In recognition of Transformers Week here at Suvudu I asked several authors and other creatives to share their own personal recollections and musings about the Transformers franchise.
Their responses ran the gamut from “Those toys destroyed my childhood” to “Transformers were directly responsible for my career in science fiction and fantasy.” I hope that you’ll enjoy reading them.
Growing up, I loved Transformers. The problem was, for a
long time, I
didn’t have any Autobots or Decepticons of my own. Instead, I played
with my brother’s figures or I’d play with whatever my friends had over
at their houses. It wasn’t that I didn’t want them. Oh no. I just didn’t
have any.Transformers hit big during the phase of my life where I
was moving
away from little kid toys and moving on to big kid toys that would see
me through early adolescence. It was an important time for me.
Unfortunately, as happens, my parents weren’t getting the memos
regarding this particular transition.The message finally became
clear on Christmas morning, 1984. We were
all settled around the tree about the begin the ritual opening of the
gifts. As with each previous year, I could barely sit still anticipating
what was hiding beneath those colorful wrappings and elaborate bows.Every
year, we took turns opening gifts and, that year, I was up
first. I went for a flat, thin one. Start off slow, make the magic last
as long as possible. I shredded the paper with a single swipe of my
hand. I looked at the prize in my hands and saw…Smurfs
Shrinky-Dinks.I couldn’t hold in the sigh. Smurfs? Really?
My
mother flashed a well-meaning grin. “Do you like it?”“Yeah,” I
lied, setting it down on the carpet.I settled in for the
remainder of the presents. The expectations I
had for that gift-giving season were lowered every time I glanced over
at all those blue guys in white hats waiting to be baked in the oven.
They were a reminder that, even at eight years old, my parents still saw
me as a baby. The rest of the haul was standard fare. Twenty-six years
later, no other gift from under that tree sticks out. Except one.I
remember being especially intrigued by this one box. It was heavy.
Angular. It had the right shape and size. I shook it. The box let out a
soft rattle as something solid shifted inside. It had the right sound. I
flexed my fingers impatiently, awaiting my turn, wincing at every
prolonged “Ooh!” and “Aah!” over my dad’s new tool or yet another pair
of comfortable socks for my mother.Finally, after an agonizing
wait, it was my turn again. I tried to
keep it cool as I stuck a thin finger under the edge of the wrapping
paper. Slowly, I tore. I saw the corner of the packaging beneath. It had
the right look. Another tear. Slowly. I wanted to make it last. More of
the packaging came into view.There it was! The emblem. The
unmistakable sign of robots in
disguise. My face lit up. I peeled off the rest of the paper as fast as I
could. Who was it? Who was it?Soundwave.
It was Soundwave!
He came with cassettes and everything! He was the
best of all the Transformers. And he wasn’t just any Transformer
but a
Decepticon. All the cool kids knew Decepticons were way better than
Autobots. I finally had my own Transformer and he was the coolest one of
all.I beamed at my parents, happiness abounding, holding up the
gift for
them to see. My mother looked at the package in my hands and she glanced
over at my father. Her smile slowly dropped as realization settled in.
The look on my father’s face wasn’t any more comforting.Her words
were soft, heavy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We must have put
the wrong name on that one. That’s your brother’s gift.”I handed
the toy over to my brother. Honestly, I probably threw it at
him. Not that it was his fault but still. Being allowed to open another
gift instead, to take my turn again, was cold consolation. We finished
opening gifts and there wasn’t any single one in my stack that was more
than met the eye.My mom and dad got hip and started seeing me as
less a stuffed animal
kid and more an action figure kid. They gave my brother and I some
great Christmases over the years but that particular one was a hard day
for my younger self.It didn’t diminish my love of Transformers,
though. If anything, it
stoked the fire. I amassed my own small collection of Transformers toys
eventually but not a one could erase the pain of the one that was almost
mine.
Jason L. Blair,
author and game designer. His most recent project is Conduit 2,
coming soon to the Nintendo Wii.
