From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Several weeks ago, I reposted a call I'd seen for submissions for a new
TF zine, asking for submissions from folks with personal connections to
the Movie. The submission concepts were open-ended, and simply asked
folks to reflect on how and when they first encountered the original
film, and the personal impact that it left.

I spent some time crafting my own submission this weekend, and thought
that folks here might appreciate the chance to check it out. As far as I
know, the zine itself will take flight in early 2026.

Enjoy! Comments welcome!

JB

====

Artifacts
A personal reflection on Transformers: The Movie, by Joseph Bardsley
July 14, 2025

rCLYeah, IrCOm sorry that we donrCOt have More Than Meets the Eye in stock right now. But this one rCa this one is cool.rCY

ItrCOs the Summer of 1992, and a version of me that is slightly less than
ten years old is standing in a no-name video rental store in Calgary,
Alberta. IrCOm at the counter, facing opposite a twentysomething video
clerk with a knowing grin. My dad waits somewhere behind me.

On this particular sunny Saturday afternoon, werCOre on one of our regular weekend pilgrimages. These werenrCOt practical errands, really: they
mostly encompassed bakeries, flea markets, garage sales, used/rCOnext to
newrCO stores; maybe, sometimes, a stop at 7-11 for a Slurpee. Looking
back, they werenrCOt tasks so much as rituals by another name. Childhood memories IrCOd never trade away.

Artifacts.

By 1992, my interest in the Transformers had reached a personal zenith,
and one thatrCOs never really ended. I was born in 1984, the same year as
the franchise itself, so I missed experiencing the precise cultural peak
of the original G1 era. But growing up with a love of aircraft, outer
space, and science fiction, and being raised during the pre-Internet
golden age of garage sales, where toys from a variety of fandoms were plentiful, it was only a matter of time before I encountered the
venerable robots in disguise.

By the early 90s, many of the kids who had been at the forefront of the
G1 craze were approaching adulthood and aging out of their hobbies.
Their parents were cleaning house. Far from being the desired
collectibles they are today, the cast-off G1 Transformers of the 1980s
simply represented clutter. They started to appear in boxes and bins
across the city, and thanks to my dadrCOs weekend rounds, I slowly began
to accumulate them. I built the roots of a collection that I maintain
and grow to this day.

At first, I was simply taken by the toys themselves. But over time, they
became something else.

Artifacts.

Back then, the Internet was still a whisper. There were certainly no
streaming services. The original Transformers cartoon had essentially disappeared from broadcast. The only way to catch it was through Family
Home Entertainment-branded VHS releases: mostly early Season One
episodes. I rented them obsessively from local video stores (Blockbuster
Video; Rogers Video, and a smattering of others, like the no-name one I
found myself in at the beginning of this story).

The stories and characters built off the toys I already had, and
embedded themselves into my imagination. MegatronrCOs commanding and charismatic personality. SoundwaverCOs enigmatic, otherworldly presence,
always there when it really counted. StarscreamrCOs wounded ambition.
HoundrCOs gentleness. The rough-edged camaraderie and care between
characters like Huffer and Brawn, or Skywarp and Thundercracker. I came
to know them all.

Through these VHS rentals that offered the highlights of a cartoon that
had been a cultural touchstone just a few years prior, I experienced
many highlights from the TransformersrCO time on Earth in the 1980s. Fire
in the Sky, S.O.S. Dinobots, and Heavy Metal War were favorites. But it
was the three-parters rCo More Than Meets the Eye, and The Ultimate Doom rCo that I rented the most often, and that I came to know by heart.

The tapes werenrCOt just media. They represented pieces of a larger story
that was just before me, and tantalizingly out of reach. They were
ephemeral windows into a world that I loved to visit.

Until that Summer day in 1992, when both my favorites were already
checked out.

The clerk offered me an alternative: Transformers: The Movie. IrCOd heard
about it, and knew that it had come out in 1986, but that was where my familiarity with the film ended. The heavy clamshell case smelled
faintly of carpet cleaner and plastic offgassing (a smell that, to this
day, instantly transports me to specific parts of childhood, despite the potential health risks we ignored at the time).

