900 Transformers

Watching Transformers Dark of the Moon

2011-07-08T13:51:00.003-05:00

There are a few spoilers to the movie in here, if you haven't watched it yet. So, just be warned.

I went to to the third of Mr. Bay's Transformers trilogy over the Fourth of July weekend. I managed to get to the 3D showing early on Friday afternoon, avoiding the weekend crowds that were such an issue the last time my wife and I went to a new flick. I have to say that the 3D was done very well, in my opinion. It wasn't something done to make you notice it, but rather just blended into the background. It was like having the bass in the soundtrack. You can still listen without it and get a good experience, not really noticing it's gone at times. But by adding it in, you get that extra dimension to the experience. The 3D was the same. I'm still going to enjoy watching the Blu-Ray in 2D later down the road, and won't feel like something's missing, thanks to how they didn't over-sell it's use. You know the ones that push it, having things fly out of the screen directly at you, like at the amusement park rides. I never had that feeling here.

As I tried to put into words at the time, I have some difficulty talking about what I think of the Transformers movies. The third one wasn't any different, by the time it was over. Being a big Transformers fan, in general, it almost feels like a duty to say that I liked the film, just because it's about Transformers. And I did enjoy the film. It's just that I always feel like I'm not the right person to ask that question of, because I'm probably much more particular about it than a casual viewer would be. Or, realizing that I might be too particular, I may end up over-compensating and say that it was awesome despite some flaws that actually made it less than great. So I just don't know how reliable my views on the film would be for most people that would ask me.

So, I'll stick with some generalities here. The look of the Transformers was as awesome as ever. The over-the-top performances of some of the characters (as in, no person in real life acts that oddly) was the same as the first two movies. The mythology was expanded, and we managed to see more characters than ever on the screen. The big complaint most people have was the lack of plot, and I have to agree that it was something I missed. I didn't realize it while watching the film, but thinking about it later, there just wasn't much of a story. In fact, there was more interesting interaction and plot between the humans this time than the Transformers. It was almost like they bolted a war with giant robots around the lives of Sam and Carly. Prime, Ironhide, Megatron, Shockwave, etc... they just didn't feel like they were soldiers working together to take over or defend the planet. The just felt like individuals with bit parts in the story. It's still a great summer movie, something to watch while eating pop-corn and beating the summer heat in an air-conditioned theater. It just won't win any awards on the story.

So, majority of the movies I really liked. It's great to have something that's been a hobby of mine for such a long time get such main-stream adoption. It's very cool that the movies continue to rake in good money. I plan to re-watch the films a number of times through the coming years. Now, for the detailed view:

Overall, taking all three movies into account, there are just two things that I really didn't like about how it all turned out. The first is the mythology of the Transformers. You see, in the cartoon and comic book, the Transformers are these almost immortal creatures that came from way off in outer space. They crashed on Earth back when the dinosaurs were still around, but were still functional when a volcano eruption brought them back in modern times... now, those are some tough bots! And the inclusion of such a long period meant that you could have all kinds of cool mythology about what was happening on Cybertron while the big leaders of the major war were suddenly MIA, and energy was dwindling on the home planet. It also meant that the death of a character was a major thing, with how long their life spans could potentially be. Distance also seemed much larger. I don't recall if it was ever really mentioned in the 'toon or comic how far away Cybertron was, but the only way to get there was eventually through a space bridge. It wasn't like they were close enough to make a solo-trip in a few weeks through space. That kind of forced isolation made the story interesting. They couldn't just head back home if the going got tough, they were stuck here.

In the movies? In the last film, especially, it seemed that the war on Cybertron was pretty recent. That when the Allspark and Megatron were lost in space, it wasn't all that long ago. Sentinel crashing onto the moon happened in the 70's, when our space program was just getting started. So, Megatron and the Allspark wouldn't have fallen to earth much earlier than that. Megatron was found, in the first film, around 1897. My guess is that the writers would have placed planet-fall just a hundred or so years earlier, at the most. I mean, if Megatron and Sentinel made a deal to meet up later, they couldn't have been separated in planet-fall by very much time. So, that means that the whole war on Cybertron was still going critical from when Megatron was lost and when Optimus Prime showed himself for the first movie. Comparing a few hundred years in the movies to a few million years in the comic books just takes away some of the mystique of the race for me. The sense of age, of wisdom, and weariness that Prime would have after thousands of years of war just didn't translate to the same figure after a hundred years. It also seemed like the distances involved weren't that big either. I mean, the Decepticons managed to find Earth for the first time in the first movie, right? So, by the third movie, six or so years later, they had built up an army to hide on the back of the moon? That means that slower-than-light transport between our two planets can't take too long, so they must be fairly close together. The feeling of the Transformers really being marooned on a backwards (to them) planet was lost when I thought through that aspect. Another piece of the mystique removed from the original series.

