Decoy Ahoy!

Here is a small little side-line from my collection, some of the very few non-Transforming pieces I collect.  I say collect, that's probably not very accurate, as the history of my decoy collecting is limited thusly:

1987 - A young Sid buys a Throttlebot, (Rollbar if you're keepingscount, I'll check my attic to see if I can find the card sometime, if I can, I'll upload it), receives a "free*" decoy.  Again, if you're keeping a record, it was a Windcharger.

This is not the one I had.

1987 - 2006 - Sid has lost the Windcharger, doesn't keep it with the others Transformers.  Doesn't give a shit.
2006 - Sid buys a complete set of Decoys from eBay. He thinks he paid about £60 for all 53 of them.  Sid will now stop referring to himself in the third person.
2006 - 2011 - After sort of being looked at once or twice, the toys remain in two separate polybags depending on faction, on a floor, in  an empty room, unloved.  So much so they auditioned for the role of the villain in Toy Story 3 and were turned down for being, "too evil".
* = included in the price...doesn't it always?


Decoys were packaged in the UK and US with various case assortments of the 1987 Transformers range, as well as the Throttlebots this included other toys which were much better.  What can I say, as an eight year old kid I obviously liked cheap green jeaps which transform into shit robots.  This was done by Hasbro purely as a tactic to fuck over any future MISB "completest" collectors, and not in a bid to boost sales, because including 1.5 inch unpainted rubber figures only boosts sales of Frosties (these are exactly the same as the US "Frosted Flakes" except for our version of Kellogg mascot Tony the Tiger is 12.6% gayer for sharing a cereal universe with Andi Peters voiced Coco the Monkey).

I haven't really been a huge fan of these, I've kind of taken them for granted in my collection, and they are pretty cool as a nice rarity.  Maybe if I had spent years tracking down every single one they would mean more to me, as it is I just bought the collection.  This makes more sense to me than trying to re-create exactly what I had as a kid, as the odds of finding a Rollbar with a Windcharger has case assortment odds of 1:318.
Anyway, I digress...this is my collection of all 53 Decoys.

If you look carefully, one of the seekers is in red.

Yes, unfortunately my #34 Thundercracker is erroneously red.  This renders my collection incomplete and hastens feeling of deep-routed shame and suicide.  I might as well just stop collecting now.  If you guys can help replace #34 Thundercracker in the appropriate purple colour, PLEASE let me know!

So is this red figure an error of production?  The way I look at it the only Decepticon figure that shoudl have been available in red should have been #50 Frenzy, repackaged as #54 Rumble just to really piss people off and divide the fan-dumb even more.

For the sake of having it here, this is a list of the full Western collection of Decoys.

01) Grimlock 02) Snarl 03) Swoop 04) Sludge 05) Slag 06) Ratchet 07) Ironhide 08) Smokescreen 09) Grapple 10) Trailbreaker 11) Sunstreaker 12) Skids 13) Jazz

14) Inferno 15) Tracks 16) Red Alert 17) Hound 18) Sideswipe 19) Prowl 20) Mirage 21) Hoist 22) Wheeljack 23) Bluestreak 24) Brawn 25) Windcharger 26) Bumblebee

27) Huffer 28) Cliffjumper 29) Blaster 30) Perceptor 31) Optimus Prime 32) Megatron 33) Skywarp 34) Thundercracker 35) Starscream 36) Soundwave 37) Blitzwing 38) Astrotrain 39) Kickback

40) Shrapnel 41) Bombshell 42) Hook 43) Scavenger 44) Bonecrusher 45) Long Haul 46) Mixmaster 47) Scrapper 48) Devastator 49) Ravage 50) Frenzy 51) Shockwave 52) Reflector

Oh yeah, and Laserbeak.  They forgot Laserbeak who is #53.  Probably because his swooping engine noise is stolen from the TIE fighters in Star Wars and it would cost a license fee of $14million to George Lucas to include Laserbeak on the list.  But they did make him, unlike the Robot Heroes Laserbeak who got even more fucked over.  If inanimate fictional robot bird cassettes can get fucked over, then trust me, he's feeling it.

Rounding off the list there is #52 Reflector, as I mentioned in my previous blog this is the only version of Reflector made by Hasbro accurate to the animation model, in a show accurate purple colouration.  Of course, to really finish of the collection, you should buy two more Reflectors and file off the lenses, to make Spector and Spyglass.

So there you go, we've managed to expand and add a few more to the officially available 52 figures:

#52 Reflector Viewfinder
#53 Laserbeak
#54 Rumble
#55 Spectro
#56 Spyglass
#57 Buzzsaw - because, why not buy another Laserbeak you lazy shit?  What kind of Transformer fan are you?

So, if you do all that, can you finally call yourself a completest?

Actually, it's not that easy.  Although in the West we had the aesthetically pleasing faction split of Autobot = Red, and Decepticons = purple.  Nice, easy and simple, although I am surprised Fun publishing haven't re-released the ENTIRE range in reverse colours as Shattered Glass Decoys.  Hang on, I'll just facebook Benson Yee!  You can see at a glimpse the split in my collection, even with my shitty camera skills (it was lack of said mobile based camera that halted this blogs updates for a week).  Do you want to see how the average Japanese person displays their decoy collection?