When Transformers reached its/their first hey day,
I fell directly
within the target audience. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I
was little, and my entire world consisted of various and sundry Hasbro
and Mattel toys–Transformers among them. My favorite, by far, was
always Soundwave–though, of course, I looked up to Prime as well
(Optimus, not Rodimus). Soundwave epitomized the terribly loyal,
terribly effective, evil lieutenant to me. The other Decepticons were
nothing but fuss and bother, but Soundwave, perhaps ironically, said and
did very little. He was an efficient villain, which, in the larger
milieu of cartoon/toy villainy of that era (G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles,
etc.) made him the most creepy–most others were clowns, of a sort, that
served only to highlight the idiocy of “evil.”And, while others
have pointed out (and criticized) the
inter-relationship of toys and cartoons, this was, for me, my first
experience with interactivity. Sure, I had an 8-bit console, but the
images were blocky and distant–I couldn’t relate to Link in the Legend
of Zelda because he was just a stumpy block with a hat and some legs.
But, I could watch an episode of Transformers and then take my real-life
toys into the backyard, where I could experiment with story lines and
characterization.I owe a lot, meta-fictionally speaking, to the
Transformers. I still
pay homage to this day–my iPod is named “Prime.”
Darin Bradley,
author, Noise.
You wanted to know if I played with Transformers as a
kid. I did. I
loved them but I had to “borrow” them from my brother as they were his
toys. I was endlessly fascinated with a Transformer’s ability to change
shape and I thought that Optimus Prime was the bee’s knees. I think
that’s why I wanted to be a truck driver for several years of my young
life.
Jennifer
Brozek, author, In
a Gilded Light: 105 Tales of the Macabre.
Even way off down in the Caribbean, with no real
TV or media contact with the US, I was vaguely aware of Transformers
and He-Man action figures via expat kids who had large collections of
them.The He-Man stuff was cool and all, but I never really lusted
after them the way I wanted a Transformers toy, because, well, it
transformed. I mean, how freaking amazing was that? Very.Because I
was in the Caribbean, my hearing of the Transformers lyrics were
slightly different. “Transformers: robots in disguise” became
“Transformers: robots in de skies” for me. I used to run around singing
that.Later on I had a classic lower class moment. My mom, unable
to afford a Transformers toy, actually saved up money (a hard thing, we
lived a very lean life then) for an offbrand Transformers toy. I think
it was Gobots.”It ended up being hard to transform that single
Gobot (maybe because I also got sand in the joints). Much like rubik’s
cubes or those stupid trick loops you see around, I was always bending
an arm the wrong way, too. Eventually I decided that the whole concept
was more annoying than fun, and I returned to my general obsession with
Legos.I remain ambivalent to the franchise to this day.
Tobias
Buckell, author, Tides
from the New Worlds.
Transformers were the first toys I collected as a kid, mainly because
they came out when I was 11 and I actually had kid-type job
opportunities which allowed me to earn money. I bought several over the
next couple of years, all of which I still have. My oldest son is
currently 6 (almost 7) and I’ve given them to him to play with. He
loves them too. I never expected I’d be able to share them with him.A few years ago I bought the collected cartoon series on DVD, which was
pretty exciting until I actually sat down to watch them. Man they suck.
Some things just don’t age well I guess.Drew
Curtis, founder of Fark.com and
author of
It’s
Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News.
I didn’t play too much with the Transformers toys as a
kid, but I
remember how they — along with the G.I. Joe reboot — revolutionized
the
way we thought of toys and entertainment. Before they came along, toy
companies usually bought licenses from TV shows and films to make toys
associated with them. With Transformers, Hasbro made toys that would
have TV shows and later films made about them. That spawned the current
breed of entertainment we have today, the kind that is planned for
multiple media from Day One.
Matt Forbeck,
game designer and author, Amortals.
I hate the Transformers.
