My personal relationship with Transformers.
- davidgrice2000
- Nov 27, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 26, 2020
When I was about 3 to 4 years old I was very fond of Thomas the Tank Engine, and by extension trains in general. Knowing this my parents bought me several train based toys in my early childhood (mostly from car boot sales since we weren't a wealthy family) one of these toys, unbeknownst to anyone, could transform. I didn't realise this for quite some time, for me it was a merely a big train.
That is until I discovered Power Rangers in late 2004, I was particularly interested in the white tigerzord. After being enamoured with giant transforming robots for the first time in my life little cogs began turning in my little head, it was then that I realised the train could transform into a robot.
To this day I still don't know what his name is (or even if he has one, I call him Trainman). He's pictured here being very old and dusty. My first ever transforming robot toy.
Some time after I figured out Trainman was a robot my parents were able to find a set of dvds they thought I'd like (due to the new found interest in transforming robots), they got me a dvd box set of the first 9 episodes of Robots In Disguise 2001 for Christmas 2004, that was transformers for me, Megatron was a purple weirdo and Optimus was a fire truck. The obsession had begun.
As for my first official bona fide Hasbro branded Transformer™ was a birthday present from my 5th birthday from my Grandad, or rather six birthday presents. He got me the whole set of Universe Micromaster constructicons. My dad, frustrated by the lack of instructions, struggled to combine the team for a long time before giving me Devastator in his combined form, I then proceeded to take him apart and start playing with him on my own. I've never really had a need for instructions with transformers, the significance of this is probably not important but I've heard many long time fans have trouble in this area, and I've always assumed it would be second nature.
I first watched The Transformers: The Movie (ironically enough) in the year 2005, at this point in my life I didn't know what a decepticon was, having only watched the first 9 episodes of RID, so I had assumed that my little Devastator was a good guy, I had learned that the vehicles were good and the animals were bad, to my knowledge at the time I had no bad guy characters despite owning several decepticons.
Many transformers fans of my generation, when learning about G1 are often confused by Magatron's gun mode, but I, the ill informed child that I was, simply assumed that any Megatron could turn into anything because the RID version had 6 modes.
But I digress, The Transformers: The Movie was the first time I saw the constructicons in action, they didn't look exactly the same but they had the colour scheme, the vehicle modes and the combination, so I knew who they were regardless of the design. Later that year in 2006 I moved to a new house and a new school which began the early morning tradition of watching Transformers Cybertron before school, I lived really close to the school so I could watch the whole thing without being late.
Another common occurrence in younger fans that I managed to avoid is being unaware of all of the different, diverging continuities. That's just what transformers was to me, it was never just one thing, I had completely different and equally valid attachments to 3 completely different continuities via the media I had watched and the toys I had.
Then came The Movie in 2007, all of the kids in my school suddenly cared about transformers and wanted to play with me (yes, being the weird kid actually got me friends at one point).
2007 was the first year I started actively getting proper transformers toys, my "collection" at that point was mostly knock offs and minicons, for the first movie toyline I mostly got the legends figures because I was small, and I already had a few Cybertron legends to go with them.
I was officially a transformers fan.
Now, I'm not going to go through every toy I've ever owned, but I am going to go through how I felt about the shows I watched and when I watched them, I'll only talk about the shows i've seen all the way through.
Cybertron:
As stated earlier, Cybertron was airing on tv when I was a kid. As such, it was the first transformers show I watched all the way through, it set the standard for what transformers was to me, over the top action and a whole bunch of characters galavanting through space to save the galaxy by finding a set of magical McGuffins.
I've rewatched Cybertron twice since then and my opinion hasn't changed on it, it's firmly in my top 5.