Using the phrases "average person" and "decoy collection" in the same sentence?!?

You've got to want to be a collector in Japan, bear in mind with the premium cost of actually having space for things in that overly developed small country, storing this technicolour yawn pile of toys would cost a billion yen a year in rent*.

In Japan they think it is a good idea to get rubber toys from vending machines, because obviously it's that or fucking used panties (buying fucking used panties is different to fucking used panties, just want to make that distinction here).  And also, Richard Gere gerbil whatever - the West is just as weird, we just don't talk about it.  The only reason I can think of for blind-buying small toys exclusively from vending machines is because they're fucking tiny and the only thing that you can actually fit on a bullet train in rush hour. It's for much the same reason this sort of item is available in cinema foyers in the UK now, usually advertised with small trinkets of Mario and Luigi to tempt kids into putting their pound coin into the machine only to come away with a badly painted Para-Goomba, which they then loose in the dark cinema only for staff to repackage and re-sell. Bwahahah.

*a billion yen = $12 dollars

To be fair, the Japanese are actually pretty cool, especially when it comes to making Transformers shit I don't really need, but absolutely feel the urge to buy.

Not content with the expanded 52 (not to be confused with the new DC Comics), in Japan they went a bit further, depending on your definition of decoy.  You see, in Japan they weren't content to just have decoy rubber figures for the sake of it, they felt the need to turn them into statistically ranked gaming pieces which you fire out of a cannon in an attempt to knock over other said pieces and ultimately defeat Trypticon.  Sort of  Warhammer meets Pokemon meets pogs.  Sure it wasn't a chess beater but with a recipe like that, how did it not make more money than Catholocism?

Yes, these rubber guys actually did something!  It was only after releasing them in Cybertron / Destron gift sets to tie into the Scramble City themed board game that they moved towards the gachapon capsule vending machine distribution mechanism, so they could re-release them again in seven different colours.  You see, in the UK and the US, distributors and retailers are always looking for that magic product that they can sell to the same person twice, in Japan there were over 550 variations available (and you didn't know what you were getting until you bought it and opened it), and that still wasn't enough. 

I'm not going to own these :(

Although arguably not "real" decoys, these guys were only available in Japan in celebration of the arrival of 2010, their version of post-1986 movie season 3.  I would like these, and include them here for the sake of completion, but as they were not available in the aesthetically pleasing faction colourations, I'm going to skip on them.  Because these and other Japanese exclusive decoys probably cost a fortune.

Some of the figures were also released in over-sized editions, including a version of Metroplex (because he should be big, you know), but in a range where Devastator is literally the same size as all six Constructicons, this feels unnecessary.

Because of my lack of desire for these items, and the 318 MISB Throttlebots, and the 550+ Japanese coloured variations, some Trans-fanboys would say I'm not a true fan.

So I have a choice.  Either I declare myself a true fan, spend the next few decades tracking all these down, have a mental break-down after achieving a balanced state of celibacy and bankruptcy, then use a cheese grater and vinegar to remove my Transformer tattoos to recognise my failure...Or I try and find a way of showing I am happy with the middle ground of not being a "completist".

You know what? I think I'm going to keep my mis-coloured Thundercracker in this collection, I kind of like the intentional incompleteness that error suggests.

Reflector: What could have been. (picture heavy)

Animation Reflector; known as Reflector(s)

We all know and love Reflector, right?  One of the original Transformers, straight from the original Diaclone figure range and revised for the Sunbow original cartoon.  Trouble is, when they released the figure, they didn't quite look like what we saw on screen.

What would be the collective noun for all three together?  A Snap of Reflectors?

A bit different to the animation model.

This is how we received Reflector in toy form.  Only available in the UK and US in exchange for "Robot Points" and some money, around $10 / £7.  Despite his use in the cartoon in 1984, we didn't receive the offer to buy this exclusive, non-retail trio until 1986, right about the time when he was fazed out of the fiction altogether.  Because of his exclusive mail-away nature, he was only available in his limited edition white packaging, labeled imaginatively; TRANSFORMERS CAMERA.

Diaclone Joustra release with lovely packaging.

In this form, he is known by his independent component pieces, Spectro, Spyglass and Viewfinder, who - only when combined - become the composite entity known as Reflector.  As you can see, the toy is a repackaged version of Camera Robo from the Microman line, because Microman is the common thing beside us.  Gotta love bad translation.

The characters use in fiction has varied since the re-popularising of the G1 franchise in the early 2000's, Dreamwave Comics (responsible for making Transformers the only comic outside of DC, Marvel and Image to top the sales charts on its month of release, seeing a massive four print runs and countless variant covers, before losing everything and forgetting to pay the creators) were the first to use not only Reflector since his mid-eighties hiatus, but were also the first to use him in fiction coloured like his toy release and component identities.  IDW Comics returned him to his more iconic and recognisable semi-identical / shared deco guise.