Second, and this one is my biggest issue with the trilogy, was the portrayal of Megatron. I'm a kid that grew up with the cartoon Megatron having grandiose plans that, yes, were always foiled by Prime, but were major plans nonetheless. They had scope and scale that only a big-time villain could pull off. Beast Wars gave us a Megatron that was not only able to think big (going back in time to find the Ark? That's a massive plan!) but was cunning and deceitful even in the little plans for defeating the Maximals. Both were strong, capable leaders that you wouldn't want to cross without Prime on your side.

In the movie? Well, Megatron's last words to Prime were along the lines of "After all, what would you be without me?" Any my almost instant reaction was "Meh. You won't even be missed." I mean, sure, give some credit for the writers giving him a plan to warp Cybertron into Earth orbit, that's a pretty big plan. But how he acted? He was like one of his processor-damaged flunkies from the cartoon series. He didn't have a plan to back-stab Sentinel Prime until a fleshling took him to task? Seriously? He just seems to be as effective an evil genius as a paper bag. I really do rate how heroic Prime and the Autobots are against how devious their counterparts are. How difficult it really is to defeat them. In those respects, Prime didn't have much of a challenge.

Also, Megatron groveling to the Fallen in the second movie? Megatron answers to no one! He mouthed off to a frickin' planet eating planet in the cartoon movie! Good grief. They should have called him Neutertron instead.

So, those are my thoughts on the movie, a week later. I probably won't see it in the theater again, but will definitely have the Blu-ray for my collection soon after it's released. Letting go of my fanboy view of the Transformers, they were a lot of fun to watch. I just hope they get more plot in the next ones, whenever they get made.

Gotta buy 'em all... if they can be found

2011-05-02T11:31:00.003-05:00

We (that is, Transformers collectors) seem to be in a new situation this month. It's been building for a while now, ever since the demise of the Transformers Animated toyline. For those unfamiliar with how these things go, Hasbro will plan out a line of toys for a season or year. Usually, those toys tie in to a show or movie. So, each year we've had a movie, toys appear a month or two in advance based on the movie characters. Between movies, we've had toys based on a couple of TV cartoons as well as a series of "classic" characters that are from shows of years past.

Well, lately some of the toys that are created for a series don't make it onto the shelves in the stores before another series or movie takes over... so, there were around half a dozen toys created for the Animated TV cartoon that didn't get wide distribution in the U.S. because the second Transformers movie came out before they could be shipped. We (again, collectors) were somewhat lucky that stores like Toys R Us decided to take those and sell them as "exclusives" that were on the pegs the same time as the movie toys. But even with that effort, there was still at least one figure that never made it to stores in the U.S. at all. Animated Blackout had to be imported from Japan, the only place he had been released.

Forward to today, and we're seeing an even larger gap in "announced" toys that aren't being shipped to stores. Either the stores aren't ordering them because they're getting space cleared for the newest movie, or Hasbro has declined to produce them because they're making the toys from the newest movie. Either way, it could end up being a case of trying to hunt down rare figures as "exclusives" from a single retailer, OR, simply never seeing them in the U.S.

It's a shame, since many of the figures not being released in larger quantities were ones that long-time collectors were excited about. They tended to be characters based on the original series of toys from way back in 1984. There are three of the ill-fated "Power Core Combiner" line that I still need in order to complete that series on my shelves. It's almost like we suddenly have too much of a good thing... there are too many characters that Hasbro's trying to put into stores and they're starting to step on one another's release schedules. I finally started ordering some of my figures from Hasbro's online Toy Shop. But even there, not all of them are available to order... they either don't get enough stock to keep up with demand, or just don't get added.

