TFARCHIVE FORUMS

I'm the sort of person who never likes to throw anything out, even when it's something that's obviously completely ruined. That means that over the years I've built up a large pile of broken Transformers that I've never really looked that closely at...until today. But now that I have, damn was I a destructive little kid!

There's Chop Shop, whose legs broke off at the hip like wishbones.

Targetmaster Hot Rod is just trashed. His tires are missing, his roof is broken off, his hood is broken off and his head is broken off of his hood. On top of that, his legs are so loose that he can't stand anymore. On the up-side, I was able to salvage his forearms along with Firebolt (about the only non-broken parts), so if the urge strikes me I can swap parts out and convert my reissue Hot Rod into an Targetmaster in about two minutes.

I had a jet Powerdasher, but one of his legs and one of his arms have snapped off. The toy looks pretty shitty overall, honestly, and I'd be surprised if too many of them have survived until today.

He was already broken years ago (I think the first wound he took was when my cousin broke his head off inside Silverbolt's foot), but after a decade at the bottom of the box the only intact piece left of G2 Slingshot was his metal chestplate.

My Technobot Afterburner looks like he's exploded. I found his arms, wheels and parts of his legs, but nothing else. I got a replacement years ago though, and kitted him out with the original's weapons. Lightspeed isn't so lucky -- he's never been replaced, and there's nothing left worth giving to a replacement anyway. His backpack (which becomes the back of his car mode) has been torn off and he's been played with so much that he can't stand up in robot mode anymore. Also all of his weapons are gone, to where I don't know (except for one of his missiles which I distinctly remember accidentally dropping down the toilet). His white plastic has also turned entirely yellow.

Twin Twist and Topspin have been reduced to nothing but arms and heads, the fragile plastic of their chests and legs long-since destroyed. In fact, they were toys that I'd inherited from older cousins and I think I'd actually ruined them before I even knew who they were, since as a kid I didn't even realize they were real Transformers.

Skyjack's arms are both ripped off and his ball joints are so loose that his legs fall apart if you shake him. He was my favourite G2 toy, but even then he's in rough shape compared to most of my G2 figures.

And then there's the guys I bought through mail-order with my collected robot points. "Cliffjumper" (which is to say, the Hubcap that they sold as Cliffjumper for some reason in the old mail-order catalogs) looks like he's been run over by a car -- there was nothing left of him beyond one of his feet, an arm and a few pieces of crushed torso. My mail-order Cosmos and Warpath are likewise ruined (although I got replacements for them in my early teens that I took better care of) and the Reflectorbots are in rough shape too. Spyglass is very loose. Viewfinder's shoulders have been torn apart, apparently on purpose. And at some point I seem to have rebuilt Spectro with part of a toothpick replacing the pin that holds his legs on (I'm not kidding). Though with the toothpick he actually works better than I remember him working before, so I dunno. To round off the set there's Thundercracker who, in addition to a chewed off nosecone, ruined his missile launchers and a broken leg somehow managed to get his die-cast pieces snapped in half. I'm not sure how that's even possible.

Flash is missing both of his arms, but that's no surprise because as best as I can tell large parts of his body are made from a soft cheese.

All of my Actionmasters(Prowl, Jazz, Soundwave, Blaster and Wheeljack) are destroyed to some extent. Most of them have had their legs broken off and the pins that hold them in place broken too. Some are now held together by crude screw assemblies that prove that if nothing else, my dad is a genius and fixing my broken toys (and hell, I gave him enough chance to practice...). Most of their partners and vehicles were junk too, as parts had snapped off over the years.

Spay-C isn't a Transformer, but what was left of it was in the same box. Anything that could have been snapped or ripped off had been. I think I hated it for not being a "real" Transformer when I was little.

None of my Sparklers survived either. Flamefeather is missing one of his robot-mode arms entirely, and the wing on his other arm. The front of Fizzle's car mode is snapped off, he can't stand in robot mode without his legs telescoping down and his chest has been turned green by photodegredation. Guzzle probably got the worst of it. His turret has been snapped off, I chewed off the barrel at some point and he can't even transform anymore because the thin plastic on his legs snapped and gets caught on his chest piece. And of course, none of them spark anymore.

