The first generation of Transformers captured my heart. At their core, they were basic, everyday objects that morphed into robots. The molds were a combination of die cast metal and plastic. Later generations were all plastic, contributing to a sense of degraded quality.

I always marveled at the engineering that went into the transformations and I would practice transforming them from vehicle to robot and back in a way that might mimic how they would do so in real life: their vehicle mode carrying momentum while they transformed into a fighting robot. There was a sense of ongoing action that set them apart from ordinary toy cars or action figures.

Toy execs might argue differently, but I always knew that there was real value in licensing real life vehicle makes and models. Yes, toys are fantasy, but they are rooted in real life role playing. Kids want to play with the things they see every day, including the family minivan.

Here are some of my first generation Autobots. The blue fellow, Tracks, is a reissue, so he doesn’t count. Hoist, the green one on the left, transformed into a GMC tow truck that you could attach other autobots and tow them around. Inferno is the red devil in the middle. When I bought Inferno and Hoist, I wasn’t sure I really wanted them. I liked fast sports cars and fire and tow trucks just weren’t all that cool. But they turned out to be two that I played with the most. The red dude up front is Sideswipe, who I got from my brother when he went to college. He’s awesome because he’s a freaking Ferrari. Did I mention how cool my brother is?

Bluestreak was one of my first Transformers, and one of my favorites. His arms articulate about the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, which was unusual. His mold was reused for Prowl, to his right in the picture. Prowl is a reissue, so he doesn’t really count, but it’s interesting to note that he is a Nissan Z police car, which as I understand was common in Japan. Note the Fairlady Z license plate on Bluestreak. I had no idea what a Fairlady was, but now I do, and I think it’s pretty cool that it carried over to the North American market. On the far left is Jazz, probably the coolest Transformer ever. His transformation is basically the same as Bluestreak and Prowl but he’s a freakin’ Porsche. As such, he was a rare find, and I was ecstatic when I did. There’s a better shot of him with the Dinobots below.

Blaster. Not a whole lot to say about him. A ghetto blaster that transforms to a robot: not that interesting, but I did like the cassette tapes that fit into his tape deck. One of those buttons opens his tape deck door so you can put the cassette tape in. He was mostly plastic and while he was larger than most Transformers, he just seemed a bit cheap.

Soundwave was the original tapedeck Transformer, predating Blaster and absolutely killing Blaster on a coolness level. Soundwave was compact, sleek, with die cast parts, where Blaster was bulky and plasticized. Blaster’s buttons were sticky and prone to failure, and the cassette tapes didn’t quite fit inside the deck, whereas Soundwave’s single eject button worked flawlessly and the cassettes fit like a glove.

Soundwave came with a cassette that transformed into a gold vulture named Buzzsaw, who’s perched on top of Soundwave in the picture. The cartoon always paired Soundwave with Laserbeak, who was the same mold as Buzzsaw but purchased separately, no doubt to drive sales.

The cassettes. Strangely enough, these were some of my favorites, though most of my cassettes were the second generation of Transformers that were introduced with the movie. I think I liked the compactness of the cassettes, the two-dimensional quality of them. Flat rectangles that transform. Don’t ask me why.

I’m quite proud to have found both Decepticon triple changers: Astrotrain and Blitzkrieg. These were unique in that each had 3 modes instead of 2. Astrotrain transforms from train to space shuttle to robot and Blitzkrieg transforms from tank to jet plane to robot. Each mode is compromised to facilitate the transformations but nonetheless it is not obvious how the transformations happen, and for that reason I think they’re notable. Blitzkrieg was a rare find in the toy store.

The Decepticon jets were all the same mold with different colors and in some cases different plastic wings. Skywarp, the black feller in the front is a reissue. Dirge (blue) and Thrust (red) are originals. Skywarp, Starscream, and Thundercracker were all identical except for coloring and were nearly impossible to find in toy stores, so awesome and badass were they. Thrust was my brother’s. (Did I mention how cool he is?)

I found this guy at Encina Drug store in Walnut Creek (Is it Encino or Encina? Is it still there?). He’s the same mold as the Transformers Decepticon jets but he was made by Takara. At the time I didn’t have any of the Decepticon jets and thought this might be the only chance to get this mold, so I bought him. One-offs and rebrands like these always fascinate me. Though to be fair, I believe the Hasbro Decepticon jets were a rebrand of Takara.