So, for now, I'll just have to be content that I managed to snag Lugnut online, since he's an awesome figure! Much more articulation than I had expected, and very stable in robot mode. I'm used to most of the plane-based Transformers being back-heavy, because they invariably seem to have an entire tail section hanging off their backs. But this guy is rock-solid.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to cut my collection pretty soon. Either stop buying new figures (which seems very unlikely to stick), or start selling some of my lesser-liked figures to make room for new ones. I'm just seeing less and less shelf space available each time I get a new character unpacked. I mean, my Primes and Megatrons are almost shoulder-to-shoulder right now!

I know that I can do some re-arranging of some of my figure layouts to gain a bit more space. But it's going to be a losing battle no matter what I do. Eventually, I'm going to run out of horizontal surfaces to safely display everybody. I have a feeling that the latest movie, Dark of the Moon, will test the remaining space I do have in the coming months...

Number One Thousand...

2010-12-23T09:53:00.008-06:00

Well, I managed to make it to the magic number before the end of 2010... sort of. As my previous posts mention, I have about a dozen "Real Heroes", "Titanium" and another dozen or so non-Hasbro/Takara/Tomy figures added in to my collection count. So, my "official" Transformer count is a bit lower than what my database shows. But, for my own purposes, yesterday was the day my count hit the big one-zero-zero-zero! What figure rolled me over to that magic number, you ask? Well, I'll tell you two versions of the story. The first is the one I prefer:

Back in 1984 I had just turned seven years old. One of the presents I opened was a brand new Transformer that changed from a robot into a little red race car; Cliffjumper. I carried that guy all over with me, and he's still in my collection to this day, albeit now with a broken-off head and very loose joints. Fast forward to 2010, the Christmas season. New on the pegs, just in time for the holidays is a brand new Transformer that changes from a robot into a medium sized Cybertronian race car; Cliffjumper!

There's some very nice symmetry in that, so it's the version I'll probably stick with. But there's also the second version:

Cruising through my local Target during the 2010 holiday season, I find a lone new figure hanging from the pegs; a single Cliffjumper, all by himself. I figure, I'd better grab it now, since I may not find another until after the Christmas rush goes away. After checking out and driving home, I realize that he's my 999th figure in the database... so close to 1,000! But I've always loved the character, so I couldn't have just left him in the store at the time... oh, well. That leaves me going to a second Target store two days later. Hanging on the pegs I see at least two Cliffjumpers, plus: Thunderwing!

So, technically, my 1K figure is Thunderwing, which still isn't bad. He was a very cool G1 figure, and had some great plotlines in the G1 and later comic books. So, he's worthy of the title if necessary. But I still like to think that, since they were both purchased close together and both released in the same wave, Cliffjumper is the deserving 1K winner.

So, 1,000 figures right at the end of 2010... only took me 26 years to get here. Here's to at least 26 more! (years, not figures) :)

The end is just the beginning

2010-08-30T14:34:00.005-05:00

So I ended up back with Photoshop to stitch together my photos. One side went fine, the other is a bit distorted on one end, but isn't terrible. It's been 57 days since I started the project. That's almost two full months from installing the first shelf supports to putting the final Prime in place. The current figure count (I don't call it "final", since that would be inaccurate... I'm still collecting, after all) comes to a grand total of:

945 Transformers

I didn't include the non-transforming Titanium figures or the half-dozen or so Robot Heroes figures I also have, but that's as close as I can come to an accurate count. So there you have it! The one number that stands out from my count is the number of Mini-Cons I have now. I've been collecting groups of them for quite a while, but I didn't really realize how many I really had until the spreadsheet gave me the total: 107 Mini-Cons... that's one ninth of my entire collection!

So that's it for the vast bulk of my installation project. All that's left is finding room for new figures as they're released. I have a feeling I'm going to need some extra shelf space in the near future, or have to sell off some of the less interesting figures. For now, I'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief that everything is back on display after several years!

Everything is on the shelves!

2010-08-29T14:57:00.002-05:00

I put the final figure (a new Prime) up on the shelf about an hour ago. Since then, I've been trying to get photo software to stitch together my pictures so that I can get each wall in one shot... so far Photoshop has completely failed me, so it's on to other freeware options. First up is Microsoft's Image Composite Editor.