Sureshot broke in half at the waist. I could probably have fixed that if I hadn't at some point thrown out the parts that held the legs on. Misfire's in even worse shape, with his cockpit snapped off and a gigantic hole in his chest (and this is after I figured out a way to reattach his severed legs a few years back).He's still doing better than Aimless, though, who has spent the last two decades somewhere inside the heating ducts of my parents' house.

The Micromasters didn't fare too well either. Stakeout is missing an arm and the hood of his vehicle mode, and Seawatch is in the same boat.* Whisper and Stormcloud are both missing their wings. Roughstuff survived just fine but his trailer sure didn't -- the wings are missing, and as I recall it's because the pins that hold them in place just fell out for no reason.

Then there's G2 Leadfoot, who suffered a similar fate to Sureshot by snapping in half at the waist when a plastic bracket broke off.

My bootleg Mach and Tackle were busted too, but to be honest they were terrible knockoffs of terrible figures so I don't care (and they were fairly recent acquisitions anyway). I also had a few other ruined bootlegs to throw out, including a set that ripped off the Air Strike Patrol's designs and transformations but gave them tweaked jet modes. They were cool toys but I broke them pretty much right out of the box if memory serves.

So suffice it to say, I've finally broken down and thrown out most of these. It made me wonder though, was I especially destructive as a little kid? Or was this commonplace for anyone who had a bunch of Transformers? Which figures did you guys manage to destroy when you were little?

* I appologise for the terrible pun.

I would say you were especially destructive...

My only damage was Sixshot. When Fortress Maximus beat him up, one weapon broke off in Sixshot's fist. This little plastic piece is still today in his fist.

Other from that, no damage... maybe I was an especially careful Kid?

I don't know, the few Transformers I had as a kid suffered horribly:

Wheeljack - lost the front left wheel, hideously chipped and then his roof canopy somehow got cracked and broken in two places, leaving it a sharp and jagged mess.

Frenzy - lost both weapons and his feet

Laserbeak - slid him down a banister at our old house which was pannelled and had an opening into which he slid and disappeared, probably remains there to this day.

Sludge - twisted his right leg off. Impressive!

Optimus Prime - snapped his gun in half (my sister kindly did this) and then I later trode on him, leaving part of his left shoulder broken so his head was visible staring out in vehicle mode. The rear trailer door broke as well at one of the hinges. for some reason, I also tried removing all the stickers inside the trailer, leaving it a papery mess.

Hotspot - ladder assembly completely snapped off and the whole toy discoloured, turning slightly green. Metal chest, again completely chipped.

I was about to say I never played especially rough, but then remembered I used to launch toy cars and Playmobil trucks down the stairs when role playing chases and crashes (sound effects and everything). I don't recall being this mental with my Transformers toys, but was just careless with them more than anything. I had a Zoids brontosaurus thing from around the same time which managed to survive unscathed, although I did chew a couple of those rubbery stoppers (they weren't nice, in case you were wondering). Likewise, my later G1 figures Hot Rod and the Duo Cons survived alright. Taking toys to school also saw them get a bit of a bashing, again , by accident - dropping them off the tops of walls and so on. Sigh. No wonder I was into Lego so much when I was little - if you broke it, you just stuck it back together or made something else.

I have none of these toys now. I think they were just so sorry looking by the end that they just had to go, they were beyond salvage.

What I find frustrating now as a slightly older child, is things just getting damaged without any effort. My G2 Bumblebee has cracked tyres, Optimus has chrome wear. My Beast Wars figures have also had some problems, Polar Claw, despite having lived in a box for most of his life has started to yellow quite considerably, and all of my Transmetal 2 deluxe figures have some degree of chrome wear - Cackle in particular is looking very sorry , huge chunks have fallen off and his thumb snapped off recently. You pick these things up and covered in glitter. Its depressing.

Addl wrote:When Fortress Maximus beat him up, one weapon broke off in Sixshot's fist. This little plastic piece is still today in his fist.

I did that with Classics Rodimus when I was 12. I only managed to get that piece out recently.

Other than that, I've managed to break and subsequently lose Vector Prime's sword, and decapitate RID Rapid Run to the point where his head simply will not stay in anymore.

