Post by Hoist on Sept 14, 2019 11:58:35 GMT -5
After trawling through 55 pages of "The Core" sub forum I can't find the old thread, and I'm sure there was one, but let's start a new thread for sharing how we got into this universe for newer members and any old ones.
So in 1984 I was 8 and depending on when it aired on UK TV that means I was either 8/9 years old, as a kid of divorced parents (Which will come into context later) I adored, LEGO, star Wars figures, He-man/Thundercats/Battle of the Planets/Ulysses 31 stuff with space and dinosaurs. I first saw the cartoon on Saturday mornings when I would still get up ridiculously early so I could watch it on a UK breakfast show called the Wide Awake Club. Naturally from there I wanted the UK comics which were a blend of original stories and re-prints of the US story, and would continue in the UK way beyond the US 80 issue run. The comics led to the toys but being a single parent family, we didn't have much money so I mainly just had the mini-bots. I can't remember which one I had first but I probably had a Bumblebee (Not Cliffjumper) and definitely would later have Powerglide, Cosomos, Warpath etc. Then one Christmas my father (Whom I had a very strained and estranged relationship with) bought me a Hoist figure. (By which time I'm guessing I would be 10 years old). It was my first regular sized figure and I adored it, with strong memories of sitting behind the sofa and putting the labels on and playing with it. AT the time, it was the one thing I felt my father did god for me. Later on I would also get a Twintwist figure, not so remarkable, but I was easily pleased and it was what it was.
I remember going to the cinema and seeing the original animated movie and after that things started to drift away. When I was 11 in 1987 i moved to senior school what the US would refer to high school, and my love for the comics shifted from Transformers to UK cult comic 2000AD with Judge Dredd, Rogure Trooper, Slaine, Strontium Dog, The ABC Warriors and Nemesis The Warlock and the like. By 1987 it felt like Transformers was on it's last legs, even though Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime were cool, even then it felt like the likes of Kup and Blurr felt very plastic based and less metal. I saw it get worse with Action masters, Throttlebots, Pretenders and the like and so on and so on as it seemed to get more and more limiting, but by that time I was not part of my life any more and I was having ups and downs with this school as well. Come the 90's in college I did see a Transformers comic and bought an issue out of curiosity.
I was not impressed.
Keep in mind this was the UK's version, I had not idea there was a US one running or that the UK would intermittent those US ones along with it's UK stories. My judgement at that time was on that issue along. The artwork was - not good bu the UK side The Find the hidden Autobot/Decepticon symbols throughout the comic to win a toy felt demeaning, but perhaps this was because I was older. There was a two page splash of the toys which where just mostly repaints in bright neon colors or originals with gimmicks like Jazz with a big blaster on his roof. The new Autobots cars with their neon window screens just looked cheap. Even though Tank Megatron looked hella cool! Later with the internet I would find about the US G2 comics and fall in love with them of course. With the death of my mother at 18, I felt out of the look for a while, especially in the TF universe, I tried to carry on for a while with college but eventually dropped out and concentrating on moving then trying to find a job. In the mid 90's of course Beast Wars came along and saved the Transformers franchise!! At that time I may have caught a bit of an episode but didn't adhere well to the whole changing into beasts things at that time and it would have to wait a few years before I was mature enough to actually see the whole series and fall in love with it. I continued with life trying to be my "Best me", making some mistakes along the way but this was the longest gap until about 2001 or so with the rise of the home computer and the internet.
Act II - The Second Coming.