Out of Prime Real Estate

2010-08-24T08:13:00.004-05:00

I'm finally down to just two full tubs of Transformers, which represent about half of my remaining collection. Which means that they must be the small to medium size figures to pack together that tightly. One should be my Beast Wars collection, and the other looks like my Armada/Energon/Cyberton figures. I can't remember if I left most of them in robot mode before packing them up, but hopefully I did. The time I'm taking to re-transform figures is still slowing me down the most. Even looking up the figure names doesn't take that long.

Last night I gathered up all of my Bumblebee figures, which were all in vehicle mode except for two. I still have three left to convert before I'm done putting them onto the top shelf.

Right now I have about two and a half shelves left open, all together. That includes a couple of feet at the ends of the two top shelves. What I don't seem to have anymore is room for my Prime/Primal and Megatron collections... I started the Primes on one side of a shelf and the Megatrons on the other. Last night I put my second to last movie Prime on the shelf and filled the remaining gap. I can still fit a few more in front of the other figures, if they're shorter. But for the most part, any new leader figure I get will have to go on a completely new shelf. I considered moving the Megatrons to the other side of the room, on their own shelf, but that would mean moving the other figures I already have over there... plus, it doesn't look quite as impressive split out that far. But it might still need to happen at some point. Maybe a year down the road I'll take the time to move them around better. For now, they can stay where they are.

My overall figure damage report was really low until a few days ago. There were less than half a dozen vehicles that had small paint scratches or rubberized parts that had been bent in a curve that needed to be straightened back out. But over the weekend I tried to work with my Generation 2 Jazz figure... the plastic they used for the front end didn't stand the test of time well at all. When I tried to pull the arms out to the sides, the top of the hood split apart, on both sides for both arms. Then the entire front end detached from the rest of the figure. So now he's in several pieces on my desk as I figure out what I want to do. My G1 Jazz is still discolored and has fairly loose joints, but it's still in one piece. I may see what I can do with some glue to put the other guy back together again. It's just a shame the plastic came apart so badly, as he's one of my favorite characters.

I'm glad that I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel now. It's been fun to revisit a number of figures as I put them on the shelves, but it's also been a much longer process than I had expected...

Further along, but still quite a bit left

2010-08-16T12:22:00.003-05:00

So I managed to get my Alternators on the shelf and moved ahead to the rest of my figures over the weekend. It's going faster than it was last month, but it's still slower going than I had assumed when I started the project. It looks like I transformed about half of my figures into vehicle mode, or at least partially into vehicle mode, when I packed them up several years ago. That means that it's taking me longer to transform them back into robot mode again before I can place them on display. I had to change every single one of the Alternators back to robot mode, so that, in itself, took most of an afternoon.

I'm also finding it a bit difficult to find the "taller" figures that I want to put on the shelves first, so that I can put shorter figures in front of them without completely blocking the one in the back. I have more and more of the "basic" size figures sitting on my desk, ready for placement, but not enough larger figures to place them in front of yet. I think the next tub of figures has a greater number of the big guys though, so hopefully that will sort itself out in the coming week.

So I finally got far enough ahead to be curious about the numbers... I've been cross-checking my figure names in my database as I put them onto the shelves, so I can get an accurate count of what I have. As of today, I have 341 figures on display. Not bad, just slightly over a third of my total collection in place now... but that means I still have two thirds of them sitting in the remaining tubs. At this rate I won't be done until November! Although, as it gets colder outside, I'll be spending more time on the project inside. I think I can probably get through the rest sometime in September, at the latest.

Maybe.

Pushed around by paperwork

2010-08-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

I fully intended to sit down and convert all of my Alternator figures from vehicle to robot mode this weekend, then get them onto the shelves. However, after pulling all the vehicles out and setting them on the table, I realized that I probably needed the instructions for some of them. That led me to the cardboard box full of instruction manuals, and from there I ended up spending close to an hour sorting all of them out into their respective toylines/series.

