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| The BIG THREE! |
When I got a little older, I started moving on to more
sophisticated toys. My trifecta of toy
collecting consisted of G.I.Joe, Transformers & He-Man. Yes there were others….but none of them
managed to make such a lasting imprint on my childhood as these three lines.
Of the 3, G.I.Joe was king.
Transformers and He-Man were just too expensive for a kid with limited
monetary funds. While I had to rely on
pasalubongs, Christmas and birthday gifts to get my Transformers and He-Man
fix, I could manage to build my Joe collection with my own allowance (60 bucks
a figure at Nova Fontana in GoldCrest).
I amassed quite a collection of Joes, about 40-50 figures if I remember
right, with a decent collection of vehicles to go along with them (again mostly
gifts).
Eventually however, I did end up outgrowing my toys. Like most boys who “grew up”, the “big three”
was replaced by the “big ONE”…..girls.
And my collecting habits were satisfied by building up a formidable
music collection of tapes and CDs. (NO I
did not move on to collecting girls ha ha).
As the years passed however, I never really stopped
appreciating toys. Especially with the
dawn of the internet, I would find myself looking at pictures of all the new
toys coming out year after year. I would
never buy any though cuz back then I couldn’t imagine spending money on
something that I couldn’t listen to, read, eat or flat out use and that would
just end up standing on some random shelf on my room.
One particular line though caught my interest, it was called
Transformers Alternators. The premise of
this line was these were Transformers not really meant for kids, but for
collectors. They featured the old G1
characters I grew up watching on TV but this time transforming into
ultra-detailed licenced modern cars. And when I say detailed, they were
detailed, complete with car interiors, licensed car logos, rubber tires and
opening doors & hoods with engines inside.
To add to that, the robots they transformed into weren’t the usual unmoving
“bricks” like the old toys, no these guys were mostly fully articulated. It was amazing, like the toys from when I was
a kid grew up as well! But still this
wasn’t enough for me to actually go out and get some……until I saw them in
person….
It was sometime in 2005, when I was following my then gf on
one of her shopping trips through the bowels of Goldcrest that I chanced upon
this toyshop. Seeing as I had nothing better to do, I decided to check it out. And then all of a sudden, there they were, my
two childhood favourite Autobots, Sunstreaker & Prowl in all their
Alternators glory….the price for each though, about PhP1,650 was enough to
deter me from buying them on the spot.
However, their image on the store shelf never left my mind and haunted
me for days after that. So eventually, I
caved. “Just these two” I told myself,
they really ARE my favourite characters…they’re all I’ll need…..just these two”. Famous last words…..
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| All I really NEED are these two.... |
