Love can be a funny thing.
I've been a Transformers fan for literally as long as I can remember. Over the years, my lifelong love of the franchise and ongoing fascination with the lore has led me to curate a collection of amazing toys, books, artwork and more. In more recent years it's given me the chance to join a community of excellent people (and for that in particular I consider myself incredibly lucky).
Yet despite all of this, I've had one foot out of the collecting game since late 2020.
It wasn’t a deliberate choice to get out of collecting, like in the same way that you choose to stop smoking. I didn't wake up one day and decide it was time to stop buying toys.
Looking back on it now with a few years perspective it was, simply, burn out. And it all hinged on one single tipping point.
Transforming Earthrise Smokescreen
2020. We'd just gotten past peak pandemic, and as global shipping untangled itself toy collectors around the world were hit with bounty after bounty of pre-ordered plastic crack.
For Transformers fans this meant finally getting Transformers: Earthrise, featuring the greatest mainline toy iterations yet of our beloved G1 characters.
For yours truly, it meant finally getting a good modern rendition of G1 Smokescreen.
Brand new out the box, this was the first genuinely exciting figure I'd opened in ages. A beautiful robot mode. A beautiful car mode. As a longtime fan of the G1 car robots this was a wondrous toy.
So imagine how it felt when, on transforming him back to robot mode for the first time, the roof snagged.
It did not move as it should.
I went back and forth, back and forth, trying to follow the instructions with increasing concern. How was something so clean, so pure - so intended for children - causing me this much difficulty?
I applied a little bit of pressure; surely the missing ingredient of the failed transformation... and you might be able to guess what happened next.
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| Breaking point |
The plastic snapped in two and the roof ripped clean off in my hand.
The moment left me stunned. There I was. A 36 year old man unable to successfully transform a kid's toy. And that was just the start of the experience.
Horrid sensations - pain, guilt, embarrassment - all surged upward from within, as a trauma from nearly three decades before came roaring back in vivid Technicolor.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was G1 Jazz all over again.
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| Can't beat a bit of Classic Jazz (source: tfwiki.net) |
As a kid I didn't get a lot of pocket money and I didn't get a lot of new Transformers; the vast majority of my collection was second-hand. This made my hankering for any box-fresh 'bots even stronger.
And there was one in particular I really wanted.
Every couple of weeks my family would go shopping in Milton Keynes. There, on the top floor of John Lewis, was a huge display of Transformers Classics in their iconic gold boxes.
And among them was the white racing Porsche of Jazz.
Finally, after several excruciating months I had saved enough to make the purchase.
Jazz was mine.
Only for me to subsequently break him in half within an hour of getting him out the box.
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| Michael Bay cuts deep. |
I never realised what an emotional trigger this was until, with Smokescreen's "help", I recreated the experience.
And did I ever wish I hadn't.
Smokescreen had long since sold out from the e-tailers; there was no way of getting a replacement. All I had was yet another broken Autobot car and a deep-rooted sense of shame.
I mean, it passed quickly. But it hurt on a level I was not prepared for.
Falling Out
I didn't realise it immediately, but the "Smokescreen moment" become an emotional catalyst.
At that point I was getting less enthused with the idea of buying new, marginally improved versions of characters I already had. I was getting to a point where I was happy with my collection as it was; a position strengthened by how expensive the hobby was becoming.
All of these feelings - alongside a whole avalanche of life changes and re-evaluations in the wake of the pandemic - made it easy to lose focus on my toy collection.
So when all that baggage met a painful emotional moment, I withdrew without even really understanding why.
In the weeks that followed I slowed down on Instagram, shuttered my old blog, and shelved my plans for YouTube. My purchases dropped off.
After a solid seven years as a committed adult Transformers collector, and a further four or five years on the periphery before that, I had finally fallen out of love with the hobby.
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| *Sadness intensifies* |
Luckily, I had learned a thing or two during my time.
In the intervening years I still bought releases I knew I'd regret not getting, such as more-or-less every Studio Series 86 figure (literally my dream line). After all, I'd been around long enough to know that it would be a case of buying them now or never seeing them for a reasonable price again.
But these purchases often felt perfunctory and, well, joyless. And the majority of them were spirited away to the attic without so much as a cursory transformation.
That is 100% doing it wrong.
Falling Back In
It wasn't until two trips to the Birmingham NEC this summer that slowly, but surely, the passion started to come back.
At the first of these - a trip to the July Toy Fair - I scored a mint Earthrise Smokescreen.
I'll admit to being a little too careful with him to begin with, not believing my luck at getting the toy again for a great price. But it didn't take too much handling before the pure joy of the figure took over. And furthermore, this new Smokescreen has transformed multiple times without issue.
This really is the car robot I wanted so much in 2020.
The second NEC trip was, of course, TFNation. Amongst a plethora of original and reissue G1 purchases, I finally bit on a box fresh reissue G1 Jazz.
And it's gorgeous.
With that, the floodgates opened once more.
It wasn't just the acquisition of these two Transformers that reinvigorated my interest. TFNation 2023 was a phenomenal weekend that re-affirmed how much I enjoy these toys and how much I love the community.
It's just worth noting that I also went to TFNation in 2022 - and had a great time - but still didn't get out of my funk.
It took tending to two of the sorest spots of my collecting life - one still quite fresh, the other almost as old as me - to finally bring my sabbatical to a close. Now I'm back in love with collecting Transformers all over again.
And after all, when you look at these beautiful toys?
It's so easy to see why.
Welcome to the new blog! Here I'll post Transformers reviews, restorations, and observations on the collecting life. If you like what you've seen so far hit the follow button to keep up-to-date with new entries.
Thanks for reading!
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