By the time I finished sorting through them, I was running out of time for the evening. My wife and I are still working on the exterior of the house, and evenings and early mornings are the only times we can work without a heat advisory making it dangerous this time of the year. So rather than start the Transformation process for a bunch of fairly complex figures, I went the opposite direction. I opened up and displayed some of the simplest figures I own:

The Mighty Muggs Transformers figures are an artistic rendering of some of the more popular figures in the shows and movies. They don't transform into anything. They're just short, vinyl figures, all the same shape (with minor variations like Bumblebee's horns) with paint used to make them look like their toy counterparts. They've been out in stores for a year or more now, but at least half of them had never been removed from their packaging until yesterday. I've been collecting them because they remind me of my own Cuboyd Transformers customs. I don't think there are any plans for new Mighty Muggs Transformers figures at this point, though. So, this particular collection may be complete already. (NOTE: From this point forward, I'll be adding clickable images with a red border for photos that have larger versions you can preview.)

I did finally open up my last two Starscream toys from their boxes, to complete their lineup on my top shelf. I had the Leader class movie figure and the Alternity figure still waiting for display until the past weekend. It isn't a complete representation of all the figures ever released, but it's a pretty good grouping of them.

Since the latest "Hunt for the Decepticons" and "Generations" toy lines have started hitting stores, I've been picking up more new figures. I'm still trying to limit myself to just those that look interesting, since I still have hundreds of other figures that still need my attention... but there are quite a few interesting figures in this series, so I'm sure I'll be adding quite a few in the next month. I also finally have my hands on the Japanese Takara/Tomy release of Blaster as a fully-functional USB hub! This guy was announced over a year ago, got canceled, then re-scheduled and finally released.

So the original figure (on the left) turned into a ghetto blaster. The USB hub turns into a laptop computer that works as a real USB hub. You can see the ports on the robot's legs in the photo above. What I think is the coolest part is the fact that any of the old cassette figures that fit in the original Blaster will also fit in the chest compartment of the new figure! I've also confirmed that the new figure can hold the original Blaster's rifle just fine. It looks huge, but the holes in the fists are identical sizes.

So, that's the collection status as of now. The Alternators will definitely be next, then we'll see what else presents itself from the tubs.

Back from SDCC 2010

2010-07-27T15:12:00.002-05:00

The San Diego Comic Convention 2010 was packed, as usual. The only similar experience I've had in my past would be that moment in high school right after the bell rings and everyone's trying to get to their lockers at the same time. But multiply the number of students by ten and divide the number of lockers in half. And give everyone giant (as in, big enough for two young women to make dresses out of them) shoulder bags in addition to all the usual backpacks. It was fun, but I'm glad to be back home, in the much lower population density you get in Nebraska.

One of my main targets for the con this year was the Hasbro booth(s). The main Hasbro booth had the upcoming figures on display behind glass panels, which was cool to see. Some new figures were there that hadn't already been shown online. The Hasbro Toy Shop booth was where the exclusive figures were being sold, which was definitely on my list. Three or four years ago the booth had an exclusive Rodimus Prime figure. The line to buy it was so long that it wrapped around the entire booth section and security had to be employed to turn people away so that it didn't get even longer. I didn't manage to get into the line that year (even though I got the figure later).

This year I was afraid I'd have a similar experience. Maybe Blaster isn't as interesting to collectors, or maybe even the other exclusive toys they were selling weren't as popular as in the past. For whatever reason, I managed to walk right into the line at 4:30 on my first day there. That was pretty cool... except for that fact that in the morning the only way you could get in line was to go to a booth on the second floor of the convention center, wait in a long line there, be given a ticket, return to the Toy Shop booth and then wait in that line before you could buy anything. So, I eventually managed to find out where the heck the ticket booth was upstairs, got a ticket that was only good after 4:00 pm that afternoon, and had three hours to kill. Then when I finally got back to the booth at 4:30, there was so little demand that they weren't even checking for tickets anymore... Oh, well. The end result is that I know have a brand new, shiny Blaster and three of his cassette figures. I also picked up a re-issue of the 1986 Hoist figure along the way.

It isn't pictured above, since I'd already added it to my Prime/Primal lineup on the shelves, but I also picked up the "Disney Label" Mickey Mouse/Optimus Prime figure.

So not a bad trip, overall. I also finally have my fixed Xbox 360 back at the house. I had the red-ring-of-death two days after buying the Transformers: War for Cybertron game for it... I've only played five minutes of the game so far. Hoping to make up for that soon ;)

The rest of my collection should be going on the shelves more quickly, but still with some delays I hadn't expected. A couple exterior projects for the house need to take priority this week and the next. But I'll keep posting as I go! Until next time!

