I received a PM from a member who doesn't wish to publicly participate on this thread, but I'd like to share what s/he said to me with the rest of you as I think it's quite poignant.
I too have personally never felt bad for liking Transformers, but I also had experiences of other kids having a problem and feeling the need to pick on me because they saw Transformers as something childish/foolish. In fact, even when Transformers first came out in 1984, other kids were picking on me and saying things like, "they're for kids." Like hello? We are kids! I unfortunately went to a primary school where a lot of the kids were wannabe try-hard adolescents. In years 7 and 8 the bullying increased and got worse. I put the iron-on Autobot badge (from STARS) on this jacket that I wore to school which made me a bigger target for school bullies. So I took many lumps in the name of Transformers.I remember that when I was in high school and draw TFs some kids would ridicule me for being "childish". And the other day when I was thinking about how "cool" many people think TFs are now, I thought "Amazing and interesting" but at the same time, for reasons I cannot quite pinpoint, I also felt somewhat uneasy about it.
It seems that history has a lot of movements and sub-cultures that are initially seen as "uncool" / "weird" but then later becomes mainstream. It's hard to say if Transformers is one of them, but I think it's certainly big enough to be considered a sub-culture, and as for myself, I've always wondered why some people thought it was childish to be a fan of it, because to me, there was never anything kiddy or uncool about it (but that's just me).
But I wonder how many of those people who looked down on Transformers and those of us who like Transformers as being "uncool" - and were even willing to ridicule and bully others for liking it - now see Transformers as being "cool"/acceptable just because it's becoming more popular now.
P.S.: In the meantime, I await the live-action movie for The CORPS!
