I'm never going to Cybertron

Even when the toys were one of the hugest brands in the world, and they were freaking everywhere, I was never into the Transformers. I never read more than a tiny handful of Transformers comics, and never watched any of the cartoons, and only managed the first few 21st century movies.

Literally the only Transformers comics I've ever read are the first four issues of the Marvel series, which I had in a sweet collected edition published on cheap Australian newsprint in the late 80s. That was all the Transformer comics I ever needed, although I was sure my pal Nik was going to sneak some into a bunch of recent Daniel Warren Johnson comics he leant to me. But I remain firm in my position. I didn't need those shape-changing clangers stinking up my comics diet.

The most Transformers I've ever seen on screen were the first three or four movies, which were a terrible incoherent mess, but were still just about worth watching for the full Michael Bay experience. 

I do think a lot of this robotic apathy was because the big cool toys were always insanely expensive. The only Transformers characters I ever owned were the shittiest, smallest incarnations - an Optimus Prime was an impossible luxury.

And they were just so limited. When you can't afford every action figure in the world, you make do with what you have, and I was constantly making up new stories and characters with the Vipers from GI Joe that I had, but I couldn't do that with a bulbous robot that turned into a bulbous minivan.

I used to call all my action figures my 'men', and I couldn't do anything with the robots. For things that changed their shape, they were strictly only useful as the thing they were created to be, and there was nothing else about them to keep me enthralled.