I've had the idea of writing this piece for a few months--the title for much longer--but I decided to wait until after SDCC to see if I could be swayed from it. I wasn't, so here it is, a last love letter to the Transformers franchise.
Sometimes I felt as though I belong to the "Generation 2" of the fandom: the group not born in time for Generation 1, yet not young enough to have experienced a Transformers series that was removed from it--Robots in Disguise and on--which isn't necessarily a bad thing; after all, our first introduction to the franchise was Beast Wars. And so it also follows that my "Prime" will always be named "Primal", my Megatron was first a purple Tyrannosaurus and then a brown one, and I'm used to television programming with decent writing (a not-so-subtle dig at both G1 and the Cybertron trilogy).
Like with many, the first installment of the Michael Bay trilogy brought me back into the franchise. Not coincidentally, it's also when I also discovered Seibertron.com. I'm sure it's not a case of cognitive bias that I remember a general feeling of electricity on the boards. That feeling was contagious. After reading Ryan's article on his McDonalds Beast Wars galleries (http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/mcdonalds-beast-wars-transformers-galleries-and-the-origin-of-seibertron/10200/), and for the first time in years, I wanted to buy an action figure.
That one figure wound up being the show-accurate Optimus Primal & Megatron Toys R Us exclusive set; if you had grown up with Beast Wars as I had, it was like being able to reach through the television and taking Primal and Megatron in your hands. One figure turned into two, and then more--the ones that especially stick out in my memory and on my shelves were Movie Premium Bumblebee, SDCC Nemesis Prime, Classics 2.0 Sunstreaker, ROTF Leader Prime--which is where we begin to reach the near-present.
The ones that started it again.
I began to find myself buying figures dispassionately, figures I didn't purchase for any other reason than just to own them: to set on a shelf, and to have it in a "collection". This isn't to say every purchase had to be accompanied by the flood of nostalgic childhood memories that came with the Primal and Megatron set; this was certainly the reason--and sometimes it seems the only reason--for Classics 2.0 Dinobot, but ROTF Leader Prime was because I felt my mind exploding at the level of design and engineering complexity that went into it; and sometimes, as with the SDCC Nemesis Prime, I just thought the figure was just... cool.
But also sitting on a shelf is a HFTD Leader Starscream that, while impressive, did not explode my mind. In my closet are an as-of-yet unopened Masterpiece Skywarp and a ROTF Bludgeon that I only purchased because they were at clearance prices. And in a drawer somewhere, I have a Japanese Beast Wars Cohrada for who-knows-why?
I felt like I'd become a collector. And I didn't like it.
This isn't to disparage collectors nor collections, as they're an invaluable asset to the community not only for their knowledge but perhaps moreso for their enthusiasm. If it weren't for collectors and enthusiasts, it probably wouldn't be Peter Cullen's voice coming out of Optimus Prime on the big screen; if it weren't for collectors and enthusiasts, we wouldn't have sites like Seibertron.
But I didn't like how I was purchasing things just for the sake of owning them. I'm sure many will offer the advice, make it harder to get the money out of your wallet. Or, sell off the figures you don't want anymore. Although I'll probably end up doing some of the latter, that alone doesn't address the underlying psychology: whereas before I bought Transformers because I was interested, now my interest seemed to be a result of my purchasing habits... and that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me.
Given that, now seems like a good time to stop. I don't desire any of the current figures out on the market. I've been reading the boards long enough now that I see the same conversations repeating themselves: old vs. new aesthetics, pricing complaints, wish lists, "Hasbro hates fans and mismanages the line", and so forth. Dark of the Moon--which I still haven't seen yet--ends the Movie trilogy that brought me back in. Transformers: Prime doesn't grab me the way that Transformers: Animated did. And, as a more personal consideration than most, Hasbro didn't show any indication of revisiting Beast Wars any time soon at SDCC.
I know my less-than-prodigious post count means that this essay may be meaningless to most, but I think there's something to sharing this experience even as an unknown; most people just fade away, and so the community never has a moment of self-reflection, i.e. if you're feeling this way, maybe it'd be healthy for you to take a break as well. While this essay may read to some as a disgruntled confession of ones own neuroses, it very much so was intended to be a love letter to both the franchise and to the best parts of being interested in Transformers for the past several years. After all, how often does a person get to relive a part of their childhood with the entire world?
So I'm saying good-bye, for now anyways:
So Long, and Thanks For All the Sharkticons.