Experiencing breakage

2010-07-18T15:57:00.002-05:00

The majority of my Primes (and Primals) and Megatrons (and Galvatrons) are now on permanent display. I have a couple of the more recent movie versions still packed away in various tubs, but most of them are accounted for now:

For the most part, the install went well. Until one Prime and one Megatron decided to show their age. For some reason, my Armada Prime and Transmetal II Megatron became far more brittle than I had expected. Prime's right arm cracked at the elbow and had to be superglued back together. Poor Megs had the joint for his shoulder armor crack during transformation, then his head snapped off his neck when I tried to turn it slightly. Both are glued back together again, but I don't dare move any of the dark grey joints on Megs at this point. He's in robot mode forever now, for his own good. I'm wondering how many more of my figures will show the same distressing breakages. It wasn't even that I put the joints under undue stress. Each break was during part of the regular transformation sequence.

Well, my next figure group is a pile of Starscreams. After him, I'm ready for the rank and file troops. I have other groups, like Bumblebee, Grimlock, and Skywarp, but not enough to make a special effort to gather them all together right away. I'll just add them into groups as I find them. But I have enough Starscreams in one tub to justify going through them all at once.

I probably won't be posting much for the next week or so. I'm heading to SDCC (San Diego Comic Con for those unaware of the acronym) on Wednesday and won't be back to my collection space until the following Monday. I have a very strong feeling I'll have at least four more figures for my collection by then... assuming I can get in line for the Hasbro booth at some point during the con this year.

So, that's it for now. I just found my pile(s) of instruction booklets, so now I need to figure out how to organize several hundred of those too...

Promptly Picked a Pack of Plastic Primes

2010-07-13T17:50:00.002-05:00

Well, I didn't get all that far with figure unpacking on Monday... I was able to find and reference all but four of my Primes/Primals though!

Once I get the last couple figures back into robot mode, they'll be ready to put up on the shelf. Next will be Megatrons, then the free-for-all.

Tubs-O-Fun

2010-07-12T11:13:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm home sick today. A cold has been making the rounds at the office, and it finally reached me. I guess that gives me an extra day to sort through plastic! So that some of you can see what I'm up against, here's a quick shot of my collection just before I started taking figures out of storage:

So those are all the "loose" figures I've been carrying between apartments over the years. There's also the more recent set of figures that I've kept in their boxes, because we were getting ready to move:

I gave some thought to how I wanted to order my collection on the shelves the past day or two. I keep coming back to simple problems. Such as, do I go by series, starting with the Generation One at one corner, then wrap around through G2, Machine Wars, Beast Wars, etc? Or do I order them more by character groups? I know that I'll have a shelf of Primes/Primals and another of Megatrons, but I also have a large enough group of Starscreams, Bumblebees, Grimlocks and others to put them all together by their character types. But that would mean breaking up other smaller groups, like Alternators... In the end, I think I'm going to just start by putting the Primes and Megatrons on one shelf, then put figures up as I pull them out of their tubs. As I get more on the shelves I should start to see where I want the patterns to go, and can rearrange from there. Trying to pre-arrange before I even have anything out of storage just isn't working for me.

My first piece of display is going to be the Worlds Smallest Transformers collection though. I keep those grouped together inside acrylic display boxes, so that they don't get as dusty. It's such a shame that Takara/Tomy stopped making them! Although, I've been keeping up with some of the non-traditional WST releases, like the Dinobots.

It's just unfortunate that they aren't really sanctioned by the parent company of the brand. Well, back to my list and my arrangements. Oh, and Daleks Rule!

The shelving is up!

2010-07-10T21:15:00.000-05:00

It started out a bit slower than I had expected, but I managed to get all the shelves cut and hooked together on the wall today! The forecast has rain for the rest of the weekend, so I figured today was my last day to get the major cuts done on the power saw outside of the garage. It just makes too much of a mess to cut inside the garage at the moment, with some of our boxes still stored there from the move.