Perfect Effect not-Reflector.

Although not the most popular of characters, or the most useful of story-telling foils, Reflector remains a cult favourite of the Transformers line, this is partially due to the scarce nature of his release and the fact that in 27 years of Transformer toys, we have had only one toy representing the character.  This is a rare feat indeed with the various interpretations of the TF mythology, especially over the last decade where the Movie franchise, Animated series and Unicron trilogy has given us various re-interpretations of classic characters, with even second-string characters such as Beachcomber and Lockdown seeing multiple interpretations.  A version of Reflector as a re-deco of the RTS Perceptor mold was mentioned by Hasbro staff in a Q and A at Botcon, I was there, they definitely said it,but this has unfortunately never surfaced.  In fact, it wasn't until 2010 that we finally saw a different interpretation of the character, and it had to come from those divisive third parties we've been talking about.

From the combined form of Edge, Shield and Bullet we receive Scouting Force X.  Tiny figures with a matching deco which ties-in to the original cartoon, but a combined form and accessories which pay direct tribute to the original toy.  This piece really is the best of both worlds, and has made hundreds, if not thousands of people happy to have a more modern day interpretation of Reflector, complete with loads of add-ons and accessories for increased playability.  This figure was also available as a (VERY unofficial) exclusive Botcon toy for 2011 in a black redeco.

We never got these either.  Shame.

Not everyone is happy with the mold of course, a lot of people find it far too small and would be happier with deluxe sized Reflectors, and then of course there is the price.  Some odd $90 on release,some felt this was too much for three not even Scout-sized Transformers.  Some detractors such as myself eventually caved, and fell in love with the toys upon receipt of them,others remain reticent, hoping that at some point Hasbro will cave and release their version of the character, others wait for the anticipated TF Club Reflector, a second third party company offering.

What a lot of people don't realise, is that before the Perfect Effect came on the scene and dominated the marketplace, and before the announcement of the TFClub figure, another third party company had also commissioned a development of these potential fan favourites.

For the first time, I can reveal the full gallery of a potential Reflector design, by Shapeways seller and Customs designer Calloway Customs.  Although some of these have been shown before on TFW2005 and a few other Transformer fan websites, this is to my knowledge the first showing of the full gallery.

Based on a modern-day digital camera.

Like the cartoon design, the middle figure is a slightly different design.

The idea was to include multiple stickers for the "screen", but look how solid this is.  Now compare this to the back of the G1 toy.

Spectro...or Spyglass.

I love the backpack look.

Guess this makes him Spyglass as he has the flash.

Viewfinder, the boss of the three.

Back kibble, about the same as RTS Perceptor or Classics Ironhide

I can't remember if the lense would have been detachable to cut down on kibble.

Viewfinder keeps the crazy trapezoids as a tribute to the original.

Generic action pose.

How many left?  I'm running out of things to say.

Phew!

Obviously, these try to pay homage to both the cartoon and toy predecessors, and I think it makes a very nice blend into one package.  The back-packs would have been used to store weapons and add-ons, though I dare say not as many as the PE offering.  Perhaps more importantly would have been that all important Deluxe sized, meaning that people could have used them as modern-day Classics at the same height as other Classics, or even as small Masterpieces depending on peoples preferences.  All that is opinion and choice though, what exactly are we looking at?  Well, this isn't just a drawing, or a 3-D shell of what the toy might look like.  This is the full 3-D design, absolutely every piece of this toy has been designed as an individual piece which, when molded, can be assembled to make the toy.  Every single panel has the fine detail and design which you would see on the final product.  With this design, the developers could have looked at every single piece individually, expanded them in and out to see how they work and how they move.  After receiving feedback the designer would then go back and tweak things here and there before applying final details and moving on to smaller detail work such as faces and weapons.  This is how it is done, and I know of a third-party designer who has had to re-start a project three times in the bid to nail the perfect figure.


The reason why these were never developed beyond their initial first attempt, is because the third party company who commissioned these decided to stop replying to e-mails, and indeed never paid the designer for his work, and as such they never received the full 3-D design model breaking the item down into it's component parts.  Although the toys were based as a hybrid on both version, the third party in question must have been working closer to the Dreamwave model...business model of not paying people for work that is.


So there you have it, the Reflector who never was.  Obviously it wouldn't have been everyone cup of tea because you cannot make everyone in the TF fandom happy at the same time, but I would have been very interested to see this idea develop and materialise beyond this, especially as I would have pushed for a re-deco / re-tool in original colours with different heads.  I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the piece.

The designer holds no grudges with the bastards who didn't pay him, but I do.  He works full time in design, but is still an active member of the TF community and still develops add-on parts for Transformers through his Shapeways site, advertised in a previous blog.  I can't put it here again, as you'd think I was just whoring my buddy out.  I'm not a pimp.



Hmm, I have forgotten to mention one last Reflector, to date the only official Hasbro release to use the animation accurate purple colour scheme, Decoy Reflector.  I might have to save that for my next blog entry.

