“It’s a world
transformed, where things are not what they seem. It is the world of the Transformers…A world
of Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons!”
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| My first "Transformer" |
My introduction to the world of Transformers toys actually
didn’t start with Transformers per se, but with the original Japanese line
called
Diaclone that Hasbro eventually ended up “transforming” into the robots
we know today. Coming home from one of
his business trips, my dad brought home a nice blue F-15 eagle jet that could
amazingly change into a robot. He even
came with a tiny little man with magnets on his feet that could neatly fit
inside the jet’s cockpit. Now as cool as
this toy was, what I found even cooler was this little booklet that came with
the toy. It was a catalogue of all the
OTHER robots that were in the line. As
it turned out my little blue jet was just the tip of the iceberg. There were 2 or 3 more jets like him, trains,
dinosaurs, insects and a whole lot of cars & trucks that ALL turned into
robots. I was instantly hooked and I
begged my dad to get me more!
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| pretty red car.... |
Around the same time, my neighbor who was my age also got
his “first” Diaclone robot (maybe our dads must have been on the same business
trip?). His was a bright red Lamborghini
Countach that also had a little man with magnets and also transformed into a
robot. But he had something else,
information about this new cartoon that he rented from our local video store,
called Sonix. He told me that this
cartoon starred the robots we owned, and that his red car robot was a good guy
and that my blue jet was a bad guy. And
as if that wasn’t enough, he said his robot kicked my robot’s butt in the
cartoon! THIS was too much for me to
believe! I went straight down to Sonix
and looked for this supposed new cartoon (at that point I didn't even know what
it was called). Almost immediately, I
saw plastered on the wall of new
releases, a poster of this epic robot battle scene with MY jet robot prominently
featured in the center (or at least I figured he was my blue jet, the poster
was actually xeroxed lang, so black & white). Oh yeah, my friends Lamborghini robot?
Somewhere in the background off to the side :P
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| see if YOU can find Sideswipe? |
Anyway that was the first time I saw the name “The
Transformers” with their famous catchphrase “More Than Meets The Eye!”. I think I stood there staring at the poster
for what seemed to be an eternity, trying to soak up every single detail, every
single robot. After eventually gaining
my composure, I handed in my allowance for the week (20 pesos) for my betamax
copy of The Transformers, and went straight home to watch it. Almost immediately I was lost in another
world, an amazing world of heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons with such
memorable characters like the Optimus Prime & Megatron, the scheming
Starscream and monotonous ultra flanged (is that even a word?) voiced
Soundwave, the cool cool Jazz and even the delusional Cliffjumper voiced by the
very familiar Casey Kasem, they ALL made an impression on me that to this day I
haven’t forgotten!
Oh, and it turned out, my friend was right, my jet robot
turned out to be one of the bad guys, in fact he wasn’t a main dude but a
lackey called
Thundercracker. And my
friend’s car robot really was a good guy,
Sideswipe. Although if you want to
really nitpick, it wasn’t really Sideswipe that kicked Thundercracker’s butt…it
was his twin brother,
Sunstreaker….
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| It was the YELLOW car that did it! |