Animated:
2007 was a great year, too bad I was preoccupied with being a child at the time to fully appreciate it. Transformers Animated started airing shortly after the movie came out, I watched it as it aired and enjoyed it very much, I wanted all of the toys and I got a fair few of them; The whole of Optimus' crew, Megatron, Lugnut, Swindle, Soundwave, Shockwave, Lockdown, Oilslick, All of the Elite Guard except for Ultra Magnus, and Wreck Gar. I was loving it until it suddenly stopped with basically no warning. That was sad. I'd still love to see a continuation.
G1:
After Animated ended I was yearning for more transformers so I turned to YouTube where I found every single episode of every single transformers show just sitting there waiting to be watched (these were the days before Hasbro claimed them all for copyright).
So, I watched through the whole series to see where it all began... it was good, not great but just good.
It's a Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s, it's fine, I appreciate it as the start of the franchise but on the whole it doesn't hold up very well. I'd say like a hand full of episodes and the movie are enough on their own.
Beast Wars:
When I first started watching Beast Wars I didn't like it, but as I kept going I could look past the 90s CGI and I was really compelled by the characters.
Beast Wars is amazing.
Armada:
I liked Armada, it falls about half way between G1 and Cybertron for me, a good mix of fun action and McGuffin chasing, the Unicron battles are probably one of the best parts of the whoole fraanhise.
RID:
Yes, despite it being my introduction to the franchise I hadn't watched through the whole show until I was much older. I had caught the odd episode being rerun on Jetix every now and then, but I hadn't sat through the whole series. I love it, definitely one of my favourites.
Prime:
Prime started airing when I was 10 years old, it felt like a definite progression as I got older. I liked it at the time, but for some reason it took too long between season 1 and 2, so I found the episodes on Youtube since they had already aired in America, I managed to watch at least half of season 2 before it aired on tv.
Prime is good, looking back on it, it's not perfect there was a lot of set up and unused potential but it's good.
RID2015:
I don't particularly like this one, I haven't rewatched it since it first aired and I don't particularly want to, the show kept hinting at a larger story, it felt like it was setting up something really important and nothing significant happened in the whole show, everything was an anticlimax.
Beast Wars II:
This show is great, it has a very similar energy to RID in that it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's a fun show about talking animals that happen to also be robots fighting against almost always incompetent baddies. It's just good clean fun with robots.
Beast Machines:
I recently rewatched Beast Wars and having never seen Beast Machines I thought it apt to watch it straight after, I like it. It explores very interesting themes, it has very interesting character development and interactions, and it explores some interesting ideologies in what Optimus and Megatron think is best for Cybertron. Overall it's a very deep and compelling narrative that is criminally underrated.
Energon:
After recently rewatching Energon, I have come to a revelation, it's bloody brilliant.
Many complaints towards Energon are mostly about; the animation, the voice acting, nonsensical plot etc. you've heard the complaints before, Energon is touted as the worst the franchise has to offer, I'll grant you it drags a bit in the middle but it's the only show to have Optimus Prime fist fighting Unicron, I'm honestly glad we'll probably never see Unicron in a live action movie because nothing could compare to that.
Energon is good, deal with it!
...And that brings us to now. I have watched nearly every American transformers series, I have watched exactly 1.5 Japanese series, I still need to finish Neo.
Ok, that was my timeline of watching the transformers shows.
that brings us up to now, in September of 2018 I joined Twitter and found the transformers online community. However I didn't start properly posting anything until Christmas of that year when I got my phone, as of the time of writing this that was nearly 1 year ago, since then I have gained over 300 followers (I don't feel I deserve it, but if you're following thank you it means a lot) so I've made a fairly noticeable splash in the fandom as a whole, even though I only post pictures of my toys and the occasional shitpost here and there, but that's what I do.
For most of my life I've felt isolated in my love of transformers, now through the magic of the internet I've been able to connect with other fans and share my love of this amazing franchise. I've been in several fandoms in my life, but none have been as welcoming and respectful as the transformers fandom, not to throw shade or anything, but the Star Wars fandom, for example, can be fairly toxic. I am happy to be a part of this lovely community :)
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