Changing Gears

Just a quick post today, as once again I'm taking a break in-between organising my display.  This has with it as many challenges as collecting itself.  How does one arrange their collection?  Year of release?  Thematically (works with books)?  Character by character?

Wish I could write the profiles for these guys.

I originally had hoped to arrange them character by character, but despite having a bigger display room than I have ever had before it is already full before I have everything out.  I have had to make a few concessions, my Masterpieces are now in my display cabinet in the lounge / front room / sitting room / room where all the furniture points at the big television.  I imagine these Masterpieces will live in the display cabinet, destroying any hope of rotating the collection every month or so into a different themed display.  This is a double-edge sword, because as much as I was looking forward to having an Optimus Prime display, or a black-only display, or a holy fuck how many e-hobby's? display.  I am more than happy to stare at Masterpieces all day long, especially with the I-Gear Coneheads courtesy of the genius behind Calloway Customs, Nick.  Besides, MP's are a pain in the ass to dust, more so than most.  There is also enough space in the cabinet for the forthcoming I-Gear releases* not-Ironhide and not-Ratchet, because although no-one ever asks what size they are I'm fairly confident they will display well next to Faith Leader, MP Grimlock and MP Starscream, who all look fairly god-damn regal with their crowns and capes.  

All Transformers should have crown and capes so they would all look special and unique.

*I'm planning on spending time talking about these and other third parties in my next article/opinion piece which is already half-written.

So back to my collection and how to display it.  The first question a lot of people struggle with is whether to display boxed or loose.  I would love to display all my figures loose, but some are just worth too much to display and worry about dust, unless I could have all my collection behing glass I would not consider this.  Plus, some stuff just displays damn well in boxes.  Both Maximuses (Brave and Fortress) look damn impressive just from the box.  Also, if I display everything loose, where the hell do I put the boxes?  Wah!  I have too many plastic Transforming robots for my lovely house.  Definitely a first world problem.

Eventually, I have decided to arrange the collection in groups. All G1 and G2 molds from '84-'93 (including Gigastorm and God Neptune as they don't fit on the following shelf), all Beast Wars characters together whether originals, Classics, Robot Masters, Neo, BW2 or the very occasional piece from Beast Machines (most of which will be gracing my trade table at AA '12).  Animated toys deserve their very own shelf, because of their unique aesthetic and just how good the show was, I have the fondest memories of going to the Cartoon Network offices in LA, and having thank giving dinner with some of the guys, remind me to tell you about it sometime).  This leaves one entire wall for EVERYTHING else, Classics / Generations, Unicron trilogy, movie, RiD, Titanium, WFC and god knows what else I'm forgetting.

This is how my collection breaks down:  G1 is half and half by the time you take all the e-hobby's and takara reissues into account.  Beast Wars is 90% loose, Animated 100% loose, as are the Classics.  Movie toys, RiD, WFC and Unicron trilogy will not account for much of the display and will be considered on a piece by piece basis on their own merits, I have a few good memories of Armada / Energon and a few of the Cybertron toys are awesome, but most of the purging of my collection over the last couple of years has come from  this area, as I was fortunate stupid enough to buy all of the Japanese releases as soon as they came out and, thanks to the packaging which is generally of a much, much higher quality than Hasbro, these still fetch good money at Auto Assembly.

The priority of all of these pieces is the Classics, (or CHUG) as that is an ever-expanding collection incorporating Universe, lots of Botcon toys and the occasional piece that I put in just to piss off the fan-dumb (Movie style Seapsray in with Classics,commence mental breakdown now).  My G1 is as done as I want it to be with the exception of grail pieces such as Grandus, Galaxy Shuttle and Overlord.  Classics will hopefully keep on keeping on, and as the shelves get fuller I expect the movie and Unicron toys will get relegated to bottom shelves, then boxes, then sold.

Still, the move has gone well, and so far only a few pieces have been found damaged and most of these are fixable (Omega Supreme small leg clips, original laser Prime sword hilt), everything else seems accounted for, although there was a genuine moment of matriarchal panic when I couldn't find Landmines helmet (not an innuendo either Freud!).   The best thing though, even more so than the space has been the fun I've had, it's given me a chance to look at pieces I haven't looked at for years that I'd forgotten about, such as this:

No idea how much this goes for after the Toys R Us reissue, but still shit the bed rare in this packaging.  I've not seen one in three Botcons.

So let's go and finish organising it, just the final EVERYTHING ELSE wall to go and that's going to be a real squeeze, my Macross and Binaltechs have already invaded the adjoining room which was supposed to be the library, and I've no idea where my un-bought Thundercats and MOTU (2002) will go but I should just about get everything out that I want to.
If I stop writing blogs, I should get it done in the next few days.



But then, where the fuck will I put the TF:  Prime toys?

My stance on KO's

KO - pronounced: Kay-Oh. Also known as Knock Off - pronounced: cheap alternative to official toys.

