The Energon Pub

Sat Sep 29, 2012 12:06 am

Thought itd be fun to see how people got interested/hooked on transformers. Im sure there are tons of different stories.

For me, well i remember being outside playing and my dad coming to the door and saying hey come here and check out this new cartoon that is on. I went in and it was the first episode of Transformers G1. i was hooked after only a few minutes. when G1 died off it kinda fell to the back of my mind untill i was in target one night and came across G2 in the store. well that got me back and i got all that i could with the little money i had.

when beast wars took over i lost interest. kinda felt like they were trying to be something they wernt and ignored the series untill i caught the show then i had to get them as well.

Wish i hadnt ignored the BW line in its early stages since there are still alot of them i dont have and want.

Sat Sep 29, 2012 6:33 am

Got my first waaay back, G1 minibot Cosmos.

What I had access to: Ladybird books, and tapes, and occasionally the marvel(uk) comic book.

What I could get from the local "toy store", were mainly minibots and combiner limbs, so I would have adventures of Bumblebee and the minibots taking on their best counterparts, my major battle was Bumblebee, Warpath, Outback, Powerglide, Seapray and Cosmos, taking on the combaticons, in an imagined scene with the special teams battling, so that Defensor( who I didn't have) could take on Devastator (Again, not having).

The first transformers animated adventure I ever saw was a cinema release of Transformers: The Movie.

In school, there were more people intersted in Star Wars and Action Force (GI Joe) so Action Masters and Beast Wars fell by the wayside ( Local toy store had closed down by that stage anyhow). revisited Transformers during Robots in Disguise, and stayed a fan again since, having my own source of income at the time helped also.

It was probably Simon Furman's ( Marvel) or John Grant's (Ladybird) stories that really brought them to life, and for anyone who decides they were simple reads, they were simpler times, phones were in boxes, mobile was a thing you dangled over the bed of a child, #-o

and Autobots were ignorant of the world around them and needed human help. heck your pocket phone now probably has more computational power than Teletran 1.

Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:53 am

I was actually into Robo Machine, they used to have a great strip in the Eagle comic I think it was. My parents were looking for toys for a birthday, and picked up some Transformers instead, and the rest is history.

News Credits: 25 · Sun Sep 30, 2012 3:31 pm

When I was a kid I watched some beast wars re-runs and alot of Armada, then lost interest until the live action films came out then I got back into it.

News Credits: 4 · Sun Sep 30, 2012 9:00 pm

I remember being hooked on Transformers during Armada. Watched the series,collected the toys,etc. But then I starting following stuff like Halo and other stuff and almost totally forgot. Then the Movies came out and I just saw it as a movie. The thing that got me OFFICIALLY hooked back into the franchise was War For Cybertron. I saw my friend playing it one time and I began to slowly and slowly become a fan for the franchise again.

To this day I will always praise High Moon Studios for making me love Transformers again.

News Credits: 15 · Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:53 am

I could sit here and sing an opera and put on a play about how I got into Transformers...

...but you can't do that over a forum. So, my friend told me about it in grade school. The rest is history.

News Credits: 6188 · Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:18 am

My vague reasons are explained in my collection thread, here.

The short version: was mostly into Beast Wars, being a child of 1989, then ignored most stuff until the films arrived. I was knee-deep in plastic crack by the time DotM came out.

News Credits: 1 · Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:31 am

It's vague, but I remember green robots, a sandbox in the schoolyard and WHAT THE CRAP DID THAT T-REX JUST TURN INTO A ROBOT.

Wed Oct 03, 2012 2:21 am

My earliest memory of TFs are watching G1 reruns on tv. I was really little though, and can't recall anything other than the first season. Then I got a couple G2 toys. My very first figures were Ramjet and Optimus Prime, both with the soundboxes, and Snarl.

Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:04 pm

Hey, all. I'm a new person on these forums. I was just posting that I found I was enjoying the Transformers Prime cartoon ridiculously more than a man my age probably should. And I found it brought back fond memories and washed those awful live action movies out of my head.

I remember the Transformers when they came on the scene because I had never seen toys with such detail and complicated moving parts before. They were very exotic and Japanese.

