TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Now, I'm going to guess that most of us here drifted away from Transformers as we grew up, through discovering things like girls/boys/masturbation making it all seem a bit childish in comparison.

So what was it that got you interested in it again? A first visit to the internet turning up stuff you'd half forgotten? Catching one of the new cartoons on TV? Finding those toys in the loft? No longer able to masturbate as much and in need of something else to do?

For me, just to be different, it never completely went away. I kept what comics I could (being undone slightly by the fact that having brought them as a small child I was ****ing useless at proper storage) and would occasionally grab an issue to reread throughout the years and put the effort into watching GMTV to try out Beast Wars when it started (though as the first episode I caught was the generally terrible The Web that quickly stopped) and had even looked up stuff on the internet at the end of the century, those Zorbovov comic synopses look tame now but were hugely exciting at the time.

But the big thing that was the real catalyst for making me A Fan was catching the announcement of the Titan trades in a list of forthcoming titles in an issue of Dreamwave. Despite being vaugely aware from the net there were fans out there I'd never expected to see any of the old stuff reprinted, after all, who'd want to buy it but me and three other people? There being enough of an audience for actual proper books to come out with titles I half recognised was mind blowing.

Mirage.

Finnish TF comic had ended with #75, but I knew there was a continuation (I had read text preview for #78 and seen 1 issue of Generation 2 in the 90's). So I found myself here through seaarch engine.

What really hooked me again was the availibility of UK comic scans.

I'd never really left the fandom, it was always there lurking, but what got me back full force was a one, two punch combo of finding a box of my old Transformers in my mother's basement and stopping by the local toy store to get something and seeing Universe Hound.

I had seen other Classics figures (Prowl and Tankor) but I thought they where ugly messes and I still stand by that assessment, even though I own Prowl because I'm anal about some things. I had already snagged Brawl because of my love of all things tanks, but Hound really sunk it in that there where not only figures of classic characters, but good looking ones too. So after that I started looking into IDW's comics, catching up on old series and so on.

A combo of Beast Wars, a beat up old copy of TF:TM my mother rented for us (over and over and over) back in 1996, an old VHS tape of Saturday morning cartoons that my brothers and I compiled over the course of many months back in the 80's, and my brothers buying the Beast Wars toys. But it never completely went away from me either, mainly due to the younger brothers. It was present, but it was very "background" behind my other (now decidedly geeky; I didn't know it back then, but I was a super-nerdy kid. Science fiction, fantasy, geology, zoology, history... my favourite magazines were National Geographic and Starlog for awhile) interests for most of the 90's.

I always held onto and took very good care of my G1 Transformers from childhood, but honestly didn't realize that there was anything after G1 until I was at First Avenue in Minneapolis to see KMFDM. Between the bands (Pig was the opener), they were showing some Beast Wars on the screen, and I was intrigued, but didn't look into it much. But it got me to dig out my old toys and start talking with my friends about how cool the old toys were.

Oddly enough, this got a friend of mine interested and he started collecting them. After a while he had to move and needed to clear out some space, so he gave me a bunch of RID toys (Optimus, Ultra Magnus, the 3 autobots). From there, i just went nuts knowing that there were new toys, and the addiction took me full force.

Armada, believe it or not.

I can't remember which one came first, the toys or the comics, but I did buy Hot Shot and collected the comics, which I guess led into me getting the Movie on DVD...and then the whole cartoon series...then actually started buying the toys...

Although I drifted away, my parents (who find it difficult to accept I have 'grown up') continued to give me one Transformer for my Christmas (amongst other junk) every year.

Beast Wars, Machine Wars and Beast Machines really didn't do anything for me. It was Leader Ultra Magnus from RID that really wowed me back - combined with getting Transformers the Movie on DVD and watching it after clubbing with flatmates at Uni. I was almost lost again due to Armada and Energon though... the Armada Unicron figure and Alternators really helped boost me back in, and Transformers got their clutches on me seriously again from then-on.

I suppose I never really stopped liking Transformers, but after the Marvel comics ended my interest became much more sporadic. When G2 hit a friend of mine and I were very into it, and between the two of us we collected a fair chunk of the figures they released here (Prime, Megatron, the Aerialbots and Combaticons, Minibots, Axellerators, Dreadwing, Starscream and a smattering of Rotor Force, SkyScorchers, Dinobots, Cyberjets and Constructicons at least). But that only lasted for a couple years, and by the time the line had dried up we weren't hanging out anymore.

Once that ended and BW started up, though, my interest started to wane. My initial reaction to the BW toys was that they had to me knockoffs, since they were made by Kenner instead of Hasbro and real Transformers would never look like that. After I got the chance to watch the cartoon my opinion changed, but by then my parents were in the "you're too old for toys!" phase and made me feel really bad whenever I pondered buying anything so I only got a handful of Beast Wars figures.

