More than meets the eye

One afternoon some months back, I'm taking a break from a stressful day at work, fiddling with something I had bought over lunch break -- a Transformers toy.

Mr Hong, one of the associate directors on our floor (not his real name, but close, haha) is walking around eating a sandwich. He sees me and says, within earshot of a handful of people: "Oh! Aren't you supposed to be playing with Barbie?"

The rolling of eyes.

And of course, the emission of a quick retort -- just as audible, but of course with the added bite of an incensed diva's wit: "Ryan, you saying that I should be playing with Barbie is like me asking you why you're eating that sandwich and not siopao."

Snaps to me. But just as quickly, a save -- lest Ryan unleash his associate director wrath upon this poor junior manager: "But then again -- it's a magenta motorbike that transforms into a girl."

Laughter. Whew, my career is safe.

Arcee transforms into a motorcycle -- notice her bangs, her bust, and her high-heeled boots, and guess what, she yields a crossbow -- while Brawl becomes a tank.

It's true that the Transformer I've bought is a female that bends into a magenta motorbike. But that's not why I bought it -- after all, I've also bought a yellow Camaro that transforms into a robot named Bumblebee.

I buy more Transformers toys over the next few weeks. And, unsurprisingly, I get a few more such remarks.

"It's off-equity for you to be playing with Transfomers!" one brand manager exclaims.

My reply: "Well, it makes me more interesting, doesn't it?"

From the movie, you'd think Jazz would be a really cool toy -- which is why I bought him. Unfortunately, the movie is sort of an overpromise for him. Bumblebee, on the other hand, is one great-looking robot.

The truth is, I was been playing with Transformers as early as grade three, and actively collecting them until around grade seven -- and up until today, I continue to check toy store shelves for Transformers whenever I can. Transformers were my second-favorite toy, next to Lego. I was interested in Zoids for a time, and later Ghostbusters, but Lego and Transformers were a different level. I had over a hundred Lego sets, and over forty Transformers. At any given time, half our living room was either a Lego diorama -- a city complete with road plates and set up with a story like "fire on the townhouse roof", or a medieval setting with knights preparing to joust amid colorful penants -- or an Autobot vs Decepticon battlefield.

And no, I never had Barbie, or My Little Pony, or any of that crap. The closest that I ever came was a short-lived interest in Rainbow Brite, and only because I thought the idea of Color Kids was so clever.

I think my fascination for Transformers was the whole idea of a human-shaped thing (or in the case of Ravage and Laserbeak and others later, a dog-like or bird-like thing or animal-like thing) becoming a non-human-like thing like vehicles or weapons or household objects. The whole idea of Transformers, and of each individual Transformer -- how they could shift form without having to be disassembled and assembled again -- captured my imagination. I would spend hours transforming them back and forth and back again in entranced wonder. I would stare at catalogs at home, or at boxes in toy stores, analyzing the images with my eyes and figuring out how each transformation would work. And I would even fill up sketch pad after sketch pad with transformers of my own -- inside and outside of class.

(A sixth grade Language teacher caught me drawing my robots once and told me to stop and listen to the lesson; I matter-of-factly answered: "I don't need to, I know it already." Snaps to me, and long live the arts.)

When the family met up for lunch late last June, with the excitement of the movie coming on, I asked Inay and Tatay to bring all my old Transformers. That night I emptied out the sports bag Tatay had packed them in, and showed them all to James.

Unlike many of my classmates, I didn't have any of the classics like Optimus Prime and Megatron. I had Starscream, but only much later when I saw him foolishly put on sale at the supermarket. Rather, my first Transformer was the space shuttle Blast Off . It was my brother Jo-Ed's first Transformer, actually -- it was my Christmas gift to him, but I eventually ended up playing with it more. On Jo-Ed's urging, I soon acquired Blast Off's fellow Combaticons to form Bruticus.

My first Transformers! Bruticus is formed from the five Combaticons -- Brawl (tank), Swindle (army jeep), Blast Off (space shuttle), Vortex (helicopter) and Onslaught (artilery truck).

Later Jo-Ed and I also collected Superion, the combination of the five Aerialbots.

Superion was formed from the Aerialbots, the Autobots' first jets. Air Raid (F15), Skydive (F16), Fireflight (F4), Slingshot (Harrier), and Silverbolt (Concorde -- yes, a Concorde, in retrospect kind of a stupid thing to have alongside four fighter planes).

Metroplex, the Autobot city, was sent as a gift from an aunt in the US. Although I secretly wished I had been given Trypticon, the battery-operated Decepticon city, Metroplex nonetheless made a great base for my "minibots" -- Swerve (pickup), Outback (jeep) and Tailgate (car). I know I used to have Warpath (tank) but I've no idea where he went.

Over the years I got more Transformers here and there, buying them with the reward money I would get during Reading of Honors, or receiving them as gifts, or trading with classmates: Kup from the animated movie; Squeezeplay of the Headmasters (Transformers whose heads detach and transform into humans -- an idea toeing the fine line between clever and desperate?); fire truck Inferno and fire car Red Alert; Dinobot Sludge and Insecticon Bombshell.

I was especially proud of some limited edition Transformers I had -- Autobot Overdrive, a red sports car; and the Reflectors, three robots who formed into a camera (a pretty crappy thing to be as a Transformer, now that I think about it, but back then it was really cool). There was pride because these toys were available only through mail order, by accumulating "clip and save" points and mailing them with a few dollars. I was the talk of the class!

I put Transformers aside around Grade Seven, when I started to get busier with school work and PC games came into my life. But like Lego, they were such a big part of my childhood that even when I was already working, I continued to go to toy stores, check out what the new Transformers toys were, and sometimes even buy them. I picked up a couple of Beast Wars toys.

Silverbolt (a recycled name) was one of the Beast Wars Fuzors. These were robots that turned into half-and-half creatures. Silverbolt was half wolf, half eagle. I just had to buy him because it was such a cool toy -- and on 50% discount.

And recently, with the introduction of new toys for the movie, I bought four of them too -- Bumblebee, Jazz, Brawl, and Arcee (not in the movie, but a marketing-driven creating using a name from the animated movie, but this time, transforming into a motorcycle).

Interesting to compare Brawl c.1987 and Brawl 2007. Twenty years ago I thought Brawl was an amazing toy -- how far Transformer toy design and engineering have come is simply amazing.

"Save your money," Inay used to say, "Because you'll get tired of those toys eventually."

Today, a little over a month after the Transformers movie (which delivered on awesome special effects and nostalgia over the toys and TV shows of one's childhood, but not much else), my forty-odd Transformers are back in their sports bag, and my four new acquisitions are just standing on top of my DVD player, untouched for weeks and gathering dust.

By and large, I guess I have gotten tired of these toys. Yet I've no regrets. There's much to be said for toys born out of brilliant ideas -- and which, incidentally, prove that Mr Hong can eat more than siopao, and I never did play with Barbie.