The Dinobots were dinosaurs that transformed to robots. I wasn’t all that crazy about them until I got Grimlock (the T-Rex). His transformation is actually kind of fun, so I got Swoop (the pterodactyl) whose transformation is kind of lame. The yellow and red brontosaurus-looking thing is a generic something-or-other, but he does transform to a robot regardless of his pedigree. There’s a better shot of Jazz there to the right of Grimlock.

The Insecticons. Lame like the Dinobots, but I still had to have one. As you might guess, they’re insects that transform to robots. This is Shrapnel. I think he’s one of those goliath beetles. Hence the big silver antennae thingies.

“Reflector was not sold in stores; instead, he was offered as a mail-in exclusive by Hasbro for money and Robot Points collected from packages of other Transformers toys.” I never sent my Robot Points in, but I did find this rebrand (or original-brand, as the case may be) and snatched it up. Microx is a far better name than Reflector anyway. All three join together to form a miniature camera with a real viewfinder.

Omega Supreme. That’s right, bitches. I have an original G1 Omega Supreme with all of its pieces and the freakin’ box. He was the first “battle station” Transformer: a robot that turns into a fortified, defensible space. While in general I don’t much care for the concept, Omega Supreme had several aces in his pocket: a battery-powered tank that ran along track and a rocket that forms his hands. There is some imaginative play to be had here. The biggest detractor to me is that his transformation isn’t so much a transformation as it is taking things apart and reassembling them.

Roadbuster is another interesting case of rebranding. Transformers marketed him as a Deluxe Vehicle and he was never featured in the cartoons that I recall. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a licensing issue involved, similar to Jetfire’s story. Roadbuster is the largest version on the left. In the middle is a smaller, fully transformable version rebrand in army green. On the right is a version that my brother found in an Asian toy store. It’s not transformable but it’s almost completely made of die cast metal. All three belonged to my brother. (Did I mention how cool he is?)

The vehicle version of Roadbuster is a concept car similar to a Humvee. While I was never a big fan of concept vehicles in the Transformers universe, Roadbuster was an exception in that his transformation was not easy to figure out and both his robot and vehicle modes are completely cool.

I bought Shockwave at Long’s. I seem to recall pissing off my mother by asking for him for Christmas and then buying him out from under her, leaving her to return hers to the store and wondering what the hell to get me. I did that a lot as a kid. I was kind of an asshole, and I guess not a lot has changed.

I picked up a quartet of miniature Autobots along the way. Bumblebee is the most famous of the mini Autobots, but unfortunately I never came across him. The closest I got was Hubcap, the yellow fellow on the right. From left to right: Powerglide (A-10 Warthog in red), Beachcomber (grey and blue dune buggy), Warpath (in tank mode – why red?), and Hubcap (Porsche 924 Turbo sports car). Standing behind them are two members of the cast of Transformers: The Movie. The movie introduced the next generation of Transformers and ushered in a new era of poor quality toys.

If Jetfire is the holy grail of my collection, Devastator is perhaps King Tut’s Gold Death Mask.

Devastator was the first of the “combiner” transformers: individual robots that combine together into a single large robot à la Voltron. Devastator is made up of 6 Constructicons, construction vehicles that transform to robots.

Hook was nearly impossible to find, being both the coolest and necessary for attaching the other five; I had slowly amassed all 5 but could never find Hook. When I finally found him I simply had no choice but to buy him. If only we had the internet in the 1980s.

Hasbro unleashed several more combiner sets after Devastator, but in my opinion Devastator was the best. Each Constructicon had more detail and slightly more complicated transformations than later combiner sets, and the later sets only used 5 robots, one of which was always a larger robot that formed the torso. The 6 constituent Constructicons were all the same size.

As I unpacked my Transformers to display them, I was surprised at how many full sets of combiners I had. I was disappointed to find that I had fewer first generation Transformers than I had thought, but having these full sets of combiners somehow made up for that.

When my brother went to college, he gave me all of his Transformers. Pretty cool, huh? That’s where I got the Combaticons who form Bruticus.

Here are the lamely-named Protectobots who form Defensor.

The next lamely-named combiner set is the Technobots who form Computron.

Superion (the Aerialbots). Not such a bad name, I guess. One of the few examples of Autobot jet aircraft. This is the only set that I bought together in a box.

