I loved Transformers back when they first came out. You could battle them as robots, or race them around as vehicles. And when you didn’t feel up to that, you could just transform them back and forth and that was pretty fun in itself. I miss them, when I got too old to play with them I sold them all for a bike. Then I realized you never get to old to play with them.

I bet they would fetch quite a bit on EBay these days. Back then they were pretty cool, they were made with die-cast metal with rubber wheels, and looked like quality collector toy cars. And were pretty cool as robots as well, often with many movable parts. They had a little black heat sensor robot head sticker on them that when rubbed with your finger would reveal if it was an Autobot or Decepticon. Then they started making garbage, really cheap plastic with basically no engineering put into the transforming aspect at all. A bad looking car turned into a worse looking robot of horrible bright colors. It seems today they are finally making some more similar to the originals, but they are pretty cheap plastic and still not nearly up to the quality, some of the toys don’t even transform at all, pretty sad. On top of that, they came out with the new movie, which is pretty cool and action packed and all, but definitely not kid appropriate, which isn’t cool after you obsess the kids with Transformers again by filling toy stores with them. And too much was changed or cheesed up (as if that was possible) for the original lovers of the toys.

Anyway, makes me feel pretty old now that I can say they just don’t make things like they use to…

EDIT: Okay, someone got my nephew the new Optimus Prime (the one that actually transforms), and it was pretty complex and a fun little challenge to actually transform it into the truck. So I will give the latest batch of toys some credit on the engineering. He still looks kind of silly with the new makeover paint job and all, they should have kept him old school, especially being that the original voice actor from the old cartoons played him in the new movie, that was pretty cool, that guys voice rocks.