TRANSFORMERS: Introduction To Transformers Month

TRANSFORMERS:  Revisiting the Characters of Generation 1

Transformers Catalog for Series 3, from my collection!

    Welcome to the SCC's Transformer Month!  I remember my first introduction to the Transformers when I saw a small ad in a G.I. Joe comic.  It was a silhouette of several robots lined up and it said "The Transformers are coming!"  Soon after, my friend John (aka Knightmare in One Word Reviews) was telling me about the cartoons that were on in the morning.  They could only be seen in small instalments on the Bozo Show.  I hadn't watched the Bozo Show in quite awhile, but here I was, tuning back in to catch these 10 minute instalments of the Transformer cartoons.  I was IN, these shows were so cool! 

    On the heels of that discovery, practically ALL the boys in my school were suddenly going crazy for Transformer toys.  Everyone was smuggling the mini-cars or the cassettes in their pockets and taking them to class.  I remember someone had Soundwave (in cassette player mode) in his locker.  I even remember a kid walking down the hall to lunch carrying Megatron in GUN MODE!?!?!  Wow, you wouldn't see that in this day and age, would you?

    Anybody bringing a Transformer to the lunchroom often drew a crowd!  It was crazy!  Everyone wanted to see it and how it transformed.  As everyone ate their lunch, the figure would proudly stand in the middle of the table for all to see.

    I don't know how long those kids stayed invested in Transformers, but the following year, few were bringing them to school anymore.  My friends and I stayed in, collecting for the next few years.

    As the years progressed, new gimmicks were introduced - sub-groups, combiners, triple changers, and so on.  I though it was all natural progression till the Series 4 Headmasters.  With that series, I felt they strayed too far from the norm.  Although I LIKED the Headmasters, I really thought it should have been it's own off-shoot series.  You could have the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth/Cybertron and the Headmasters could have a completely different thing going on over on the planet - Nebulos.  Yet, it all got crammed together and when the Pretenders were introduced with Series 5, I bowed out.

    At this point, my focus diverted solely back to G.I. Joe (though I kept reading the Transformers comic).  I collected Joes a couple more years and then I was done with that too.  Not because I though G.I. Joe had veered off-track, by this point I was in High School and it was just time to move on.

    When I returned to action figure collecting, I did not get into the new Transformer series'.  They just did not seem to have the same magic the original series had.  Plus I was frustrated that the new toylines often mirrored G1's moves.  It was like there was a checklist that was a guideline...

- Optimus Prime is the Leader...  check

- Megatron the bad guy... check

- Starscream is a traitor... check

- Optimus dies... check

- Grimlock is a dinosaur... check

- Megatron becomes Galvatron... check

- Add in Unicron... check

- Optimus comes back... check

    This was uninspiring to me.  The Transformer G1 series was so groundbreaking at the time.  Now any new series would just constantly borrow from the original.  So I just wasn't sold on the live action movies, Beast Wars, Armada, Energon, Animated, etc...  Then eventually, Combiner Wars caught my attention.  Here was some great-looking classic characters (like Brawl), with some not-so-great-looking ones (ie. Drag Strip).  Then they came out with Titans Return!!!

    My boys got into this series and I was really impressed with the majority of the figures!  At the time, 4 of my boys were collecting, so their collection was growing fast!  I ignored any comics or cartoons, but the figures were really impressive.  I would be looking at Weirdwolf (Wolfwire... whatever) and saying, "this is better than the original!"

    So once I started photographing Joes, I eventually added in some of the awesome Transformers my boys had.  But this is a G.I. Joe blog, what am I going to do with pictures of Transformers???  I thought about covering Transformers randomly, but I wanted the blog to remain primarily about Joes.  So I decided we will blast through several Autobots and Decepticons in ONE MONTH!!  To me, these are updated G1 figures, not Combiner Wars or whatever...  My figures are long-gone, so we are going to revisit the characters from the original series with the NEWER figures!

    I tried to select from the first 4 G1 waves I enjoyed and to have a fair mix of good guys and bad guys.  There are certain characters I was not able to cover because I did not have a new version at hand - like Prowl.  At the same time, it was fun to dive into lesser known characters and put them in the spotlight for a bit - like Misfire.

    Writing the profiles was easy till I got to characters with a rich history like Starscream.  So I breezed over some details.  Otherwise some of these profiles would be a mile long!

    I hope you enjoy this slight detour into the world of the Transformers.  As I mentioned, I don't plan to add Transformers on a regular basis, we are simply going to plow through several in a single month.  If people dig it enough, maybe we'll do another Transformer month somewhere in the future!