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[Fighbird]

Took me almost a week, and I still haven't taken pictures of everything (am missing most of my Brave, and missing all of Eldoran and Microman). But anyways, here we go.



Boxed and carded G1 in black packaging. This is what Transformers is to me: Going into a toy store and seing a selection very much like this with this classic package design. My prize gem in here is the Menasor giftset -- rarely have I seen such a huge box in such pristine condition. BTW, everything is opened, except all the carded stuff, and Nightbeat is still sealed on his insert. And yes, lots of Seasprays... more on that later.

BTW, anyone able to see what is amiss on this picture?



Japanese G1. Yes, a lot of reissues in there (everything but Apeface and the Trainbots, actually), but I love these with their deliberate G1 design reproductions. Apeface was the first G1 Transformer I bought when I got back into collecting in 1998, and has a high sentimental value for me. The single-pack Raiden (top right hand corner) took me 5 years to complete, but was definitely worth it. Everything has been opened at one point.



G1 related stuff I forgot to include on the previous pictures... Everything is still sealed, except Hook and Downforce. Bonecrusher is the Mexican release (check the company logo in the lower left-hand corner). Love the G1 design on the Windcharger keychain release.



UK/Spanish gold and silver G1. In my mind the REAL Classics... I remember seing commercials on german TV for the Motorvators, and remember seing them in the local toy store, but didn't get one 'till the late 90s. Very blocky, but the gimmick is pretty neat, I think.



A blurry (sorry) shot of my loose G1 -- check the next two pics for details.



All toys are complete, except for AM Megatron missing his 'bot (he's in the repair shop), Nightbeat missing his helmet (I have the small guns, though!), and the two Breastmasters (both are quite shoddy, but I want to modify them anyway for my "UK version Liokaiser").



Many of these loose toys are from my childhood collection, but mostly are from the last 10 years, even though I'm mostly a MIB/MOC collector.

CONTINUED!

[Fighbird]

My initial plan was to shoot every toy just once, but most of (at least) the G1 toys can be grouped in various other ways, which I have done in the following pictures.



Mexican Autobots. Around 1989 a lot of these came to Scandinavia, and I jumped on the wagon to get some of the classic characters that I had missed out on earlier. Used to have a few more, but traded them away. Inferno and Sideswipe aren't that interesting, and Top Spin "only" has a read face, but Hoist is really freaky: Check out his head.

The white Windcharger with the blue body is actually the mexican version of Tailgate -- basically just a repaint of Windcharger and not the retooling we came to know. Also one of my favourite pieces. The brown Brawn is actually a custom done for DairyCon 2007 AFAIR, but his tech specs make him the commander of the IGA (mexican Transformers maker) releases, so I figured I'd put him in here for good measure.



And the Decepticons. Couldn't find Hook if my life depended on it back then, so it took me almost 10 years to complete my Devastator. Starscream isn't doing too well, but has his "classic" IGA trademarks: Sparkly blue plastics, orangy lead paint, hard plastic nose cone and plastic wheels. Gotta love that.




My Windchargers -- vehicle and robot modes, respectively. Favourites include the Seven (manufacturer's name) model kit (black/red one in the left hand side), the 2 white "non-Tailgate" ones (also on the right hand side), the transitional US Windcharger with Tailgate markings (the one without a rub mark in the middle of the top row), the purple/pink Estrela (manufacturer's name) one from Brazil (bottom row, right hand side), the "big-box" Microchange one on the left hand side and the purple one on the left front row, which was one of my first customs named Carver.



This leads straight into my minibot collection. I love the variety of colors in that shot. All the carded stuff is sealed, BTW.



I also collect G1 Seaspray. He was my first toy back in the day, and I happened to come across some of the harder to find specimens on this picture, and thought "what the hey". Besides the two loose toys (the one on the left is my own original toy, the one on the right a "newer" mintier version), these release are (l to r, top to bottom): Chinese 1990s version, Takara 1st (carded) version, European 2nd (Hasbro logo) version, Greek version, European 1st (Milton Bradley) version and US 1st (no offer) version.



Various custom exclusives. The NTFA figure on the far right next to Downforce has no name, and was made as a "thank you" host gift for Frank and Hild, so I labeled it an "Organizers Exclusive" and only made 2 Downforce (blue Drag Strip) is the official convention toy from the Sandnes mini-con November '06, and the rest are from DairyCon US where I know the organizers, except Minesweeper, who is from Sabretron 2004 in Australia.

[Tformer]

Very impressive!
The minibot collection itself is awesome, and the fact that there's so many Windcharger variations!? However, I don't see many of the "newer" minibots. Warpath, Powerglide, Cosmos and Wheelie (<- ) What gives? Not a fan of the designs?

[Fighbird]

Pics too heavy? Should I downsize them a bit? I still have a lot of pictures to go, but won't continue adding them before tomorrow.

Very impressive!
The minibot collection itself is awesome, and the fact that there's so many Windcharger variations!? However, I don't see many of the "newer" minibots. Warpath, Powerglide, Cosmos and Wheelie (<- ) What gives? Not a fan of the designs?

Oh, I have the others as well (only missing Outback loose and Beachcomber to have all the minis, though), but I enjoy the Microchange-based toys the most, since they were repainted and retooled throught the years the most.

