Drift Notes #3: Dreamwave Dinobots

(Dream)Wave Bros 🦖

In 2002, aged 18, I visited a comic shop in Bristol. In recent months the Dreamwave G1 comics had rekindled my interest in Transformers, as had getting a VHS of the '86 Movie for the first time in a decade, but there was still an element of uncertainty over this re-connection. These were still kids' toys, right? Ironic detachment was the order of the day.

That was all about to change.

Drift Notes #2: Rewind Frenzy

The late 1980s. Luke’s house, the living room. His Mum pulls a video from a generic middle-class faux leather case. 

The film starts playing and Luke and I, at 5, maybe 6 years old, sit enthralled as a demon planet emerges from space to devour an entire world. 90 minutes of heavy metal violence later, Unicron’s decapitated head becomes the new moon of Cybertron.

My fragile infant brain is broken. We watch it again.

Restoring G1 Optimus Prime

Restoration of a Classic

August 2023. With TakaraTomy revealing the figure just days before, the newly-announced Missing Link Optimus Prime was the talk of TFNation (the UK's premiere Transformers convention).

For those of you living under a Rock Lord for the last few months, Missing Link Optimus Prime is a reissue of the Generation One Prime toy you remember - except now re-imagined with a butt-load of added articulation, all-in-one transformation, and several brand new features.

Drift Notes #1: All Outta Love

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.