The cover art hit like neon static: unfamiliar faces, alien landscapes,
and a looming planet in the sky. Electric blues and greens and purples.
Bright flames. No Prime, no Megatron. A bunch of new characters I hadnrCOt
seen before. No Cybertron, as I knew it.

Still, I was intrigued.

We brought it home. I watched it with my dad, who sometimes half-watched
the series with me, but who rCo as a US Air Force veteran rCo mostly just appreciated the toys and their often-militaristic alternate modes. I
donrCOt know how much of that inaugural viewing he remembered, but, from
the first moments, I was transfixed.

The animation and voice acting; the score and soundtrack, all pure 80s
bombast, hit something in me that never left. The world of the
Transformers suddenly felt huge and mythic, blown up with raw, adult
language and stakes that felt very shocking rCo SpikerCOs infamous line, expressed at the filmrCOs most ominous moment rCo and the real consequences
of war, abruptly laid bare.

But there were strange dissonances, too. Characters I knew and cared for
died with no fanfare. Others rCo entire teams, like the Combaticons, which
I was very proud to have collected a full set of at the time rCo were
missing. The visual tone I knew had shifted from haunting desert and
warm oceanic hues to the cold, technicolor glint of space and modernity.
Given how popular the original cartoon formula had proven by the time
the Movie hit screens, I didnrCOt understand the dramatic shift then. In
some ways, I still donrCOt. As fans, werCOve since pieced the rCyhowsrCO and rCywhysrCO together. But, as a kid, change could be challenging.

Still, the Movie cast its unique spell on me, and on many others.

I rented that same copy dozens of times, watching late at night and on weekends. Eventually, I reported it rCylostrCO to the video store so I could keep it (paying the then-daunting replacement fee of $75). In a
childhood often shadowed by anxiety, the Movie became a place of
stability. A constant. Over time, the tape began to show its age. The
colors warped. The audio thinned. Ghostly shapes that had not been there
before occasionally flickered into the picture.

Artifacts.

By the late 1990s, my family had signed up for the Internet, and IrCOd
found my way to the alt.toys.transformers Usenet group as an overly
confident teenager, content to lurk most of the time. It was the early
Wild West of the Web: text-only newsgroups, slow-loading Geocities fan
sites, ASCII art, and MUSHes, where ideas and characters reigned
supreme.

That was where the Transformers fandom coalesced and thrived for many
years: where we dissected plot holes, compared character ideas, and
debated who really became Galvatron, along with a host of other arcana
and lore. That was where I found people like me: many of whom I am still
in touch with today, thirty years later.

In hindsight, I realize that, for a lot of that period, I, and fans like
me, had treated the Movie like a palimpsest: a set of stories with core
ideas understood by each reader, but interpreted and rCywritten overrCO slightly differently by each one, over time as well. To each of us, the
Movie represented a slightly different story. This kind of diversity of
thought laid the groundwork for all kinds of creative exchanges rCo
fanfic, role-playing, and zines, much of it inspired by the Movie rCo and contributed to the depth of community found online in these early days.
Even now, those years represent some of my most profound Internet
memories. They represent an ephemeral time and place that no longer
exists, and can never be replaced or replicated.

Years passed. By the early 2010s, my dad had passed away from ALS. The
Calgary house IrCOd grown up in was sold. The alt.toys.transformers
newsgroup had become much quieter as people moved on (or also, sadly, in
some cases, also passed away). I had moved to Vancouver, where I remain
to this day.

But the Movie stayed with me.

It was a place I could always return to.

Today, I sometimes think of that boy in the video store, holding a bulky clamshell tape in his hands, asking questions and contemplating futures
not yet in reach.

I think of the smell of old video store carpet cleaner and warm,
clamshelled plastic cases.

I think of my dad, standing in shadow, still waiting, somewhere behind
me.

Some things fade. Others remain.

Artifacts.

END

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