Wow, nostalgia time!
My childhood collection was pretty piecemeal. My parents weren't big on buying dropping a lot of money on toys, so most of my childhood Transformers I either bought with allowance money (usually at yard sales, occasionally new) or ended up trading for with other neighbourhood kids.
Also, Charlottetown being such a tiny, homey place, all the department stores were located right downtown... which was like, 2 blocks from my house, and on my way home from school... so all the Transformers I couldn't own, I spent a LOT of time studying on she shelves, memorizing those Tech Spec bios, even drawing little sketches of their faceplate designs so I'd remember them later.
Weird story... an old friend of mine had a broken Optimus, and wrote a nasty letter to Hasbro (here in Longeuil) complaining and saying he'd never buy TFs again, etc. They actually replied, informing him that they would send him one of their "new Triple Changers" free of charge... which was pretty exciting, because at the time we had NO IDEA what a Triple Changer might be! Instead, however, a whole new Optimus Prime arrived in the mail.
Of course, my buddy Ben never cared much for Optimus. He wanted to be a pilot when he grew up, so when another kid at school was selling Jetfire for $14, Ben sold me his still-new Optimus for exactly $14.
Of course, although Megatron was one of my first Transformers, he was stolen by another kid within the first year I had him. THEN I got Optimus Prime. TRAGEDY! With no Megatron, and limited funds, I ended up buying a "Galactic Man" from Radio Shack for $13 instead (yes, the notorious grey "Shackwave"). My slightly miscoloured Shockwave became the regular adversary of my comparatively diminutive Optimus for the rest of my childhood.
I also had a Construction Robot gift set (KO of the Diaclone version) I'd bought at Zellers for $20 (because REAL Constructicons were $7 each!) so I even had a rainbow Devastator for a while, though I later traded the set with another kid for Tracks, Sunstreaker, Inferno and Super Gobot Defender... which I considered to be a pretty good deal at the time.
For the sake of recollection, I think this was my old collection by the end:
Optimus Prime
Sunstreaker, Tracks, Inferno, Prowl
Windcharger, Brawn, Yellow Cliff, Red Bee, Powerglide, Huffer
Protectobots (gift set)
Snarl
Gobot Defender (rechristened "Roadbuster")
Shackwave
Rumble, Ravage, Frenzy, Laserbeak
Kickback, Bombshell, Shrapnel, Barrage
Thundercracker
Combaticons (purchased separately)
Gnaw
Soundwave and Buzzsaw
I think Soundwave was my last TF purchase of that era... it was the rerelease, languishing in some Woolco in Halifax, unsold... for a hefty sum of $23.99! I was getting a bit old to buy Transformers (ha! if only I knew!), but after owning all the Decepticon cassettes for years with no Soundwave, it felt like an appropriate way to close the collection. To this day, I think that Soundwave is in the best condition of all my remaining TFs.
Of course I had a much younger brother, so I still got to experience new Transformers through him. Naturally they were all inferior to MY Transformers though.
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Originally Posted by Pascal
Narrowed down my choice to Apeface and Scorponok, went for Scorpy because he was bigger, but somehow I regretted it later, I hated how the city mode on Scorpy wasn't really functional for little cars and thought Apeface was a much cooler triplechanger.
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Yeah, bigger isn't always better. I hated the city modes too.
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I also remember my grandmother giving me Grimlock and Hoist at school during lunch for my birthday (she also was my teacher) when I was 11. Over the years I got the following:
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Your grandmother was your teacher? Where did you grow up? I'm picturing some tiny little community one-room schoolhouse!
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Originally Posted by Hhai
I think my first Tf was Snarl, but I broke it pretty fast.
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I'll bet it was one of his "wings" (tail-halves).
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One of the best memories I have from my childhood is getting Powermaster Prime for christmas. I still have that scene on videotape. You know that viral youtube video where you see some kid being hysteric after getting a Wii console? Well, my reaction was exactly like that!
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I think you need to put that on Youtube! Watching some little girl in the 80's freaking out over Powermaster Prime on Christmas morning sounds like an instant classic!
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Originally Posted by gericault
I remember religiously leafing through the Sears catalog to see new transformers.
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Those old catalogues really put some effort into their toy sections back then! Funny to think now, how that was pretty much our SOLE window on cool new stuff coming out!
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I remember spending hours one xmas having to decide whether to ask my parents for Blitzwing OR Astrotrain. Damn that was a hard choice. And xmas morning, I discover they got me BOTH!! Happiest day of my life, I can tell you!
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Happiness used to be so easy to buy back then, eh?
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I'm 39, not married and no kids, with a VERY patient girlfriend. I mean, really, she thinks my love of transformers is sweet! That's patience for ya!
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Hear hear! I mean, when you come from a fine arts background, you can talk a smokescreen of material culture artifacts and personal affective meaning... but it's nice when you don't have to.
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Originally Posted by SHCKWAVE
Man,these dicussions are making me think of all the various stories connected to my TF purchases.One memory that comes to mind was shopping with the folks at Canadian tire of all places and they had the frikkin Predacons.My mother said I could choose ONE as it was Christmas time and I already had "way too much" and it was difficult because I knew they all formed Predaking so my Dad was getting annoyed and finally said "Choose one NOW or nothing at all" so I chose Gnaw.LOL
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haha! I think we all got that ultimatum from a parent at some point, and ended up with some weird choice because of it... my Gnaw was a Zellers open-box special. I found him rolling around the aisle loose (but with his tail) and a price tag stuck to his back for $6. He looked kind of goofy to me, but for $6, he was a pretty big Transformer, so I bought him.
When I showed him to my mom, she said "Pretty colours." and that was it. Feh.
Girls.
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Originally Posted by Buhawi
My best purchase memory was Hasbro MP Grimlock. We had to go drive 45 minutes to meet up a board member here right after church. My mother, my daughter and the wife were all there and since it was very nice day and we just bought a new car, we all decided to go all the way to Ottawa. We ended up in the natural history museum and saw my first dinosaur bones. That was the best day for hunting TFs for me.
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MP Grimlock, a spontaneous family outing, AND dinosaur bones? That's pretty awesome!
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Originally Posted by MaxArel
So yeah, I've been a fan my whole life. I lost it when BM arrived, come back with the movies and learned the wonders of G1. That's about it...
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Haha! Kid!
I always find it sort of odd when youngsters are into G1, especially when they weren't really there for any part of it. Vain falls into that category too. I mean, that's cool and everything, but somehow I always assume the GeeWunners are all old cranks like most of us here.
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Originally Posted by Protoman
I asked my father to get me Hot Rod, when I described him, I told him he was a red and yellow robot. My poor french Canadian dad came back with Blaster..... and THUS MY FIRST TF WAS ACQUIRED!
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Wow... history almost took a dramatically different turn there. Imagine if you were the world's biggest Blaster fan instead!
Of course, now that I think of it, frustration over not getting Hot Rod that one time was probably the catalyst for you becoming such a big Hot Rod fan. Those things we always wanted but couldn't have always seem to be the biggest motivators in this fandom.
zmog