Not the characters
themselves. I’ve got nothing against Optimus Prime
and his gang. But I was in college when the Transformers hit the world,
and if you miss one of those age-specific pop cultural windows, even by
a few years, it remains forever closed. The devotion that Transformers
inspire in others is a mystery to me. I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s
not like they’re Micronauts, for crying out loud.Bu the
characters are fine. It’s the toys I can’t stand.When my son was
about three, the transformers began to arrive. They
snuck into the house on birthdays and Christmases, were left behind
after sleepovers, or simply appeared, as if his Pokemon cards were
secretly breeding with Legos. Suddenly they were everywhere.And
none of them could stay intact. Legs, arms, missiles, minicars,
and heads scattered as soon as the box was opened. Each bot was a little
entropy engine, whose main job was to disintegrate as fast as possible.
They were the cotton candy of toys. And so complicated. I knew I was
disappointing my son every time I couldn’t get one to turn back into a
car or robot or ham sandwich. It was like trying to put together an Ikea
entertainment center at gunpoint.One Christmas party when my son
was five or six, he was given a
particularly huge transformer, a cheetah/jet thing about two feet long
called Cheetor. I believe it had 312 possible configurations. The arms
and legs could all be removed. His back unfolded, the head spun around,
scimitars popped out of his arms. It was cool.One of the rear
legs went missing before we got it home.For the next few months, my son kept handing this three-legged creature
back to me, expecting me to turn it into other things. The only thing
that transformed was my mood. In all the time he owned it, I never,
ever, got it to go back in its original shape.A few months ago my
wife and I decided it was time to excavate my
son’s room. He’s fourteen now, and too big for his old bunk beds. We
opened up the shelf below the lower bunk, and there it was. Or there
parts of it were. That growling head, its aerodynamic torso, and one
leg. Cheetor was buried in a pile of autobot arms and Bionicle weapons
and Digimon wings and the limbs from a score of toy species — a charnel
house for plastic creatures.“You want any of this?” we asked my
son. He’s a teenager now, and has
moved on to Diplomacy and Call of Chthullu and Dungeons and Dragons. He
plucked out a few of his favorites from the pile. Several Pokemon
figures made the cut. But Cheetor, alas, was put into the garbage bag,
and sent on its way to its final transformation. I can’t say I’ll miss
him.
Daryl Gregory,
author, The
Devil’s Alphabet.
My two cents it that I am cordially mystified by the
Transformers
franchise. When they started up (I think in 1984) I was just aging out
of cartoons and I had no younger siblings to clue me in, so I only
vaguely get what it’s about. I know it’s about robots that turn into
vehicles, right, like mechanical werewolves? Or cars who have closeted
identities as sentient robots? This is the confusing part for me – why
would a self-respecting, awesomely snazzy giant robot (surely the apex
form of mechanical evolution) want to revert to a mundane slave-identity
as a tractor-trailer or a motorcycle or speedboat or car or jukebox?
If you’re a sentient machine, isn’t the very idea of a steering wheel
anathema, the symbol of submission to the human will? Maybe it’s about
robots who are not comfortable with their robot identities, who fear the
autonomy their own sentience gives them? Maybe they experience the
burden of their own free will as a crushing existential dilemma?Maybe.
Maybe they should take some time off, drive around in a van
and solve some supernatural mysteries, and relax a little. That of
course would make perfect sense to me.
Austin
Grossman, author, Soon I Will Be Invincible.
Do you remember those little stat cards that came on the
back of
Transformers’ boxes? You were supposed to put a red see-through decoder
slip over them to read the vital attributes of the robots? I took those
things seriously. More than once, over the years, I used those little
cards to devise simple Transformers roleplaying games, typically using a
basic roll-under dice mechanic. I know I did that once or twice as a
lad, and once again when I found a slew of cards rubber-banded together
in my closet, while moving boxes around. Then, while working as a
playtester and freelance writer for Fantasy Flight Games, I had the
opportunity to work just a little bit on another RPG of transforming
robots.The designer said to me, “I’m really excited about this
game, but I
don’t have a title yet. It’s right on the tip of my tongue, but I just
can’t find it.”“It’s Mechamorphosis,” I said, and he swooned. I’d
been preparing for
that conversation, readying myself to solve that problem, since I was a
kid. I just didn’t know it.