I received Hound and Thundercracker as a gift when I was young. Those were the mostly metal first generation toys, too, which I'm sure are prized by collectors nowadays. In my memory, though, they were also very loose-jointed, and the paint wasn't the best quality. I probably sold them at a yard sale years ago. I see that some people think the toys they make nowadays are of lesser quality. I see the toys nowadays and wish I had them when I was younger. They actually look like the cartoons for one. (Does anyone else remember that the original toy versions of Ironhide and Ratchet just sucked?) Also, injection molded plastic has come a long way since I was a kid.

I remember those old toys ran hot and cold. Some were very cheaply made and disappointing. Some of them, such as Optimus Prime and Trailblazer, and Prowl were made with a quality that no other toy lines were at the time. Soundwave was probably THE hottest toy from the 80s as I recall.

A lot of the mini toys, and the combiner toys after the Constructicons, always felt a little too cheaply made. I took note how some lines had very articulated joints and hands, while others did not, as though they were being made on cheap after Transformers became popular.

I loved collecting toy robots, and still do. I had every wind up gizmo from Taiwan I could find, as well as Star Wars droids, etc. The Transformers line was great fun. I still have the Macross-style Jetfire and the Dinobots somewhere. As well as an original Optimus Prime I repainted in a burst of tinkering.

All the best,

Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:26 am

nice posts...............

News Credits: 22 · Fri Oct 05, 2012 8:14 am

I was 7 years old and wanted a comic book, any comic book, so my Grandma picked up US Marvel G1 issues #13, "Shooting Star" and #14, "Rock and Roll Out" from the post office when she went to mail stuff, and I've loved TFs and Bruce Springsteen ever since. It's probably the reason I root for Megatron more than Optimus.

Sat Oct 06, 2012 12:13 am

A lot a great stories, reading through them helped me remember another small tidbit i could have added so i will now.

First transformer i got was Bone crusher. seen him at a Kmart. I remember my mom worked some nights, so the times she did work at night on her way home she brought another piece of devastator till i had all 6.

was an amazing day when i got them all and my dad formed devastator. on my birthday thatyear i got my first large transformer....none other than Prime himself. that was my most prized possesion for years.

Sat Oct 06, 2012 5:23 pm

Actually, from the first commercial, although in Fort Worth, the GoBots commercial came first. When I saw those commercials, I wanted those both of those toylines. I am still not a GoBots hater to this days.

First TF, G1 Starscream. It just confirmed my passion. Still a great looking toy (mine is not great shape, my childhood friends were toy breakers!) despite the short arms and easily lost fist and landing gear. My friends (actually in the nerd catergory) in college (I still U of I) made fun for liking a "outdated" toy line so much. I was right, and they like so many Illini on so many subjects were wrong!

also had TF #1 too! Probably lost it, although the cover was separated from the rest of the comic since the mid 80's.

Sun Oct 07, 2012 10:28 pm

Started out by renting the 1986 movie from a local video store when I was like ... four or five? This would've been '94 or '95.

Blew my mind. From there I rented every other G1 tape they had, which was a decent smattering of Sunbow season 1 episodes.

Beast Wars hit shelves very shortly after that, and, although I actually didn't realize they were related to Transformers yet, I thought they looked cool and had my parents buy one. (Razorbeast)

Then the cartoon hit the air, I quickly realized it was a sequel to Transformers, which was awesome, and I watched it through to the end with my friends each week, explaining any of the references I could.

I built up a pretty sizable collection of Beast Wars figures, which are still sitting in a tub in my parents' garage, and actually got my hands on some old G1 toys as well, which were always kind of mysterious to me and a huge treat.

I don't remember when or how I got back into it again as a late teen/early adult, but like most things from my childhood, I found I still got a huge kick out of it, and I've been eating up the fiction (though not the toys) since.

Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:21 am

I got into them watching the G1 cartoon with my brother. We were hooked. We didn't have a lot of the G1 toys, but between the two of us we had enough for some pretty epic battles.

Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:57 am

My earliest memory in the TF world was an older neighborhood kid playing with a Starscream and Thundercracker (G1) and I had to borrow some of his in order to be able to play Transformers with him.

