Hi all,
I've been lurking around for a week or two so thought I should probably post ...
I've been a Transformers fan ever since I was a kid, and until I thought about it recently I never realised how lucky I was back then, as my brother and I had a lot of Transformer toys at the time - I remember we had a Wheeljack, Sideswipe and Soundwave and his tapes, then we had a lot of the movie characters such as Galvatron, Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod and Rodimus, Kup, Blurr, Scourge, plenty of mini-vehicles, a Metroplex (which my brother took to school and snapped in half), all of the Protectorbots and all of the Arielbots, even the Predacons - we were certainly well looked after. My favourite though was Devastator - I had Bonecrusher originally and one birthday I received each of the others from a different relative - I was shocked my parents were able to co-ordinate it all! Unfortunately all of those toys are long lost and gone, which is such a shame now.
I briefly got back into Transformers in the mid 2000's and collected a lot of the RiD toys released here, which have been in storage for a while but still in great condition and are now back out on display - I enjoyed the movies and was thrilled to be able to buy ROTF Devastator, but I don't have a lot of movie toys (this will probably change next year though) as funds were limited with starting a family and buying a house etc. taking priority at the time.
Finally, I got back into collecting again this year when I randomly came across YOTS Omega Supreme - I had never seen and Omega Supreme toy and being a classic character it was too good to resist buying - then my re-interest was confirmed when my wife showed me Metroplex in a Big W catalogue - there was no way I was missing out on that (esp. after my original was broken in half as mentioned earlier), and from there I was hooked again.
Since then I've been buying whatever I can find on the shelf at various retailers - I particularly look for classic characters that I remember from my childhood as opposed to characters I've never heard of - for example I like a lot of things from the Generations series, but I don't have any Beast Wars stuff.
Just this week though, I have plucked up the courage to start collecting Masterpiece Transformers - I picked up Acid Storm from TRU and am kicking myself for not being aware of Soundwave earlier, and then I discovered the Japanese releases, and immediately ordered all of the Autobot cars - yesterday the first delivery arrived and I now own MP Lambor and MP Tigertrack, which are amazing and exactly the type of Transformers I want to collect.
And during my Transformers research I stumbled across OzFormers - an Australian collectors forum - brilliant!! Thus far this forum has been a great resource for information and reviews of toys, and I am looking forward to hanging around and getting to know you all!
Cheers