I ended up getting ten inch brackets and just drilling the holes in the bottom of the shelves for the notches at the very ends. It was faster than cutting them all with the tools I have available. I don't see any way that the shelves can ever be rearranged, so the holes will be fine where they are. Here's a small view of the two walls now. The first photo is of the left wall, with a Mighty Muggs Bumblebee for size comparison. The second photo is the right wall, with the PCC Skyburst with his drones attached.

So now I get to print out my list of figures and start putting them onto the shelves... I just have to figure out where to start.

Putting names to face(plate)s

2010-07-08T14:44:00.001-05:00

One of the big hurdles I'm going to have to get over in my upcoming work is trying to remember the names of all these characters as I pull them out of storage. I'll be honest, there really isn't much hope that I'll recall even a tenth of them by sight. If they weren't featured in one of the TV shows, there isn't much chance at all. This is especially important since I need to work my way through my existing database by figure name to make sure they're all included!

Luckily, I see that TransFormerLand is still up and active. I have a feeling I can probably even provide some missing photos of some figures for them as I go... it would be nice to be able to pay back a bit of the time I've spent at their site in the past, trying to remember a figure's name on nothing but a vague memory of a color and alternate mode. I had almost forgotten about them, if it hadn't been mentioned in an eBay auction I was browsing through. Definitely going to be a great help!

I'm still looking for shorter brackets for the shelving right now. Odds keep getting lower that I'll find ones without the notch on the end in place. I may just have to break out the dremel or find a good pair of metal shears and just resign myself to some extra manual labor. I really want to get the shelving up by the end of this weekend. My TFCC Punch/Counterpunch arrived in the mail today, so my stack of figures keeps growing in the corner...

Shelving considerations

2010-07-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

I decided to put modular shelving up along two of my office walls using those metal strips you attach to the wall and add shelf brackets to. It's what I've been using since our first house in 2004, and it allows me to put the figures out in a continuous, unbroken line from one side of the room to the other. I think it's better than having multiple bookshelves, where the shelves are interrupted every few feet by the side of the bookshelf itself. It does remove a bit of the configurability, since the entire shelf has to sit at the same height, while bookshelves can be staggered to fit the figures more easily. I just prefer seeing the characters side-by-side, and it lets me cram more figures onto the available horizontal surface.

So, I have the main supports up on the walls, and I have the shelving boards in the garage, ready to be cut and spliced together. What I don't have a the moment are the brackets to hold the shelves themselves. The boards I have are just under 12 inches in depth. So, I picked up some 12 inch brackets, thinking they'd work fine. Turns out, having close to an inch of bracket sticking out from under the shelves every few feet just doesn't look all that good:

So, I think I'll go back to the eight inch brackets. The only problem there is, I can't find eight inch brackets locally that don't have that little notch on the very end. It's meant to be there to keep the shelf from sliding forward and backward, but when the bracket is eight inches and the board is 11 inches, that just doesn't work. I would either have to drill holes in the bottom of the shelves for each bracket, or cut off the notches on over 40 pieces of metal... I did the cutting option back in our first house, but I didn't have the sheer number I have now. So, today my plan is to do some searching on the web to see if I can find some eight inch brackets without the notch. Exciting, I know.

Meanwhile, my collection keeps growing. Yesterday the Leader class movie Starscream, Deluxe Sea Spray, and PCC Skyburst arrived from Toys R Us online. Sea Spray and 'Screamer may just have to remain boxed until I have time to get to them...

Simple mathematics: how to count

2010-07-06T08:14:00.000-05:00

Before I get into the process of setting out my figures, and before someone asks the question anyway, I wanted to talk about how I count my collection. In the Transformers fan community there's been some running debate about how figures should be counted when people ask you how many you have. You see, it isn't quite as simple as pointing to each figure on the shelf and adding a mark on a tally sheet as you go, although that's one option.

Where things get tricky is when you start working with some of the "-master" figures, sets, and Mini-Cons. For those of you that aren't Transformers fans, here's the dilemma. There are some Transformers toys that had a main figure in the box, but also included a smaller, secondary figure as part of the "gimmick" of a particular line. So, in the Headmaster line, each main figure came with a little person that transformed into the head for the robot. Targetmasters had figures that turned into weapons. Powermasters had figures that turned into engines. So, when you're counting those figures, is it just one, or two?