I hate KO's, nasty little pieces of shit that parents who don't love their children buy from £1 shops, which over the last few years seem to have been replaced by 99p shops.  I have a great idea for a business, it's revolutionary actually...98p shops!  Just think, by under-cutting all my competition I'll make a fortune, especially seeing as most people wouldn't wait for their change from the transaction, I could use that extra 2 pence to pay my staff 2p extra per hour!  Brilliance.  I would patent the idea for a 97p shop while I'm at it, but I've been told that's going too far and I don't want to irk my peers too much, after all when I tried to patent an eleven blade razor I got death-threats from Gillette.

Crappy KO's...hang on, these don't look too bad?!?

...I digress.

A funny thing has happened to KOs in the last few years.  Rather than having a badly painted orange gorilla that look a bit like Optimus Primals retarded cousin in packaging* labeled "Beast Beasties!", who shares a case assortment* with a bunch of other miscreants who all share the same card art showing a toy that isn't even available in the range*, we've started to get high end KO's aimed at the "collectors market".  These are useful for multiple reasons of varying importance, which I will document here. 
*I use the asterisked terms loosely.



1 - They're cheaper.
This is two-fold.  Cheap toys appeal to the same "parents" who want to pretend they love / feel obliged to give presents to the bastard(s) from a previous relationship(s).  In all honesty though, this is a false economy.  Most KO's are of a poorer quality than a HasTak toy, even one of the newer high quality KO's.  You might be stuck with floppy limbs or easily breakable toys.  You might be thinking that's not a problem as the toys are cheap, but think of the look on poor Jimmy's (contemporary name replacement in progress) Brooklyn's / Seven's / Cage's / Cadence's face when that beloved half fish / half Ford GT40 KO breaks on Christmas morning?  I am, Haha.
TakBro toys are tested, and they have to pass vigorous tests including a Fortress Maximus reissue foiling "drop" test before they can be released in the UK / US, so you know they will be made of sterner stuff.
Worst case scenario?  These toys may contain toxic materials.  It was not unknown for G1 KO's to contain lead paint.  So if you want to release the burden of a disassociated offspring these might well be the toys for you.  I recommend finding an actual radioactive Toxitron.  Thankfully I don't work for the BBC so I say such flippant, obvious jokey comments without fear of reprisal.

That's better.  Floppy POS. 

From an adult collectors POV, the cheaper KOs can be a way of getting hold of that exclusive or expensive figure.  Can't afford the Botcon Shattered Glass Hot-Rod?  Don't fancy dropping upwards of $300 for a Henkei Wildrider? You can find these bad boys online for $30.  Personally I don't want to spend upwards of $1,000 for the original four Dino-cassettes, but now some very reasonable reissues are available.  I'll give details on these another time.

I myself have puchased a Blue Mirage and a Sunstreaker G1 KO for this very reason.  I have the originals, but they go back to when I was a little kid, all sunshine and innocence and buying other kids Transformers off them for pence, because I didn't stop collecting when they all got bored and moved on to Turtles or Robocop, or whatever the next inappropriate adult property adapted into a toyline and cartoon for kids was.  Because they are the toys I had as a kid - second-hand ones at that - they've seen better days.  A lot of my old toys have been replaced with Has/ara reissues because THEY LOOK BETTER, but Sunstreaker and Mirage fit into the "they really broke the mold when they released Wheeljack" category, because Hasbro actually did break the molds in the early '90's when they re-issued these guys in gold boxes. I also have a Red Mirage from the same line, more on that in a second.

We'll come back to him.

I don't feel bad for purchasing these illegal items because:  I bought the originals in the day (and still have them, just not on display); I support HB/TK to the tune of lots of money every year so they're not losing out because of me; they do it themselves anyway;  and finally because I have a cold, dead soul.

Of course, they're not all cheap...

2 - Hasbro / Takara don't make it.

Want a Classics Sunstorm?  Tough shit.  Want a Blue Classics Optimus Prime to go with your (equally grey territory) DIA Fans Project Armour?  Fuck you buddy!

Not official, but pretty darn good.

High end KO's have really come into there own in the last few years providing us with all the toys mentioned previously like Red Mirage who has never been released as a Transformer, and exclusive repaint characters like Deep Cover, the friendly named Black Death Starscream, Power Rat GI Joe and Bad Boy Powerglide.  These toys are of a good quality, you might get the odd loose joint or overly tight joint, but these can be remedied fairly easily.
A step up from this are the I-Gear conehead seekers, people like these because they can't get them anywhere else and they just plain need them to fill that pathetic void in their lonely lives.  I have all the conehead seekers, I couldn't just stop at the original three, right?  These lovely toys are without a doubt a massive violation of IP (intellectual property), and as Evan Davis' book talks about in detail, IP management is the biggest business in the world, ahead of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Industries.  Charging the same money ($130), if not more than Hasbro and Takara for a retooled product - whom not only own the IP, but the copyright for the names and no doubt the patent for the Transformation - is dodgy ground, one which is sure to incur the wrath of a toy industry giant who are obviously quite keen to protect their BILLION dollar property.  I-Gear walk the line between KO and third party company, and nothing wobbles on the tightrope over the abyss quite like the Conehead Seekers and their Optimus Prime clone Faith Leader, but I will cover these more in depth in a future article about third party toys. 