Then I quickly started getting my own. My first was a Constructicon. Slowly but surely, everyone in the neighborhood pretty much had their own little collection of Transformers and every once in a blue moon a lot of us would get out to play at the same time and have a "war". Otherwise it was usually just a smaller affair with 2 or 3 of us getting together to tell stories with our toys or play out what was the 2nd-3rd grade equivalent of LARP'ing.

All the while, the original toon was part of the Saturday morning block of cartoons that got our imaginations fueled up and ready to go. It was probably on before and after school at varying times, too. They switched programming schedules all the time.

Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:41 pm

I remember watching the original run of the G1 cartoon after school when I was really young. This kid in my class had a G1 Blitzwing and I thought it was the coolest toy I'd ever seen. One Christmas I got a haul of G1 figures and from there I just never stopped loving the franchise.
I was totally lost during the Beast era until Beast Machines came along. In subsequent years I've rewatched the BW series and really taken a liking to it, but I'm a G1er all the way. A part of me will always love G1 not for Geewunning, but out of respect of where the brand came from and for being something new and different. I scratch my head when people screech that the movieverse is somehow innovative but the original series is some type of derivative, as the original series was....the...original series. If anything, being a part of the online fandom has just reminded me that I don't have to like everything TF, I just have to like the TF things that I like.

Sat Dec 08, 2012 11:08 am

Hard to remember exactly what, but it might have been something to do with watching weekend morning cartoons on a Finnish television channel and one of the cartoons being Transformers: Energon. Afterwards I kinda stumbled upon the rest in the net. But the idea that really got me was that they were ROBOTS who turned into VEHICLES! How cool was that!
And I was twelve...

Sat Dec 08, 2012 12:00 pm

The rerun of the first episode of Beast Wars on Fox Kids. I became obsessed with the notion of animals that can turn into robots. The rest is history... until I started watching RID (they can become cars too!) and then the rest truly became history.

News Credits: 7 · Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:32 am

Short story: playground peer pressure.

Long story: I went to school in England from 1984 tot 1988, just when Transformers hit. Some of my friends had Transformers: I distinctly remember friends bringing Kickback, Wheeljack, Skywarp and Grimlock to school on separate occasions.
I especially remember wanting to hold Grimlock, so I bragged to my friend I could transform him without instructions. It went well, until I got to his chest part, which I couldn't work out without being shown.
Anyhow, I soon harrassed my parents te get me a Transformer. Got my first Transformer, Thundercracker, from British Home Stores (BHS). I now sort of regret not getting a Dinobot, but back then, I was all about blue jets. Soon after, I did get Slag for Christmas, though.
Lost interest in Transformers with the 1986 and 1987 series due to non-realistic alt modes, and my TF's went to goodwill when we moved house. Beast Wars recaptured my interest in TF's.

I'm still not a fan of the G1 Seeker mold, but I did treat myself to a brand new MISB original G1 Slag a year ago, for nostalgia's sake.

Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:53 am

Man, Canadian club doesn't help when I'm going back 25 years. I remember walking into a toy store with my mummy dearest and seeing a black hilux that turned into a robot to camper and back. Trailbreaker

never looked back, I was hooked

Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:50 pm

The g1 cartoon for me. Love that transforming sound and Soundwave's voice. I could do a great imitation in elementary school. Then I hit puberty and there went the Soundwave voice!

News Credits: 15 · Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:23 am

skywarp408 wrote:The g1 cartoon for me. Love that transforming sound and Soundwave's voice. I could do a great imitation in elementary school. Then I hit puberty and there went the Soundwave voice!

You could still do it, all you need is a vocoder and a Dr. Claw voice. Seriously, that's what they did in the cartoon, same voice actor and everything.

Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:56 pm

hi guys thanks for letting me join youre forums looks like a fun place

ok ive always loved transformers since i was kid ( iam 30) just the designs and fantastic personalitys

my brother got me the g1 season 1 dvd boxset for my 21st birthday and that got me hooked again prior to that it was the rebirth and return of prime that kept me going lol

also as somebody with aspergers ( middle line ) its part of my as obbsesions so that a really big reason for it