For those of you who are older than 30, what were you doing that year, and when did you end up getting into Transformers?

1984 - Little Angry Trev

That year I was 6 years old, going on 7, living on a farm on the Murray River with my parents in a little farming community called Beverford (population 17 - population 14 a year later when a bloke shot his ex-girlfriend, her dad and them himself ). Oddly enough since then I spent 9 years living in Bendigo, a year in London and 15 years in Melbourne, and now I live 15 minutes from there on a farm of my own

I was a Saturday Morning Cartoons junkie, loved'em! He-Man being a favorite (She-Ra confusing me because it was a girls cartoon so I should hate it but there was something about that line drawn on her chest that kept me coming back ). Voltron and Battle of the Planets would keep me going during the week. Then one morning I switch on the TV and there were these big robots that turned into cars, trucks, jets and all kind of cool stuff! Talk about love at first sight! I don't think I moved for that half hour, absolutely glued to the TV.

6 weeks later my mother enrolled me in tennis lessons, since my 4 older brothers and sisters were very sporty. As a non-sporty kid with zero coordination and usually smaller than all the other boys I hated it! Hate hate hate! And these lessons were on a Saturday fricken morning! I wanted to watch this cool new Transformers show! So each week I would turn up, miss the ball every time, crack the shits, throw my racket and go sit in a sulk. After a couple of months my rather irate mother gave up and back to watching these giant transforming robots I went.

I never even realised there were Transformers toys, there only being one toy shop in the nearest big town (Swan Hill) which I never got to visit. Then on my birthday the woman my mother used to babysit for gave me a Dirge figure for my birthday. I went freaking nuts! Never had I been more excited or grateful about a toy. Then that year I suddenly was getting all TF's for X-Mass, Mirage being my first Autobot. A life long love afair was born


Share a little bit about your time with this hobby of yours, and how much longer you imagine you'll still be a fan.

Growing up I was still massively into Transformers. For a while my mum ran a little toy shop in Eaglehawk so right through to the Micromasters era I was able to get my Transformers at cost price I kind of lost interest during the G2, BW & BM era, not really liking the toys and having discovered beer and girls . I would watch the G2 cartoons, bought all the G2 comics and occasionally get out my toys and have the odd play still though.

It wasn't until my first wedding in 2001 when a friend gave me a loose G1 Optimus, Wreck-Gar and Chop Shop that the flame was sparked within me once again. Then I discovered ebay (never having had any money I had never used it) and found all these G1 toys to buy! Then RID came out with great looking toys, an Optimus that kinda looked like Optimus, a Prowl that was a police car, an Ultra Magnus that was a Car Carrier and Decepticons were back in play instead of just Predacons. My eyes were opened to the fact there could be a TF multiverse and that new iterations did not detract from the G1-verse. From there I never looked back!

My collection has grown from 144 back before I stopped collecting to now I have broken the 1400 mark so have nearly timesed that number by ten and have more comics and misc merchandise than you can shake a mini-con at! It has only been in the past 18 months since I had my first child (named Orion ) that Transformers is starting to become less of a priority in my life. Between a child and wife, a hobby farm and a career I often don't get around to opening my figures, sometimes for months after I have bought them. But it is a hobby that will stay with my for life, gives me great enjoyment and hopefully in the next twelve months we will finally get around to putting the extention on our house so that my collection can have their own big room rather than living in crates. A lifelong dream coming to fruition

Happy birthday Transformers! Thank you for all the joy you have brought me over the past 30 years!