The future of such KO's is looking shaky at the moment, as one of the main distributors of such items, KO Toys, has announced they will no longer be selling, well, anything.  The rumours around the internet are rife, and I'm not going to go into all the gory detail, name calling and petty recrimination surrounding the cult of personality-non-grata that is the guy who runs KO Toys.  Maybe Hasbro or someone gave him a cease-and-desist order, maybe he's sick of all the negative shit when all he's trying to do is sell some toys to a fandom he used to feel a part of, maybe he's finally got enough money selling fake toys to finally set up his religion in the name of Optimus Prime.  I don't know, I don't care.  All I know is I used to buy toys from there, and now I can't.  So now where am I going to get the parts I need for...


3 - Customising
In my opinion the best reason for buying a KO.  I love customising, when I can find the time.  It takes lots of prep work, patience and way more money than you think by the time you buy paints, spray, base coat, materials, and usually a minimum of two toys going in (one as a base model, and one to strip-mine for parts).

Custom Rotorstorm by board-member Rotorstorm.

So much time and money that when I had the option to buy a custom Rotorstorm recently for £25 I jumped at the chance.  The way I saw it, if it wasn't great I could strip it down and start again cheaper than if I'd started from scratch (it turned out said custom was okay, not great, and certainly not what I am used to with the quality of Calloway Customs which I aspire to emulate).

This is why KO's are great, Sunstorm (pictured earlier) would have taken me maybe 2-3 hours work stripping down, sanding, as well as a lot of waiting time for the paint to dry and cure before detailing.  The KO was less than a tenner, and opens the door for my to attempt different repaints and characters without breaking the bank.

Sigh.  I'm going to miss KO toys, I'm not sure if this means the end of the high-end KO's as I think they were funding CHMS who were responsible for a lot of the quality output.  KO's however are not going anywhere, the really cheap ones have been, and always will be available widely throughout China, because they have no laws surrounding copyright protection.  Don't tell them how much IP management makes the US and the UK, if they start kicking our arses in that area too the West is fucked.  I think G1 reissues will continue because they've been about for a while, and for all your other KO needs I heartily recommend Chimungmung, who I used to buy from on eBay before he opened an online store.  He also carries a lot of third party toys, which is useful for combined shipping.  Shipping is to me, the most hateful part of the fandom, except maybe for all the posts about personal hygiene surrounding any convention, and all the illnesses the week after a show.  Lot's of smelly, typhoid Magnuses at TF conventions.  I don't mean you of course, you are clean and smell of flowers.

Coming full circle, you can use KO toys to make repaints of toys that never existed without having to destroy an expensive mold.  This is one of mine.

Okay, I've waffled on enough here and I'm still in the middle of moving and organising my new toy room, this was only supposed to be a five minute break.  Expect more blogging by the end of the week, I might start chronicling my collection, I'm just not sure whether to do this character by character, line by line, or original order of release?  I may even discuss my full stance on third parties like I have KO's here.  Any thoughts or comments to the normal address.  I just want to clarify a few points before signing off.

How much £ is a $?
This varies month to month,and if we can ever stabilise the economy it might be easier to convert off the cuff.  I can tell you that the very first time I went to the US we were getting $2 to the £.  This has never happened to me when I have gone to a Botcon, where I've been lucky to get $1.60 per £, but the exchange rate was also close to 2:1in late 2001 and it was a good chance to buy a lot of rare G1 toys.
You might notice / get fucking annoyed / get mildly confused by my increasing Americanisations.  Even though I am a UK born and based toy collector, my soul has always had one foot in America (or should that be sole?  hahahahacunt), so I tend to use UK spellings but US terms and even US currencies when discussing Transformers.  12 years working in a comic-book store will do that to you, I'm even a left-hooker!


Abbreviating Hasbro / Takara
This is just getting annoying,I think throughout this column I used about twelve different terms for the collective companies.  I think we need a sensible portmanteau that everyone in the fandom agrees on, of course, we can't even decide on the colour of cassettes so this will never happen, which is why I dub it the fan-dumb.  I propose TakBro or HasTak.  I tried experimenting more, but Hasara doesn't work, neither does Bra.


If you just read this, and you don't really know much about Transformers, then I'm sure it read as absolute gibberish.  Good job I'm a funny fucker!  Once again, TF wiki is a good place to learn what some of the terms I've used mean and I'm linking you to a list of such terms, 'cause I'm fucking great like that.

The Difficult Second Post

No sophomore jinx here, I just wanted to spend a little time clarifying what I do and don't collect.

Everything.

Minus the shit I don't like.

If the Michael Bay movies have done one thing for me, they've made me break the insane spell of somehow wanting to be a completest, that is, to own every Transformers toy ever.

This is stupid, this is very expensive, it is also impossible.  Most importantly, it is not fun.