Will Hindmarch,
game designer and author, The Bones.
I’ve been a
Transformers fan from the very first wave of Generation One, but the
best part came twenty years later, when I brought my four-year-old son
over to my parents’ house and discovered a box tucked away in the
basement. Some of the toys had rusted or broken, but most had held up
remarkably well. Sure, the cat had peed on Thundercracker, but you
could still form Devastator and Predaking. I brought them upstairs (all
except poor Thundercracker), and my son’s eyes went wide. “What are
those, Daddy?”For the next year, whenever I was free, he dragged me back to play
Transformers, or ran up with a half-changed dinobot saying “Transform
this one, Daddy!” He has some coordination trouble, so watching him
work and learn to transform some of the toys has been especially
rewarding. It’s been wonderful to have an excuse to play with the toys
again, and to be able to share that experience with my son.
Jim C. Hines,
author, Red
Hood’s Revenge.
I wrote about Hello Kitty a couple of years ago for The
Escapist, and my Transformers experience is similar. I first
knew Voltron as this weird cartoon paired with toys that my Chinese
grandmother (whom we joke is culturally Japanese because of their circle
of friends and my Japanese grandfather) gave my brother and me. Because
of them we also knew Speed Racer ahead of the curve — uselessly so,
socially anyway. When you’re that far ahead of a coolness curve, it
turns out you’re actually not cool at all — which is good, I suppose,
since being cool may have precluded me from true geek fame in later
life. The early Voltron/Transformers toys back then were pretty lethal
– made out of metal, much more rugged than the later plastic ones.
Later, I remember that there was another metal toy around the house, a
transforming yellow VW Beetle that I assume was Bumblebee, a name I know
now only because of the movies. My “world” picture of Transformers was
scattered, because I could interact with the toys in this sort of random
fashion, interspersed with figurines of Egon Spengler and Donatello the
Ninja Turtle, leading to a weird hodgepodge kid-constructed narrative
where Ghostbusters and transforming vehicles adventured with Swift Wind,
in or out of his own transformed winged unicorn form. (I had a She-Ra,
too, but she was a bit too Barbie-like and I preferred the horses.) The
cartoons were decidedly boy territory, and anyway the television was
dominated by whatever would keep the younger kids in the house busy, but
with the toys I could slip off into my own preferred
machines-and-magical-horses world, however manifestly uncool it was!Man.
I don’t know if that’s useful, or what else I remember –
Transformers for me were part of this vague heavily Asian influence in
my grandparents’ home, with weird cartoons in Japanese and crazy colored
candies. And, of course, Hello Kitty scented erasers and Mr. Sketch
scented markers (licorice and cherry ftw).
Erin Hoffman,
game designer and author, Sword of Fire and Sea,
to be released by Pyr.
When I was a kid, transformers was it. I had a ton of
them, the
simpler ones where you could make them transform within seconds, not the
complicated ones that took hours just to move the head out. I didn’t
have any Go-Bots. Go-Bots where what lame kids played with. Go-Bots
where the cheap yardsale second hand store hand me down Transformers.
Go-Bots did not have their own television show, so therefore they were
lesser beings on the universal scale.I remember each week buying
transformers comics. Walking down the
street to the convenience store, using a small quarter, running home and
reading it right away. Or using that little red lens to get the SPECIAL
SECRET MESSAGE that all transformers backs had on the back. Usually it
was stats, like how tall they were, what weapons they used, etc. It was a
toy with the promise of violence. So much so that my mom wouldn’t let
me have that big bad guy that turned into a gun. Cause guns were bad.
