I am reading the other write-ups under this heading, and I can not believe that absolutely no one goes into depth describing the Transformer toys.

The transformers line of toys in the eighties was the most incredible, in my mind at least, toy of my generation. The concept was simple, take an object, flip some pieces around, turn it here, fold it there, and magically, you get one bad mother of a robot. A prime example is Optimus Prime. He was a semi truck that became a robot with a base.

The Transformer idea is actually much older than Transformers themselves. There were toys being sold in Japan for years that transformed, mostly really cool ones made of metal. The Transformers line of toys were among the first to come to the US though. I also remember a line of fake transformers that transformed from a rock to a robot. I hated those. Oh joy, a rock, how fun.

Also, there were Go- Bots, which I always loved, because they were all metal. Go-Bots had a series of super sized all metal robots that were cool.

Lastly, how can you talk about transformers and not mention the jive talkin’ black robot Jazz?