...I feel like a little kid compared to you all

For some reason, even as a kid I always took special care of my Transformers. I had armless and headless GI Joes and Star Wars figures, and their weapons were often lost to the vacuum cleaner, but I never broke any of my Transformers or lost any of their weapons. My brother accidentally snapped the Devastator connector off of Hook, so I did have to replace him, but that's the only casualty from all of childhood. I still played with them and enjoyed them very much, just took really good care of them.
And after selling the silly crab headmaster for $80 a few years ago, I'm very glad I did!

Smokescreen - rear windows and roof. Heroically glued multiple times by Dad before they broke again.

Addl wrote:My only damage was Sixshot. When Fortress Maximus beat him up, one weapon broke off in Sixshot's fist. This little plastic piece is still today in his fist.

If we're going to count broken-off weapons pegs then I've got a whole other list for you. PM Optimus has the pegs for his shoulder guns permanently stuck inside his sockets, and the peg from his trailer hitch is broken too (the latter is more common than not in 'well-loved' PM Primes, from what I've seen). The peg from Sinnertwin's big gun is snapped off inside his torso. I had to toss Landmine's sword and Waverider's axe because the handles tore of. BW Snapper's gun is pegless too. The smaller half of the peg on Pretender Grimlock's tail-gun (the part that let the inner robot use it) got snapped off when my cousin was too rough, and there's quite a few more I'm just not thinking of.

Wait, that reminds me...I actually snapped Pretender Grimlock's head off at some point, but the way he's built it's easy as pie to just glue it back on.

Addl wrote:Other from that, no damage... maybe I was an especially careful Kid?

Do you remember how you old were when you started getting Transformers? I got Lightspeed when I was three, in blatant defiance of the recommended age on the package (I remembered thinking my mom would get in trouble with the government for giving it to me, because obviously the recommended age on a toy box is the law) and I suspect the reason most of these are broken is that I was too young to realize they couldn't take as much abuse as a He-Man toy.

Skyquake87 wrote:Sludge - twisted his right leg off. Impressive!

Speaking of legless Dinobots, I owned G2 Snarl for about a day and a half once before his leg literally just fell off while I was standing out on the deck not doing anything. Or at least, that's how I remember it now. I probably bashed it into something accidentally and didn't realize.

He's long-gone now, though. Since stores in Canada have ridiculously lax return policies I was able to take him back and get another Dinobot in his place, but since they were clearing out the first wave of G2 by then I couldn't find Snarl and had to settle for Slag.

Skyquake87 wrote:Optimus Prime - snapped his gun in half (my sister kindly did this) and then I later trode on him, leaving part of his left shoulder broken so his head was visible staring out in vehicle mode.

Both of these happened to me as well with my G2 Prime, though I broke a different part of his shoulder and I was able to glue him back together without too much trouble. He's definitely seen better days though, all of his joints are now so loose that he can't do anything but stand at attention with his monkey arms straight at his sides.

Skyquake87 wrote:What I find frustrating now as a slightly older child, is things just getting damaged without any effort. My G2 Bumblebee has cracked tyres, Optimus has chrome wear. My Beast Wars figures have also had some problems, Polar Claw, despite having lived in a box for most of his life has started to yellow quite considerably, and all of my Transmetal 2 deluxe figures have some degree of chrome wear - Cackle in particular is looking very sorry , huge chunks have fallen off and his thumb snapped off recently. You pick these things up and covered in glitter. Its depressing.

Oh hell yes. I bought most of my Transmetals on the secondary market so I was able to pick and choose ones that had good paint, but my TM2 Prowl is ridiculously bad. Even to this day I get shiny little blue flakes on my hand every time I touch him. My G2 Minibots are a sad lot too. Bumblebee is still a glorious, shiny gold without a scratch on him, but Hubcap, Beachcomber and Seaspray all look like they went through the washing machine a few times. Skram and Rapido's weapons have lost most of their paint, too.

It's strange how some figures will shed bits of shiny paint like dandruff while others are just fine. There must have been something wrong with the process they used back in the day. The same thing happened to the normal paints on my Pretender shells -- Grimlock, Bumblebee, Waverider and Landmine are all virtually naked, although thankfully Bludgeon survived without any serious wear.

Notabot wrote:My brother accidentally snapped the Devastator connector off of Hook, so I did have to replace him, but that's the only casualty from all of childhood. I still played with them and enjoyed them very much, just took really good care of them.