My first computer was actually my sisters old computer and I remember a dream I had about Transformers and maybe that's what started it off again? Following that I had had regular dreams about finding old Transformers comics in a newsagents, old copied being sold old really cheaply. In the dream they were so real - tough them, holding the parer and feeling the paper felt like. So when I first got online I was immediately looking for Transformer comics. I ended up finding a website where I joined their message board having spent hours upon hours on the actual website part and began interacting with TF fans. In the real world I had been curious about TF toys and whether they still were going, so popped into a UK store called Woolworths - which is when |I saw them. The first ones I saw at the time were two packs of the little R.I.D spychanger figures like Crosswise, WARS, Hot Shot and R.E.V. being the ones I started getting first. Thinking back maybe it's a funny coincidence as already mentioned I started with Minibots back in the day. I ended up getting all the spychangers line including mini Optimus Prime, Magnus Scourge and X-Brawn. One day I went in there however and saw something big that i wanted and wanted immediately (Even though I had to save to get the money) and that was Megatron. The five alt mode bat figure of greatness for me. And it didn't stop there, which also led to getting a credit card, new computer and all the transformers I could get as well as then 7 years of debt because I was young, dumb and naive, but that's another story. I ended up getting quite a lot from that line - the three Autobot brothers, Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus. The build crew IE Wedge, Grimlock and the like for the combiner. Never got any more Decepticons bar one, or later lines except Super Sideburn, purely because of the Hot Rod recolor. The bar one being Stormjet, no idea who he was but he looked cool! The biggest for me was getting Prime and Magnus ans getting that Omega Prime combination - a thing of pure beauty.
Act II_ The Armada of the new cartoon trilogy, the internet and message boards.
Around the time of the Armada cartoon is when I made this message board but I had history before. Hand, Having dabbled with message boards, it was whilst at that first TF community I made a sci-fi message board that ran from 2002 - 2004 before it was deleted, and for a time it became very popular and more than just a message board, it became more than the sum of it's parts and about the friendships forged there. I made mistaked during my time there leading to our enviable closure by deletion, though there were a lot of jealous people out there who where out to see us go down anyway. I made that message board in March that year 2002 and this one followed in August 2002, and the rest of history. The previous forum I had come to feel like an outsider and wanted to talk to other fans on my terms were certain other big fandom TF sites at the time, had quite toxic communities.
The rest is history and I never stopped since, I may have stopped collecting and my movie appreciation having gone down with each Bay film, but I still consider myself part of the fandom.
So what's your story? Did you grow up with the Bay films? What show was running at the time, how knowledgeable where you of the franchise growing up both at that time and past?
So in 1984 I was 8 and depending on when it aired on UK TV that means I was either 8/9 years old, as a kid of divorced parents (Which will come into context later) I adored, LEGO, star Wars figures, He-man/Thundercats/Battle of the Planets/Ulysses 31 stuff with space and dinosaurs. I first saw the cartoon on Saturday mornings when I would still get up ridiculously early so I could watch it on a UK breakfast show called the Wide Awake Club. Naturally from there I wanted the UK comics which were a blend of original stories and re-prints of the US story, and would continue in the UK way beyond the US 80 issue run. The comics led to the toys but being a single parent family, we didn't have much money so I mainly just had the mini-bots. I can't remember which one I had first but I probably had a Bumblebee (Not Cliffjumper) and definitely would later have Powerglide, Cosomos, Warpath etc. Then one Christmas my father (Whom I had a very strained and estranged relationship with) bought me a Hoist figure. (By which time I'm guessing I would be 10 years old). It was my first regular sized figure and I adored it, with strong memories of sitting behind the sofa and putting the labels on and playing with it. AT the time, it was the one thing I felt my father did god for me. Later on I would also get a Twintwist figure, not so remarkable, but I was easily pleased and it was what it was.
I remember going to the cinema and seeing the original animated movie and after that things started to drift away. When I was 11 in 1987 i moved to senior school what the US would refer to high school, and my love for the comics shifted from Transformers to UK cult comic 2000AD with Judge Dredd, Rogure Trooper, Slaine, Strontium Dog, The ABC Warriors and Nemesis The Warlock and the like. By 1987 it felt like Transformers was on it's last legs, even though Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime were cool, even then it felt like the likes of Kup and Blurr felt very plastic based and less metal. I saw it get worse with Action masters, Throttlebots, Pretenders and the like and so on and so on as it seemed to get more and more limiting, but by that time I was not part of my life any more and I was having ups and downs with this school as well. Come the 90's in college I did see a Transformers comic and bought an issue out of curiosity.