Yet I had a ton of GI Joe toys. Go figure.Anyway, the best, most
important memory was the movie. I remember
writing my first novel (I was nine? I think? – I didn’t know what
paragraphs where back then, but I drew pictures and everything- six
spiral notebooks worth, and I still have it) and I just went by the
commercials on tv, since I didn’t watch the movie until it came out to
the rental place years later. So I drew that giant planet that ate other
planes, and I came up with my own plot and everything. To this day, I
still like my version betterOptimus Prime doesn’t die.
Paul Jessup,
author, Open
Your Eyes.
I watched the show, mainly because it was on
TV. What I really won’t
forget about Transformers is a panel at a convention called Jersey Devil
Con I went to many years ago. My then-roommate was a big wheel in
Transformers-fandom and was on the panel, so I went to support him. A
husband and wife duo were also on the panel and they just absolutely
needed to share something–there was a Transformers program called Beast
Wars with which they were fascinated, and in it a character named
“Dinobot.” (Frankly, they all looked like dinobots to me.) They loved
this character, whom they described as a cross between “Worf and a
ronin”; they then stopped the panel to show us a lengthy segment of the
episode in which Dinobot dies. They shush everyone, ignore questions,
and the other panelists and then after the character dies and the lights
go up, the woman of the duo is actually WEEPING. Pretty amazing, I
thought, since she had surely seen the episode tens of times.The real punchline is this: I often tell this anecdote as a test
at
other science fiction conventions. If the people who I am telling smile
or giggle at the silliness, they’re all right. If they frown and say,
“Yeah, it was really sad when Dinobot died”, I know to mentally file
them…elsewhere.
Nick Mamatas, author, co-editor, Haunted Legends.
Transformers stole my innocence. My
first real exposure to “death”
was in the first Transformers movie, the cartoon, when Optimus Prime was
suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed. For years, I had watched GI Joe’s
leaping out of planes in heavy gunfire, only to land in tanks and drive
bloodlessly through minefields and etc. I had never actually seen one of
these characters, flirting with disaster, cross the edge from play to
drama. And, there wasn’t really any warning. It’s not like parents were
given a warning message about a movie about what was, basically, a toy
franchise. We had no idea what we were going to expect when we sat in
the theater.To this day, I’ve avoided Transformers and all their
toys and tie-ins
as much as possible, including the recent CGI-fueled remakes.Basically,
I hate Transformers now. I want them to quietly go away
from my culture, and never come back. I want my robots to remain robots,
and my cars to remain cars. And, if one of them dies, I’m bitter and
hardened about these things. I get this grim look on my face, call a tow
truck, and refuse to personify them with an imagined “soul” or “spark”
of life.
J. M.
McDermott, author, Maze,
forthcoming from Apex Book Company.
I loved the original Transformers toys. I had several of
them when I was a kid, including Soundwave. I also had several knock-off
versions, but they just weren’t as well put together–there was
something extra-cool about the way the real Transformers folded
together, and they tended to have more mobility in robot form as well.
The knock-offs often lacked separate, poseable arms and legs, and just
had feet and hands popping out of a blocky body. The knock-offs didn’t
have the same solidity, either. Those early Transformers were tough!
They were built well and made to last, just like the vehicles so many of
them could transform into.When they came out with the new toys based on the movie, I wasn’t
sure how good they’d be, but one of my friends got the new Optimus Prime
and we were blown away. They’d done a fantastic job on it! It had even
more complexity than the earlier version, even more detail, but it was
just as thoughtfully constructed and just as cleverly assembled.I like the Transformers Animated figures as well, though they’re a
bit streamlined and simplified, just like the Transformers on that
series. They’re so bright and cheerful, and they capture the essence of
the show and the concept in a lot fewer pieces.And in any incarnation, Optimus Prime is just too cool for words.