It gets even further complicated when you reach the Mini-Con era. Mini-Cons are fully transforming figures that connected to a larger figure, but also remained distinct vehicles of their own. So a Transformer figure could include one or more Mini-Cons that transformed into jets, but also connected to the main figure as a power-up feature. Some collectors group those together when counting, partly due to how freaking many Mini-Cons were released (and are still being released) over the years.

Beyond the pack-in figures, there's another group of fans that prefer to count collections in terms of packaged figures. So, if there were two figures in a single blister pack, that would count as one rather than two in the final numbers. The same with "sets" of figures, like the Micromaster series that included four small Transformers in a pack. Even though each figure was distinctly named on the package, they were all purchased together as a single set, so they count once.

So, what method do I use? It's a bit of a mix, to be honest. Any of the "-master" figures in the Generation One series I end up counting as just a single figure. So, even though Powermaster Optimus Prime includes the Hi-Q engine figure, I just count that as one Transformer. But after Generation One I started counting figures individually if they were named on the package and transformed from one mode to another. So I do count every Mini-Con individually, even if they were packed with a larger Transformer that they connect to. It's still a bit of a judgment call with every figure I get (the recent Targetmaster-ish Cyclonus I counted as a single Transformer, even though his weapon transforms into a named figure) but I think that's what many collectors do.

The number really is just a way for me to see how much my collection has grown since 1984. Especially during the last two or three years, when everything was in tubs rather than being displayed where I could see it growing. It isn't something that I compare to other collectors 1) because I don't really know any others personally and 2) because I'm still a bit shy about telling another human being how much plastic I've been hoarding in the basement all this time. I've been a huge fan of the toys through the years (except maybe the Actionmaster era), but I haven't really connected with others so far. I haven't even managed to get to a BotCon yet, where I'd at least have a common conversation with other adults. It's on the list though, so maybe 2011 will be the year ;-)

In other progress news, I have the brackets for the shelves attached to the walls now. I just have to cut and splice the shelving to fit the length of the walls this week. I'll post the pics as soon as I can find and unpack the camera charger...

900 Transformers and counting

2010-07-04T20:25:00.000-05:00

I've been a Transformers fan since I was about eight years old, back when Hasbro released the first series of figures in 1984. I wasn't what I would have called a "collector" at the time, but I picked up as many as I could afford on my allowance through the early years. They ended up being well-worn aids to my imagination. I still have all but two of my original "Generation One" figures, although they aren't in the best condition now. When I really started "collecting" them was when I moved out of the house after high school and started college in '96. The Beast Wars series was just getting started, and I bought just about every figure I could find in the local stores. I've been collecting ever since, although not to be a completest. I just pick up the figures that really catch my eye or have some homage to the earlier characters that I still love.

So, to the point of this blog. My wife and I have recently moved into a new house, one that we had custom built for us (and have put quite a bit of our own work into completing). We're still in the process of finishing up the minor details, like window trim and painting a few rooms. But one of the things I was able to do in the design was to make sure my new office had plenty of display space for my Transformer collection. When we lived in our first house, somewhere in 2004, I was able to fit the collection along one wall and roughly three shelves of a spare bedroom.

By the end of 2006 I had moved to the larger office/bedroom in the basement, where the figures took up three shelves along a much longer wall and around part of a second wall.

When we ended up moving in 2007 I took with me seven completely full 18-gallon Sterilite (like Rubbermade) containers of my beloved Transformers. Three years later, we're starting to unpack in the new place. I have nine full 18-gallon containers, plus some still boxed figures that would probably fill most of a tenth tub.

I put together a database on my Handspring Visor that converted over to my two Sony Clie PDAs and now resides on my iPod Touch. It isn't 100% accurate, as I've found from time to time, but it's pretty close, and that's where the title of this blog comes from. If the calculations are still correct, I have just over 900 individual Transformers figures that I'll be setting up on shelves over the coming month (or more). That's a lot of plastic to pull out, dust off, re-configure and set in place! I'll be taking my time to cross-reference my database at the same time, getting everything back to an accurate count as I go. I'll be adding entries to this blog as the process continues, from putting the shelving up all the way through to placing the very last figure.

So, wish me luck and follow along as I start a journey back down my own personal memory lane, Transformers style!