When Beast Machines came around I watched a few episodes of the cartoon, looked at the toys and went "what the hell?" I had zero interest in any of it and stopped paying attention to any new Transformers stuff (although I did still occasionally break out the old toys) until I saw RiD stuff in the Sears catalogue a few years later. I didn't buy anything, but the fact that the Autobots were vehicles and the Predacons looked like (or in some cases were) Beast Wars toys was definitely heartening. At that point I'd have described myself as a casual fan -- I was interested in Transformers but there were other things that I followed with a lot more interest.

But then 2002 happened. My family and I finally got the internet at home and I found this place (I think we were #1 in the Google results for 'Transformers' at that point). The site still hosted comic scans, and since I'd only started reading the book at issue #67 and only managed to get my hands on a small number of back-issues I was really excited to get a chance to read the entire series from start to finish -- let alone the UK books, which I'd only vaguely been aware of before then!

At the same time, Hasbro's reissues started to show up. Since I was born in '84 I'd never even seen most of the original lineup of toys, other than a couple I'd gotten second-hand and the ones that got rereleased for G2. The chance to own a shiny new versions of the toys I'd hopelessly coveted since I was three was very exciting. Also, I was in my first year of university at the time and having a rough go of things without any of my high school friends around for support -- bringing home brand-new Ultra Magnus and Starscream toys, taking them out of their packaging and putting the stickers on them is one of a very small number of good memories I have from that entire year. Ultra Magnus especially made a huge impression on me because when I was a kid I'd spend hours staring at the little catalogues that came with the toys and Magnus was one toy that I'd desperately wanted the way only little kids can want something. So like Cliffy and his Mirage, Ultra Magnus is probably the reason why I'm here today.

Between reissues, Alternators and the Beast Wars redecos in Universe, I went from barely paying attention to the new toys to actively hunting all the stores in my area within the span of a couple months (ironically, almost all those toys are currently sitting in boxes while my small number of display shelves are filled with Classics and Movie-style toys -- I should do something about that ). After that, Transformers were pretty firmly ensconced as one of my biggest hobbies. There's been a few times where my interest has waned -- mainly the span between the reissues drying up and Classics first appearing -- but never to the low levels it was at during Beast Machines.

I had lost interest in TFs in the early to mid '90s, just after the first G1 reissues had started (reissue Sunstreaker was my last TF of that first phase), and felt more and more disappointed with the Tf toys I saw occasionally on the shelf.

G2 translucent neon Sparkabots? No thanks!
Poorly articulated and fugly Beast era shellformers that had "organic" alt modes? No thanks! *
OP as an all red fire engine? Madness!!!! *

* I know I'm a gonna get flamed, but that's what I thought.

Then, in 2004, I visited Hamleys in London. In a fit of TF toy buying nostalgia I spent what was probably twice the going rate on an Energon Hot Shot on the basis that at least he had a vaguely recognisable car mode, and if you squinted a lot he had something of the later plastic-y chunktastic G1 cars about him (Getaway and his kind). Plus he wasn't that godawful orange Laserbeak thing that was the only alternative. Hot Shot was, well, passable. However, advertised within his leaflet was...

ALTERNATORS SMOKESCREEN!!!!

And now I'm skint but have a shed load of Alts, BTs, Classics, reissues and their like. Thank you Alt Smokescreen for opening my eyes (again)!

Rack 'n Ruin wrote: Poorly articulated and fugly Beast era shellformers that had "organic" alt modes? No thanks! *

Not by me you ain't... However good the BW/BM shows were, the toys are largely terrible. The articulation might have been good, but they were monstrously ugly in both modes, and - as you say - largely terrible shellformers.

Cliffjumper wrote:Not by me you ain't... However good the BW/BM shows were, the toys are largely terrible. The articulation might have been good, but they were monstrously ugly in both modes, and - as you say - largely terrible shellformers.

Like any line I think it had both hits and misses, but I think the 'shellformer' aspect was mostly a problem in the early waves the designers seemed to have a hard time with the idea that they needed to pick alt-modes that could actually convincingly transform into something. Far too often you ended up with toys like Snapper or Armordillo, where the legs and arms fold awkwardly under the beast mode (certainly there were a few neat toys, like Insecticon or Waspinator or Cheetor or Ultra Primal...but they were the exception rather than the rule). And most of the Transmetal 2s were pretty ghastly. I'd say the Transmetals and Fuzors were the best of the line (well, OK, not Injector but you know what I mean), and so naturally they had fewer toys released than any of the other sublines.

In general I think the show characters fared pretty well. Most of them have at least one very good toy to their names, and usually it's the 'definitive' body that's most-remembered from the show (although some of them had to wait until the 10th anniversary line before those toys got decent colour schemes, like Tarantulas or Waspinator). Since no one remembers or cares about guys like Scarem or Bantor or B'Boom fifteen years down the line, I think a lot of people evaluate the Beast Wars toys solely on the strength of the TV guys. I know I certainly do.