* * *
One of the things I really liked about the original Transformers
cartoon was that each of the Transformers–both Autobot and
Decepticon–had a distinct personality. They weren’t just robots, they
were people who happened to be made of metal. And their other form was
an extension of their personality.I admit, I enjoyed the first live-action movie. It was a lot of fun
to watch. But I didn’t feel like the characters–specifically the
Transformers–had the same depth. Optimus had personality, but none of
the others felt, forgive the term, fleshed out. They just felt like
robots who could turn into cars and trucks and planes.The Transformers Animated series managed to recapture the
distinctions, however. Watching the episodes, you can immediately see
the difference between Bumblebee and Ratchet or Prowl and Bulkhead. And
those differences have nothing to do with their coloring or the kind of
vehicle they can become. They each have personality again. They’re
people rather than talking cars.When I wrote my Transformers Animated books for HarperCollins, I
tried to preserve those personality traits. Bumblebee’s basically a kid,
impulsive and eager and a little touchy. Ratchet is an old veteran,
grizzled and tough and taciturn. Prowl’s slick and reserved and a little
too self-confident. Bulkhead is a little slow but incredibly loyal. And
so on.I think the cartoons allow a lot more opportunity to showcase each
Transformer’s character, rather than just focusing on their ability to
transform. They’re better developed, and more well-rounded, which makes
them a lot more engaging.
Aaron
Rosenberg, game designer and author. See a list of credits here.
Transformers transformed my life. Perhaps they were my
first SF love? For years, my favorite Transformer toy was a little fella
named Seaspray. Alas, he’s yet to appear in the live action movies.
Jason Sizemore, publisher, Apex Book Company.
The 1986 Transformers animated movie, which I saw in the
theater with
two younger cousins when I was eleven years old, was my first conscious
introduction to Orson Welles. He had been in the Muppet movie, of
course, but that didn’t stick, just like Marlon Brando in Superman
didn’t stick. Unicron stuck.
Brian Francis
Slattery, author, Liberation:
Being the Adventures of the Slick Six after the Collapse of the United
States of America.
My younger brother and I loved the
Transformers. We loved the
cartoon, the comic books, and of course the toys. We were meant to share
the toys my parents got us, but Optimus Prime was *mine*. Maybe I was
trying to compensate for hogging the toy when I attempted to make my
little brother an Optimus Prime costume one Halloween. I tried to use a
cardboard box for the torso and hockey gloves for the arms. It didn’t
look right. He didn’t want to wear it. So, I just cut up an old yellow
rain poncho and borrowed a red sweater vest from our sister to make him a
Robin the Boy Wonder costume instead. And I still wouldn’t let him play
with my Optimus Prime.
J. Torres,
author, the Alison
Dare series.
“My life has been wedged between two stages of
Transformers. My
younger (by five years) brother played with Transformers all the time
when we were kids. And watched the cartoon. The theme song is burned
into my memory. I didn’t play with them; I was too old, or I was
incapable of manipulating the die-cast metallic transformations. All
these year later, my son has gone through a Transformer (enabled by my
brother, who we call Uncle Fun now) phase. And, to my horror, I still
can’t transform some of the little robot bastards correctly. Especially
the beast ones.”
Paul G.
Tremblay, author, No Sleep Till
Wonderland.
Transformers, huh? I was mostly a Gobots kid. Which if you
say that nowadays, most people think you were abused as a child. At
the time the Gobots seemed cool enough and I could afford them on my
allowance. Yeah, I was expected to buy my own toys. Maybe I was
abused…The only real Transformer I ever got–well, see, my family
was in San Francisco, and we went to Japantown there, and I basically
got an advance for six months on my allowance to buy this incredible
F-15 transformer, the name of which I will never know because all the
packaging was in Japanese. It was pretty damn cool. Much better than
the cheap American knock-offs my friends were playing with. At the time
my friends made fun of my “foreign” Transformer. It’s funny, isn’t it?
Today a kid with the original Japanese model would be the coolest kid
on the playground. I was the reject who wasted my money on a
transformer that wasn’t even “real”. I loved the damn thing, though.
The inescapable conclusion here is that kids do not know what they’re
talking about. Or at least, they didn’t back in the 80s.
David
Wellington, author, Frostbite
- A Werewolf Tale.