I was not impressed.
Keep in mind this was the UK's version, I had not idea there was a US one running or that the UK would intermittent those US ones along with it's UK stories. My judgement at that time was on that issue along. The artwork was - not good bu the UK side The Find the hidden Autobot/Decepticon symbols throughout the comic to win a toy felt demeaning, but perhaps this was because I was older. There was a two page splash of the toys which where just mostly repaints in bright neon colors or originals with gimmicks like Jazz with a big blaster on his roof. The new Autobots cars with their neon window screens just looked cheap. Even though Tank Megatron looked hella cool! Later with the internet I would find about the US G2 comics and fall in love with them of course. With the death of my mother at 18, I felt out of the look for a while, especially in the TF universe, I tried to carry on for a while with college but eventually dropped out and concentrating on moving then trying to find a job. In the mid 90's of course Beast Wars came along and saved the Transformers franchise!! At that time I may have caught a bit of an episode but didn't adhere well to the whole changing into beasts things at that time and it would have to wait a few years before I was mature enough to actually see the whole series and fall in love with it. I continued with life trying to be my "Best me", making some mistakes along the way but this was the longest gap until about 2001 or so with the rise of the home computer and the internet.
Act II - The Second Coming.
My first computer was actually my sisters old computer and I remember a dream I had about Transformers and maybe that's what started it off again? Following that I had had regular dreams about finding old Transformers comics in a newsagents, old copied being sold old really cheaply. In the dream they were so real - tough them, holding the parer and feeling the paper felt like. So when I first got online I was immediately looking for Transformer comics. I ended up finding a website where I joined their message board having spent hours upon hours on the actual website part and began interacting with TF fans. In the real world I had been curious about TF toys and whether they still were going, so popped into a UK store called Woolworths - which is when |I saw them. The first ones I saw at the time were two packs of the little R.I.D spychanger figures like Crosswise, WARS, Hot Shot and R.E.V. being the ones I started getting first. Thinking back maybe it's a funny coincidence as already mentioned I started with Minibots back in the day. I ended up getting all the spychangers line including mini Optimus Prime, Magnus Scourge and X-Brawn. One day I went in there however and saw something big that i wanted and wanted immediately (Even though I had to save to get the money) and that was Megatron. The five alt mode bat figure of greatness for me. And it didn't stop there, which also led to getting a credit card, new computer and all the transformers I could get as well as then 7 years of debt because I was young, dumb and naive, but that's another story. I ended up getting quite a lot from that line - the three Autobot brothers, Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus. The build crew IE Wedge, Grimlock and the like for the combiner. Never got any more Decepticons bar one, or later lines except Super Sideburn, purely because of the Hot Rod recolor. The bar one being Stormjet, no idea who he was but he looked cool! The biggest for me was getting Prime and Magnus ans getting that Omega Prime combination - a thing of pure beauty.
Act II_ The Armada of the new cartoon trilogy, the internet and message boards.
Around the time of the Armada cartoon is when I made this message board but I had history before. Hand, Having dabbled with message boards, it was whilst at that first TF community I made a sci-fi message board that ran from 2002 - 2004 before it was deleted, and for a time it became very popular and more than just a message board, it became more than the sum of it's parts and about the friendships forged there. I made mistaked during my time there leading to our enviable closure by deletion, though there were a lot of jealous people out there who where out to see us go down anyway. I made that message board in March that year 2002 and this one followed in August 2002, and the rest of history. The previous forum I had come to feel like an outsider and wanted to talk to other fans on my terms were certain other big fandom TF sites at the time, had quite toxic communities.
The rest is history and I never stopped since, I may have stopped collecting and my movie appreciation having gone down with each Bay film, but I still consider myself part of the fandom.
So what's your story? Did you grow up with the Bay films? What show was running at the time, how knowledgeable where you of the franchise growing up both at that time and past?