I met a guy at Botcon 2010 (yeah, I travel thousands of miles to buy little plastic toys, but I get a vacation in Florida out of it!) who was selling his entire collection because he realised he was never going to have them all.

Craziness!  This isn't Pokemon, where only the first 151 count and the rest are shite.

What he could have done is, oh, I don't know?  Kept the ones he liked?  Or the ones that meant something to him?

The worst thing you can do with a hobby is try and be a completest.  The best thing you can do in a hobby is draw boundaries.  This is also the second worse thing you can do in a hobby as you can end up buying figures arbitrarily.  I'll explain.

To me, the original Transformers started it all.  I love the original toys, from 1984 until 1985 they were excellent toys.  In 1986 the downhill slide began, but I still have them all.  Does that mean I should move on to the eight remaining Transformers from 1987 that I don't own, despite the fact that I don't really like them?  If I do that do I eventually move on to 1988 and all the shitty Pretenders?  Then what?  1987-1994 was a real mixture of toys, including rare Japanese exclusives, the non-Transforming Action Masters and the divisive Generation 2.  So what do I collect?  Everything?  All of G1?  Toys that featured in the show?

My first ever TF comic.

I grew up on the Simon Furman comics, and I was lucky enough to meet the chap and now consider him a friend.  Because I grew up reading his comics I have a disproportionate affection for Magnus, Galvatron, Thunderwing and this gay (incorrect use of term as pejorative, deleted), clumsy idiot dinosuar who was pretty bad-ass in the comics.  These leaves me liking a lot of toys and characters who never made it on screen.  So who do I collect?

I also like Beast Wars.  Different reasons altogether, I can't say I grew up with them, but for what they meant at the time and the friendships that came from them they will always mean a lot to me.  Do I just collect the characters from the show?  What about the ones in the comic series?  And some of the Japanese characters are pretty cool, like the rabbit, penguin and tuberculosis carrying alarm clock Racoon.

I also like Beast Machines, but I hate the toys.  Should I buy them to show my love for the media?  I don't know what to do!  What the fuck?!? Argh!

Pause and reflect.







So, it's easy:  collect the ones you like, and don't get other ones.

When I was a kid, I made a vow to myself that I would buy all the Transformers that I wanted and couldn't have as a kid.  We weren't poor during my childhood, but we weren't spoiled, and due to my Mums refusal to buy odd toys from various toy franchises it meant we actually had a pretty good collection of TF's, so rather than having bits of everything - a Mumm Ra, a Cobra guy, He-Mans elephant mate, a red truck called Rhino, an out of scale Spider-man - we had Star Wars from 1979-1984, and then we had Transformers.  And remember, we kept the boxes!
This meant we actually had a decent chunk of toys and whilst my want list as a kid contained all the characters from the 1986 movie and all the cool stuff that never came out in the UK (for US readers, you might like to know we never officially saw releases of Blaster, Trypticon, Fort Max, Deluxe Insecticons, Swoop, Predacons, Sky Lynx and many more.  Soundwave and Megatron were very scarce after the first year) it meant I wasn't far off completing '84-'86 when I started collecting seriously.  Especially with my wily tactic of a) not selling off my childhood toys (other than a random Bebop from TMNT I somehow acquired) and b) buying my school friends childhood toys when they got bored with them.

Since then I have expanded my collection substantially, for the most part I blame Paul Hitchens of Space-Bridge fame/infamy, if he hadn't shown me all the Japanese releases, Diaclones, Micromans etc... more than half my life ago I would never have gotten as much detritus as I have now.  So, thanks...I think?  For the record my first purchases from Paul (I have a scary memory for crap like this) were Trypticon and Omega Supreme complete for about £100 quid, this was in the mid to late nineties, just after I got over the Star Wars thing most people went through (and made a fortune!£!).

So, to summarise:

I collect the toys I like.  Originals or reissue?  I don't care.  I want to have the toy, and generally I don't want to spend a fortune.  For the most part my toys are originals, but in the case of Mirage and Sunstreaker I have replaced my display versions of the toys with KnockOff reissues.  Why?  They look better.  I have no interest in spending $200 on a piece of shit when I could have an official or KO reissue for $30.  I see people do this at Botcon and I want to beat them to death with a Metroplex torso.  I swear at Botcon people get so god-damn hard for "originals" I could open a reissue for $20, throw a missile away, fold the instructions wrong, chew a few accessories, rip a few stickers and throw the toy up and down the street for ten minutes and then sell it on a stall as an original for five times the money.  THIS IS RETARDED!  The flipside of my KO habit though, is I have no problem buying rare toys for obscene money if I can afford it and the condition makes it a worthwhile investment as Megamus will attest to.

So I'm not a completest.  What you see is what you get.  If I could be bothered I'd sell my originals and replace them with reissues or KOs.  Elitism and Transformers = people I don't bother talking to at Botcon or Auto Assembly.
I collect most toylines to some degree, even the movie line which is an aesthetic I really don't like, but for £25 Leader Starscream is an excellent Raptor F22.

How much?  More than I earn in a week.