Predaking is perhaps the lamest of the combiner Transformers. While the big combined robot is ok, each component is a joke and far too expensive. I remember buying all 5 members of Predaking and feeling completely ripped off. Transformers had evolved from really cool, die cast metal licensed versions of real vehicles with complicated robot transformations to asinine plastic approximations of animals with simplistic robot transformations.

Unfortunately, my collection consists mostly of the latter, and as I unpacked my Transformers I felt sad and more than a little bit betrayed that I had wasted so much money on a product line whose quality had nosedived. When I get around to showing my Optimus Prime, I’ll show you exactly what I’m talking about.

Until then, I hope you enjoyed my early sets of combiners.

When I was a kid, there was a show called Amazing Stories. It was sort of like Twilight Zone but not as mean to its characters. One show was a story about a kid who wouldn’t let his mother get rid of his toys. Time passed and wasn’t kind to him, leaving him homeless. But one day he discovered his cache of toys and sold them at auction, making him a rich man. Or at least that’s what I remember of it, and it inspired me to keep all of the boxes for my collection of Transformers.

Unfortunately, I played with my Transformers and while I still have all of the boxes, I’m afraid their condition considerably degrades their monetary value.

For many years, they have lived stowed away in their boxes. Finally the wife and I decided it was time to take them out and display them, so we cobbled together a couple of glass doored bookcases from Craigslist and over the course of several weeks I have put my Transformers on display. I wish I had done this years ago; there is something about seeing them all together and free that simply makes me happy.

So, here you go. My Transformers. Let me show you them:

This is the first post in a series.

I’m going to start with what I consider the holy grail of Transformers: Jetfire. He’s hiding out here with his friends on the 2nd shelf from the top.

Did you see him? He’s the dashing fellow decked out in white, red and black.

For several months, he lived in the toy aisle of the Longs store and was one of the pricier Transformers. Every time I happened to be at that store, I would look at him wistfully, wishing for the day I could bring him home and wondering how I could ever afford him.

There was something about Jetfire: he was one of the few Transformers whose transformation was complex enough that I had absolutely no clue how he could possibly transform just by looking at its pictures in the catalog, and both his robot and vehicle modes were stunning. I must have him. I must know how he ticked.

One day I came into possession of enough cash to take him home; probably birthday or Christmas money or something. I rode my bike through the paths along Contra Costa County’s canal system to Longs, praying that no one had snatched him out from under me. To my glee, he was still there, and for a few minutes I agonized over whether I really wanted to spend $29.99 to take him home. Of course I did.

He came in a big box and was rather unwieldy on my bike, but I managed the return trip without incident and soon my mind was blown by the engineering that went into his transformation. As I said, both his robot and vehicle modes were impressive, and his arms and legs had multiple points of articulation. Truly, he is one of the best Transformers ever.

Jetfire has an interesting history. All of the first generation Transformers toys were rebrands of Japanese toys. The original Japanese toys had no story or team affiliation: they were simply everyday objects that transformed into robots. Hasbro gave us the warring factions of Autobots and Decepticons and a cartoon to drive sales.

Jetfire is more recognizable from his role as a Veritech fighter in the Robotech saga. Again, Robotech was an American rebrand of 3 separate Japanese television shows. The first in the series was the Macross story whose Veritech fighter jets were the same model as Jetfire and were likewise sold as toys with different branding.

Hasbro ran into some licensing problems with Jetfire, so his only appearance in the cartoons was as the lame Skyfire. But that’s ok; Robotech was much better (see the Veritech in action starting at 5:30… and by the way, the music from Robotech was top notch).

I’ve always considered Jetfire and the Veritech toys to be rare finds, and whenever I saw a variation of one in a store I would buy it. I never saw another full-sized Jetfire or Veritech fighter but I did end up with a few smaller, kooky versions. The small, fat ones crack me up; they’re like little Jetfire caricatures but what’s cool is that they still transform the same.

At the bottom center you can see what the jet looks like: a variation of the swept wing F-14 fighter jet. Also featured in the picture are two small Alpha fighters from the 3rd Robotech series. they’re the light blue and army green robots. At the far right, in red, is the motorcycle from the 3rd Robotech series. The rider is not attached but I have since found her; unfortunately she’s missing a leg. And there are some Micro Machines tossed in there for good measure.