Welcome to the first in several Geek Nights, in which I lead you, the misbegotten readers, through the dark woodland byways of my geekiness.
Those of you who are well versed in all things geeky will already know much of this, so I guess this is really aimed at those who see me mucking about with my transformers collection or reading roleplaying books featuring scantily clad people holding enormously phallic swords and think 'what the hell is up with that big goober?'
Well wonder no longer. Tonight's installment will delve into the world of transformer collecting, which is probably the least geeky thing I'm into, and thusly something you can all relate to.
Cough.
So, as I believe is the case with most transformer collectors*, it's all about the nostalgia. I loved the original cartoon with all the dreamy eyed passion a prepubescent lad** can conjure up when he's watching 30 foot tall robots blast away at each other with laser guns. And when you're seven years old, the fact that the show you're watching has reeeeally awful animation, ludicrously stupid scripts and is basically just a 30 minute long toy commercial completely skips you by.
Now, as a hairy 28 year old, I am stuck with the fact that the original cartoon was bloody awful, and not only this, but the original toys were pretty crap too as far as standards of articulation and cartoon similarity went. Luckily for me (many collectors don't give a crap; I'm a fussy bastard), Hasbro released a line called Classics, which are toys based on the old cartoon but redesigned. It's the Classics line that I'm collecting, because for me these are the toys I always wanted to see as a kid. They look totally awesome, you can put them into silly poses and I'm yet to see the anyone born within ten years of me wander into my room, eye the shelf full of toys and not say 'hey, cool!'
When the film came out, it took like five viewings for me to start getting annoyed with parts of it (let's begin with the moronically offensive black stereotyping and go from there!), I was that swept up with seeing my childhood heroes on the big screen. And that's probably the biggest part of the whole thing: as totally lame as Optimus Prime could be, cartoons like that have replaced the stories of old with our generation. They were our Greek heroes, our champions, our legendary giants striding the earth.
And they can be purchased from all good retail stores near you.
EDIT: I couldn't find a way to work this picture into my post, so I won't bother.
*At least those who don't keep their toys sitting inside the original packaging in the hope that one day they can sell them for riches, a beautiful partner and possibly their self respect back
**Next to the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when Commander Data gets it on with that short haired blonde officer who died a bit later. That was totally hot even when I was 12.