I love third-party toys!  I would rather support Hasbro and Takara with toys at a reasonable price, but what can I say?  Fans Project, TF Club, I-Gear and Mastermind Creations all maketoys (that's a pun not a typo) I like so I will support them too.  I'm not a lawyer, and I just don't care enough to debate the ethics.  I like add-on kits -  Venksta's Renderform have made my Skyfall and Darkwings come alive - but I won't touch G1 ad-ons, you can only polish a turd so much and my Ratchet / Ironhide will remain headless as Yoke-San intended.  I also enjoy customs, although you don't know what you're going to get if you buy from other people (*Rotorstorm, cough*) so I prefer to make my own, though who has the time?  My customs have been spotted at Botcon for the last couple of years, and some very nice people have even bought them in exchange for real money and everything!  Although I still haven't made the Animated Beast Wars Megatron Custom for Derrick Wyatt I promised him /namedrop

I've sold two of these, and neglected to keep one for myself.

So yeah, take it with a pinch of salt.  This isn't the biggest Transformers collection in the world, or even in the UK, but it is the biggest TF collection I own, so enjoy.   I'm not sure whether I will stick to showing the toys in order, or get excited when I get the I-Gear Medical blah blah Ratchet and Weapons blah don't sue Ironhide and post pictures of those straight away.  Watch this blog to find out.

Can't believe I have a blog again, what is this, 2006?

Mission Statement

My name is Sid and I'm a Transform-aholic.  No, seriously, it's a disease.

See my leg?  This isn't normal.

Fortunately, not every disease has to be suffered in silence, and that's what this website is about.  This is my chance to vent at people who might be interested rather than the poor bastards who feign interest on Facebook.  This is my chance to exorcise the dark energon  demon within.  This is parasitic brain parasites, this is Remaining Men Together, this is generative bone disease, but for Transformers.  This is a self-help guide for the lost generation of children: our great war is a fictional one, our great depression is our Beast Machine toys.  Just call me Cornelius.  Okay, no.  Bollocks to all that.  This is just an excuse for me to showcase some of my toys and talk a bit of crap whilst I do it.

I have been collecting Transformers since their release in 1984, although many people will often argue that they didn't make it to these humble UK shores until 1985.  Whatever.  I was a kid, and my first Transformer was Optimus Prime.  Best First as the name implies.  Something changed in me that day, all the other toys lost some appeal.  A fire truck toy seemed like half a toy, an action figure seemed incomplete.  I raided other kids toy boxes looking for new Transformers that I hadn't seen, and could never understand why their Transformers were incomplete or damaged?

It was only as I got older that I realised that most people Mums are not quite as mental as mine.  Not only did we have to look after our toys, not only did we keep the boxes, not only were we restricted to collecting one toy line at a time (more on that later), but if we lost a piece then, boy, we're we in for it!  I remember buying Landmine sometime in 1988, not quite sure what a Pretender was, and for once in our intrigue we were allowed to open the figure in the car, before we got home!  Never again, somewhere on that journey, we lost the helmet.  When my mother found out the next day she was furious!  We hunted all over the house, in the car...everywhere (both places!).  When the search was un-fruitful we started to re-trace our steps, and lo and behold we found the helmet at the kerbside by McDonalds in town, it had fallen out the day before and somehow remained at roadside.  Wow,what a boring story to anyone who isn't myself or my brother, who seemingly Johnny Mnemonic'ed his entire childhood away to erase such painful memories.

Anyway, that's what you can expect from this blog, if it was any media released after 2005 it would be advertised as a cross between Sopranos and the topic it's discussing, and seeing as we'll occasionally be touching on over-bearing mother issues and familial disputes I think it's safe to say this site is like: "Sopranos meets Tomarts Action Figure Guide."

Some Grimlocks in a picture to break up all the words.

So what toys do I collect?  Mainly Transformers, although with the odd bit of MOTU (2002) and Thundercats (2011), but as they don't transform they'll rarely - if ever - get mentioned on here.  Expect to see the occasional Macross, Gundam or Brave, but always book-ended with Transformers.

What won't you see on this website?  Crazy variants or obscure Diaclone packaging.  This is also not a guide.  If you want a guide check out the great Unicron.com who list all Transformers toy releases year by year, I will occasionally reference that site, so it is worth checking out.  If you want detailed articles about variants or crazy pre-Transformers check out the always interesting Maz or the antiquated clunky Diaclone page.  Also, don't think you can ask me crap about Transformers, although I'm happy to talk bullshit about TF's for hours, and although it seems I have nothing better to do, if you want to know something you can probably find out about it by checking out here, or by joining and discussing shit here.

The idea is I will post my Transformers collection on here, and write a little bitabout the figure and any cool / boring little stories surrounding it.  Where I got it? Who from?  How much?  When?  Did I buy it because there was nothing else out even though I didn't like it?  Probably.  The idea is to start from 1984 and work up from there in order of release and wherever possible use photos of my own toys.

Thanks for reading, there will generally be a lot more pictures in future posts, I know I can get a bit wordy.