Warcry wrote:Since no one remembers or cares about guys like Scarem or Bantor or B'Boom fifteen years down the line, I think a lot of people evaluate the Beast Wars toys solely on the strength of the TV guys. I know I certainly do.

Wait, does no one care for their leading role in the IDW comic? Shocking.

Actually just reread the first mini and it's not actually terrible even if it misses the point by a wide margin. IIRC it's the club exclusive tie in crap in the second one and the deeply stupid profiles that ruin it.

Well I was still buying TFs right up to Action Masters. But I was very hard on my toys and almost everything I had was in pretty bad shape by the time I was well in to my teens. Mom had decided that the gigantic toybox of toys I was never touching anymore could be emptied out and they could all be given away. So she did that.

I wouldn't say that I lost interest in TFs, I just stopped paying attention.

I completely missed G2. I saw part of an episode of BW but didn't know it was Transformers and was completely ignorant of a toyline.

I discovered comic books about then and managed to find the rest of the US Marvel TF comic series that I didn't have.

It wasn't until 97ish that I walked into a general store and found a crap load of G2 toys and started buying toys again. By then I'd graduated High School and was working. Not long after that I got my first computer and got online and started frequenting this site and any other TF site that could feed my need for info on the original toylines. I bought some VHS copies of the original cartoon from someone back in 98 or 99.

The rest is history.

The promise of live-action movies - simple as that!

I really liked the original toys, even if my Dad told me never to waste my (scant) wages on them, and managed to catch some episodes on TV, but the comics kept me going. Being a comic fan is useful sometimes, see?

Finding out that all G1/G2 episodes were available on easily purchased - and cheapish - DVD sets tipped the balance just as the notice of the first movie was hanging around in the background like a relative at a wedding who isn't sure of a welcome. Along with these sets, I found Beast Wars and numerous bits of other series, which really set me up to keep finding out more than just the comic story arcs.

And I found the TFA

inflatable dalek wrote:Wait, does no one care for their leading role in the IDW comic? Shocking.

All joking aside, Razorbeast's toy did become pretty popular after the first mini. But Magmatron was always one of the more sought after Beast Wars figs after the main cast and no one else really mattered, so I really doubt there would have been a run on Drill Bits or Manterrors. Five years after the fact I wouldn't be surprised if even that minor blip had disappeared

inflatable dalek wrote:Actually just reread the first mini and it's not actually terrible even if it misses the point by a wide margin. IIRC it's the club exclusive tie in crap in the second one and the deeply stupid profiles that ruin it.

The first series was OK, but like you say it completely missed the point, showed pretty clearly that Furman didn't understand why Beast Wars was so popular, featured what has to be the most gratuitous shoehorning in of Grimlock that he's ever produced and was a bit muddled and confused in the area of time travel. It's fun in a throwaway sort of way, but if anyone at IDW 'got' Beast Wars it would have thrown up huge warning signs saying that Furman probably shouldn't be the one writing it.

What brought me back and ultimately here? That honestly is a good question.

It started with finding an old CD I got from Botcon2000. Signed by Vince Dicola. It's been kicking around, along with the collectors plate for years.
I finally decided Maybe I could go digging for some old fics just because I got a hankering for 'memorabilia'. Found a couple of toys and some art I bought then low and behold old Cobracon junk and Bigbot.com RPG Stories.

That got me start hunting for old members, friends, enemies, whatever. Came across this and that. Finally I ended up just plunking in a IRL name of one and found an obituary. :/ kind of a downer right there.... so yeah just been mingling here and there now. Poking and prodding slowly. Not sure how deep I want to get back into things.

I've followed the movies and TF: Prime. Missed Everything between Beast Machines and Prime toonwise.
I know have time... too much time on my hands while we're being sickies and not moving well ATM. I'm just dabbling back.

So yeah. Hello.

`ST
CCMDR

The movies.

Well, that's what brought me in in the first place.

Well, I had crossed my life with Transformers several times but never got into it. First was the G1. Saw several episodes but was never enough to get into it, plus my parents did not allow me to have many toys nor did I like to beg them for toys, so that was it. Then it was Beast Wars, saw few episodes and meh. While still like to watch cartoons at adult hood, dissed RiD and Armada totally put me off. And when I looked at toy isles, Armada and Energon era toys urked me away. Cybertron brought my attention again but when around the end of this show, the Dragon Ball-ish thing made me hate it. At last, same like Blackjack, the 07 movie really brought my interest and then I found TFA. But for what really put me into this fandom is the 86 movie.

Since that twat blew our cover by selling it to Hollywood, its been hard to remain hidden, i've come online to share my similar lonely experiences with fellow Autobots(Decepticons;Keep away!). Oh that twat as every REAL transformer knows is Optimus.

Note: We need a 51% opinion/vote to nominate a new leader, and i therfore put myself forward, after these tragic events of Optimus selling us out, and our some of our real life experinces put into the movie.