I had pretty beat-up versions of Scrapper, Hook and Scavenger when I was a kid (Scrapper was missing his cockpit and a wheel, and Hook and Scavenger had both lost their vehicle-mode arms) but I'm pretty sure that all the damage had been done by my cousins before they handed them off to me.

When G2 came around and I got a shiny new Scrapper, I believe I traded the three old ones for Sandstorm and the tank half of Flywheels (of course we had no idea who it was).

Notabot wrote:And after selling the silly crab headmaster for $80 a few years ago, I'm very glad I did!

Don't disrespect Squeezeplay! I've always wanted one.

Cliffjumper wrote:Smokescreen - rear windows and roof. Heroically glued multiple times by Dad before they broke again.

Hot Rod, Thundercracker, Misfire and Guzzle all went through the same thing for me, getting fixed multiple times but never staying that way. I think I remember gluing G2 Sideswipe's door back together too, but once I fixed him he stayed that way and looking at him now I can't even tell if he really was broken or I'm misremembering.

I've always been obsessively careful with my Transformers because as a child my aunty had a boxed set of aerialbots that I needed special permission to play with and which were treated with the same level of care as fabergé eggs.

Saying that, I let my brother try and transform MP Megatron and he snapped the metal bit that holds the arms on. So he's fine as a robot, fine as a gun and falls apart as a gun. On a similar note, the Armada Optimus I inherited from him has lost all its flaps so a second head is permanently poking out.

Oh, and now that I have my own Aerialbots, it makes perfect sense. That little gold fella discovers a new part that can fall off every time someone breathes in the same time zone.

Just the usual bits -- seeker null rays, Jazz's roof, paint on Actionmasters, etc. I'm usually surprised at what sellers call "good played-with condition".

MOTU (and to a lesser extent Thundercats) came before Transformers personally, though, and those were generally a lot more sturdy.

TBH even now every now and then I pick up a Diaclone car and think "shit, did they really sell these to five-year olds?". I mean, I own a lot of toys of a similar vintage, and you can use most Japanese robots of the era - Gokin and the like - to murder someone without damaging the things. But those Autobot cars, Christ... Beautiful collectibles, fail action figures.

I know exactly what you mean. Considering the havoc I wrought on Targetmasters, Technobots and Pretenders, I can't even imagine what they'd look like now if I'd grown up playing with the Diaclone molds instead. Maybe Inferno or Grapple would survive that kind of abuse, but Prowl or Jazz or Skids? It makes perfect sense to me now why these guys were so scarce and expensive on the secondary market before the early-2000s reissues.

Out of my Transformers toys that I haven't demolished or given away, my T-Wrecks is missing one of his dinosaur halves, his robot mode head, several other miscellaneous pop-able parts and have extremely loose joints.

I remembered snapping off RID Megatron's tail/jet thing into two, somehow. Also, I remembered owning a bootleg rainbow-coloured Nightscream that I turned into paste in a matter of weeks.

There was a knockoff undersized Nightscream I owned as a kid that I demolished entirely into a pile of broken plastic.

Any surviving toys from my childhood... well, to put it this way, they are either very durable from the get-go, or they won't survive li'l Blackjack. Surprisingly, Airraptor and Dinotron survived my childhood (I think Dinotron's missing his sword) but not getting sold away a few years before I watched the live-action movie, got on the interwebs, and found out that my childhood toys were part of this franchise.

I think I still have a surviving Crankcase who benefitted from being a later release plus he is pretty much a brick with wheels.

Warcry wrote:
Do you remember how you old were when you started getting Transformers?

Sure.

Of course you can add 8 years to your age at that time.

Anyway, as already mentioned, beautiful toys and a waste for small kids.

I was always careful with my toys, but the gen 1 tfs I would have broken as well I guess.

Most of my G1 figures are either broken, hopelessly loose or missing pieces.

Worst offenders: Jazz had a broken back window at the pin hinge, I broke TWO Flash[es] at the swivel of his doors, one Hook who lost his leg at the die-cast bar and at least one Rotorstorm with broken pink blades [the other was mostly intact].

My Fireflight was almost always with a missing right wing, I had at least two of each protectobot except Hot Spot and of course my Powermaster Optimus was broken at the trailer hitch!

Aside from Prowl's roof and rear windows (which were fragile to begin with)... I broke Snarl's lower leg off once. But that's about it. Optimus is missing part of his front bumper.

As part of my mass sort/clean out I've just unpacked my Takara box style reissues.

