Transformers I Flogged (And Why I Don't Regret It)

So this last year has been pretty messed up. It's felt for a long time like things are changing in a big way, and a couple of months ago I found myself suddenly far less attached to my beloved Transformers collection than I had previously been (which was pretty friggin' attached). Whereas it had for years been my pride and joy, not to mention my main source of self-worth, it suddenly felt like a giant weight around my neck, tying me down to places and habits I'd rather get the fuck out of.

After a fair slab of soul-searching and a few hours digging through instructions, I reached a point where I'd decided what (considerably reduced) shape I wanted my collection to take and that a lot of the ballast just had to go. Below are a few of the robots I ditched - most of them for far less than their worth - and why I couldn't give a rat's nut that they're gone.

Star Wars Crossovers Darth Vader 

Jesus, why did I even buy this fucking thing? I guess I thought it would be interesting to see how the designers had managed to engineer a toy that could transform into the awesome and iconic Star Destroyer, a slab of pop fiction that I'd always held dear. It's one of those vehicle designs, like the Millennium Falcon or AT-AT, that made Star Wars so special, and I figured that it would be neat to own one that can turn into a robot - especially a robot that's Darth Friggin' Vader. What could go wrong?

EVERYTHING, it turns out. What a joke this thing is. It's a terrible, terrible figure, and it takes up WAY more space than it deserves. Still, I got a pretty good review out of it, I guess.

Even though I got this figure at a discount (£25, down from £40), I still made a huge loss on it. After posting the massive bloody thing to the states, I came out with about about four quid. What a crock. Still, I certainly don't miss that huge slab of regret and bullshit, and that four quid bought me a whole mess of tuna!

Generations Fall of Cybertron Starscream

This one actually came as a bit of a surprise because I never had any intention of even owning it. FOC Starscream is still quite a new and hot figure, having shown up on European shores only last month and in very scarce quantities. I spotted one in Toy Planet and, having thoroughly bought into the hype, immediately snapped him up. I didn't really want it. It had no place in the collection I had decided on. Buying it almost felt like a reflex action. There it was on the peg, and then I was outside the shop with a carrier bag and £15 missing. When I got it home and cracked it out of the package, I felt nothing. It didn't do anything for me except occupy a bit more space on an already cluttered shelf.

LIGHT PIPoh god kill me

I took this photo and posted it on my Facebook page so that I could at least get one tiny bit of use out of the figure before I sold it on. It went to an eager fellow on Twitter who took it off my hands the second I advertised it, and he's delighted with it. I only lost about £2, and I don't reckon that's a rip-off for making somebody's day.

Transformers Prime Thundertron

So I'm in Nuneaton one day with my stepmum, who's completely and gleefully addicted to shopping, and we're screwing about in TK Maxx, right? I buy this pair of headphones, take them home, and they turn out to be dump, so I head back the next day to exchange them for a different pair, when oh no, there's a Transformer on the shelf at half price. So I automatically exchange my shit headphones for that instead, even though doing so left me with no headphones at all. The toy turned out to be TF: Prime Thundertron, but it realistically could have been anything.

I kept Thundertron in the box for about six weeks before realising it was doing absolutely nothing for my life. He went to a good friend of mine in Australia, where I assume he's doing more good than he was in a box in the corner of my bedroom. Thundertron is one of the very few Transformer toys released which is neither Autobot or Decepticon, which, I have to admit, was a factor. I wouldn't have known which shelf to put him on. Hey, I'm still a nerd.

yeah get out

Generations Darkmount & Drift

My reasons for dropping these two are far more nit-picky and less depressing. The early waves of the Generations line proved a little dry - all I really got out of them was Thrust (a repaint of a mould I already had five of) and a bunch of boring sods I didn't even recognise. Darkmount (née Straxus) and Drift were so unappealing to me that they were immediately pushed to the back of the shelf after I'd finished blabbing at a camera about them.

Before too long, their designs were re-released as far more interesting characters - Blurr and Skullgrin - who I at least remembered from childhood, which is kind of the driving force behind this whole hobby, right? Anyway, my tedious twosome sold for reasonable prices and I'm now far happier with a sexy blue sniper and a fat purple pickaxe-wielding tankformer with a goddamn goat skull for a face.

Left: toy yawn. Right: toy porn!

G1 Galvatron & Kup

Incredibly, these antique figures were among the first ones I decided to sell. To date I've cleared out a total of about 65 robots, yet these guys - who I've had and treasured for years - found themselves at the top of my list.

The reason is simple - I just don't fucking like them. 

Kup, for instance, is one of the most shittily-executed action figures I've seen in my life. It looks almost nothing like the classic character it represents - it's a laughable mess of bad design, inaccurate colours, lame transformation, and half a fucking head.

Nope, sorry dude, I don't see it.

The same largely goes for Galvatron - while I still think the bonkers movie villain is as cool as ever, the toy just doesn't do him justice. It's a twee, dated design that doesn't even get away with a nostalgia factor - I bought the damn thing in 2008 and disliked it straight away. It does, at least, have a size advantage over Kup; a big shitty toy is always gonna be preferable to a small shitty toy. Regardless, when I made my mind up to de-clutter my collection, Galvatron was the first name I thought of.

Are we even facing the same direction?

All The Kre-O

Lego is SO HOT right now. It's everywhere. Everyone knows what Lego is, everyone loves it, and it seems that the Lego company are completely fine with other brands totally bagging on their ideas. There are dozens of copycats - Mega Bloks, Microblox, Minecraft even, so you can't blame Hasbro for wanting to get in on some of that sweet constructobrick action by launching their own version. Kre-O was launched in 2011, and judging by how quickly the sets began showing up in bargain bins, it wasn't much of a hit. I took full advantage of this, snapping up discounted sets left and right over the winter of 2012 until I had pretty much all of them. 

That's only like two thirds of it.

I have to admit that I enjoyed myself with Kre-O. I spent several blissful hours building the sets and screwing around with the Kre-On minifigures. They were kind of cool. Thing is, once built, they're incredibly ugly things. And holy crap are they big! I had to give them their own shelf. This sudden influx of large, blocky, crappy-looking robots was a big factor in my decision to downsize, so it was only natural that they were out the door first. I only made back a fraction of what I'd spent on them, especially considering I'd dropped £60 on importing the Micro Changer combiner sets from Singapore. They were a neat idea, and pretty fun to build, but ultimately all I got out of them was a few Instagram snaps and a crapton of regret.

Not hashtag proud of my hashtag self.

It also didn't help that I had used Kre-O as a means to distract myself from the fact that my father had just passed away. I had amassed - but not opened - them in the period leading up to the end of 2012, when I was still in absolute denial as to how bad his condition had become, and after it happened, I immediately dove into this abundant pile of adorable bricks just to keep my mind occupied.

Once the job was done, though, the mere sight of them, all on my shelf, all in a row, looked like a fucking timeline of the memories I'd been trying to drown out: the time spent at home with him, distant and too weak to speak; the agonising week by his side in the hospice; the sights, the sounds, the smells, the platitudes, the fucking waiting. Of course, it had been all I could think about while busying my hands and eyes with fiddly bricks, and I wanted those memories out of here. I don't want to remember my dad that way. I needed these things out of the fucking house.

Jesus Dude, Way to End the Entry on a Bummer

Yeah, well, it's happened.

So, what next? Who else is destined to go under the hammer? I'm not sure yet. There are plenty of other robots lurking in boxes who wouldn't be particularly missed. Maybe I'll sell off my Animated figures or some Bayformers or Beast Machines. For now, having shed these few (and about forty others) feels like a step in the right direction.