart. I'm a 44 year old coot, and my son just turned 14, so I fondly regail him with stories of what i was doing at his exact age, but to his chagrin. .

But anyways, I figure, now is as good a time as any to look back at Action Masters, which appeared (I'm not exactly sure when) early in the spring of 1990. I remember it well...

TF Wiki wrote:The Action Master toyline, depicting the obvious oxymoron of "Transformers who don't transform," generated initial ire ("BLASPHEMY!") from some fans. This was magnified as Action Masters were released in the final year of the original Transformers toy line in the US. When Transformers was summarily canceled in North America, some fans blamed the gimmick for the death of the franchise (despite the wide variety of other factors that doubtlessly were involved).

I can remember the commercials vividly...that big Steel Hand with the Action Masters Logo, Prime's promise of new powers if others would *join him* in giving up their alt modes etc...



Was there rioting and outright hate among my peers and I ?...Well not exactly. It was more like apathetic rejection.

You see by 1990, most of us in the 8th grade had phased out of toys and cartoons to varying degrees. Some of my friends had hopped on the TMNT hype train, still trying to retain some of their boyhood, some had moved on to more adult things....perhaps too soon. As for me, I wasn't into any toys, but I still did like to watch my saturday Morning and weekday cartoons, including original TF reruns as they became scarce.

The last TF toys I got were the Headmasters in 1987. When I first saw PM Prime and the Seacons in 1988, I thought they were cool, but the Pretenders just didn't do it for me, so I had been done with toys for almost 2 years, though I did casually browse the toy aisle, maybe in some way hoping things would go back to a more traditional look. How wrong I was.

I remember the conversation among my peers went something like this:

"You see those new Action Master Toys commercial?"
"Yeah, Transformers that don't Transform, what are they called just "Formers" ?
"Yeah that is pretty dumb"

....and that was it, no more was ever said on the subject.

A few months later my family moved and I started high school (9th grade) in a new location. I eventually made a new circle of friends, one of whom had actually purchased some Action Masters. I may have criticized him a little at first, but I'm sure it wasn't anything too bad because we remained good friends for a long time. Especially as we became adults, and I quickly discovered the value of old Transformers and tried to buy as many as I could at shows/conventions in the mid to late 90's prior to eBay.

Well here we are 30 years later. Again I am pretty ok with the idea they existed. I didn't have any younger siblings, but its my understanding that some who would have been a few years younger than myself did enjoy Action Masters on some level. Also in the Generations line, I am not adverse to obtaining a character based on an AM toy, as long as it fits within my collecting aesthetic.

Still...like an old codger, I'll poke fun at my son every once in a while and ask him...."You know what killed the original Transformers Toyline?"...and he will reply Action Masters .

IMO the Action Masters themselves weren't a dumb concept, although the fictional justification for them makes me shake my head.
The concept has been revisited minus the playsets with things like Robot Replicas and Revoltech.