I so do not deserve nice things, boxes faded from the sun, several of the ones with white plastic are slightly yellowed like Cliffy's been standing next to them smoking for five minutes and Starscream has a broken null ray.


THESE ARE TOYS I BROUGHT AS AN ADULT.

Lordy knows what the rest of my boxed toys will look like when I inspect them.


Luckily, from a distance, they look great!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

Mmm, toys that broke when I've already started being careful with my toys...

On my Movie Swindle, the place where the ball joint on the elbow clicks into the car kibble snapped off due to rough play. Keep wanting to superglue him back together, but it kept dropping off anyway.

Blight the mint motorbike Minicon had one of his arms snapped off, so he will spend the rest of his days in motorbike mode, where the snapped-off arm still peg to the other.

One of my Reissue Laserbeak's cannons snapped off when he fell off Soundwave's shoulders, but with a bit of superglue it's fine now.

It frightened me very much when I saw how much the painted chrome on my Henkei Megatron's chest and cannon had spiderwebbed and flaked off. Astrotrain's starting to flake off too, but not as bad as Megatron is. Mirage doesn't have any paint on his chrome, so he should be safe for a while.

Universe Legends Jazz has his pegs snapped off while transforming, but it's not really a big deal. I think there are a fair bit more, but I can't remember.

Was throwing out old stuff, and found a box filled with toys that I didn't sell or give away during my childhood (poor Dinotron and Airraptor, you'll be missed) and I found pieces of the Knockoff Protectobots I had as a kid... and they're utterly destroyed. The cheap-ass plastic combined with rough play meant that every single Protectobot -- Hot Spot, Blades, Groove and the two First Aids -- are at least missing both their arms. The hilariously oversized Groove is missing his head and wheels as well, and have been reduced to nothing but an icky, soggy lump of plastic. One of the First Aids have snapped into two, and the other has yellowed and... decayed? Do plastic decay? Does shit plastic decay? There's nothing left of Blades but chunks of his chest and his broken rotors, it's like he exploded or crumbled or something. Hot Spot, likewise, is a pile of half-melted blue blocks that have crumbled. The ladder lies in a mangled mess. They smell. I think some kind of mold grew on them or the box, so I threw them all (alongside some random junk toys) out for good.

Knightdramon wrote:I broke TWO Flash[es] at the swivel of his doors

I'm not at all surprised. I still can't believe they used that horrible plastic on a joint like that. I know I wasn't the most careful as a kid, but I swear that Flash is even less durable than stuff like Prowl or Jazz. The only things I've seen that are worse are made from gold plastic.

Knightdramon wrote:My Fireflight was almost always with a missing right wing

Looking at my G2 Fireflight, it looks like he came very, very close to suffering the same fate. His wing has a crack running from the hinge to a little more than half of the way to the tip. I get the feeling that his wing sticker is the only reason he hasn't broken completely.

inflatable dalek wrote:several of the ones with white plastic are slightly yellowed like Cliffy's been standing next to them smoking for five minutes

I'm pretty sure Cliffy doesn't need to actually smoke around them to cause yellowing anymore, he's just surrounded by an aura of tobacco 24/7.

inflatable dalek wrote:THESE ARE TOYS I BROUGHT AS AN ADULT.

Sometimes it seems like stuff just doesn't want to survive. I was going through my box of movie stuff today, and somehow Dune Runner's hip joint exploded. This from a toy that I haven't touched in three years and that I barely played with when I first got.

Luckily Dune Runner sucks, so I'm not too bothered.

Blackjack wrote:Do plastic decay? Does shit plastic decay?

Some plastics are quickly biodegradable, but we're talking about the sort of plastic they usually use for shopping bags, not toys. Fungus especially will speed up the process, apparently, so if the box was moldy and they used really, really substandard plastic...maybe? If it's hot where you stored them that'd probably help too.

I lost a Lego minifig when I was a kid and my dad found it in our compost pile nearly a decade later. It was completely undamaged by sitting in a pile of rotting, decomposing meat and plants for years and looked as good as new after a few minutes soaking in soapy water. So non-bootleg Protectobots probably wouldn't have suffered the same fate.

My Classics Starscream is all yellow as well, and he's definitely never been in a position to have caught the sun. Who's been going through my boxes smearing yellow on my stuff?