[Groundsplitter]

1,25-1,8 MB per picture is a lot, yes. If I were you I would start by compressing them. According to PhotoShop you've only compressed them down to 10/12, and that is much, much higher than is really necessary. I usually bring down my pictures to 5/12. That would drop the file size to about a quarter of the original file size.

[Vector_Sigma]

I dont know what to say...
This is truly great..Keep wondering how other collectors are getting hold of their minibots,since you seem to be hoggin` them all...hehe..truly wicked collection

Btw...who is the dude next to Overlord,behind Grimlock?

[Skybolt]

Great collection I love the european classics.
I'm usually using Photoshop for resizing and I usually do a max of 1600x1200 in resolution = still good amount of detail. And then I save them for use as web images and compress to 8/12. That way I can get a 1600x1200 photo still in fine quality down to about 300kb instead of 1.3mb.

Btw...who is the dude next to Overlord,behind Grimlock?

Skyquake - I think he managed to be a "gewunner"

[predaking]

It's nice to see the details of your collection. And that flame still brings a big smile to my face.

What the heck, I think I'm going to take pictures of parts of my collection again as well. Some pieces deserve more than a group shot.

[Fighbird]

Fair enough -- I will resize everything.

I just figured that I (for once) would do some real hi-res pictures, so that people could see all the detail and stuff. But maybe I went overboard with that... 1.3MB+ is too much, yes.

And thanks for the kinds words; you haven't seen nothing yet...

[Leobreaker]

An excellent collection, Fighbird!

[Fighbird]

HEAVILY reduced the picture sizes -- LMK if it's better like this.

Hope to add more pictures this evening.

And thanks for the kind words so far, guys.

[Vector_Sigma]

HEAVILY reduced the picture sizes -- LMK if it's better like this.

Hope to add more pictures this evening.

And thanks for the kind words so far, guys.

Yup,this page loads way faster now

[Inkku]

really nice looking collection there..

[Fighbird]

Right, since the picture situation is fixed, why don't we continue where we left of?



What I call my "Pre-Transformers Heritage" picture. On the left a Henshin Cyborg, the "godfather" of pretty much everything from Diaclone to Microman and (the small) G.I.Joe to Action Man. Although neither an original 1970's release nor a reissue, this is a "reinvention" of him from around 1998. Kronoform was Takara's attempt at marketing the Diaclone toys in America back in the early 1980s. The boxes on the right are all from Microman Microchange.

The loose toys in front include a finnish Diaclone pre-Ironhide, and 5 Microchange minicars. Then we have 2 Diaclone drivers (from the Kronoform Multi-Force set) and Microman Saram, the original commander of the Microchange forces.



French Diaclone toys. Joustra and Revell are (were?) all subsidiaries to Ceji, so they're all from the same company. Not much is known about the french Diaclone, other than the smaller toys came with TF insigniaes, while the larger ones didn't -- and were mostly a lot like the Italian Diaclone, but without the tell-tale Italian safety missiles. We believe these toys came on the market in 1984, some time after Hasbro started making TFs, but before the line was introduced over here.



The Takara "Dreamwave bookcase" reissues, aka Transformers Collection. Excellent line in beautiful packaging. Too bad they didn't continue that. Am missing #18, Soundblaster w/ Buzzsaw and Ravage, on this picture.



Late UK Generation 1 (which I call Generation 1.5) and Generation 2. I love the packaging design on the UK-only stuff, and it was only the later toys in G2 that were really good IMO, like the Rotorbots and the Laser Rods. Sureshot is still sealed, BTW.



Beast Wars "classic". The first toys I got after taking up collecting again in 1998 were the two Beast Wars combiners. I remember reading about these on the internet and thinking that this was really outrageous what they had done to the toyline with these beasts, but figured what the hey, and got Magnaboss and Tripredacus at a very reasonable price. And I was hooked once again. Transquito and B'Boom are still sealed.



The card design has become classic in my mind -- and notice how close they are to the current movie stuff with the red/black theme? Terrorsaur is a really early european release without the "Biocombat" subtext, and if the picture was clearer, you might be able to see the TF G2 logo used on it as well in the lower right-hand corner.



Beast Wars 2 was primarily a repaint line of US toys, but there were a few uniqe moulds released in here, amongst those the two leaders, LeoConvoy and Galvatron. The small white lion is LeoConvoy Jr. (aka Prowl from Magnaboss) in an exclusive version from a jig-saw puzzle set. The black robot on the top is Dark Egg-Bot, one of the Microchange sphere robos, redone in smokeclear plastic.



Beast Wars Neo. Took quite some time, but last year I finally completed this set. It's not all that difficult to locate these toys per se, but I wanted to have them in their single-pack versions only, and some of those are damned hard to find at reasonable prices. The VS-sets are nice, don't get me wrong, but I like the designs on the single-packs just a wee bit better. Includes the Toy'R'Us Japan Black Big Convoy and two RPG guns (lower left-hand corner).



Bought a few when the line appeared locally, but most were too weird for me, hence why I only have four of them. These four, however, are pretty darn cool, though.



Machine Wars, the ill-fated test-line done simultaneously with Beast Wars wave 1 in the US. I really like Prime here, although his face doesn't have a mouthplate (he is a straight repaint of Turbomaster Thunderclash) and he generally doesn't look like his boxart at all. Seem familiar? Check out the box art for Laser Rod G2 Prime...

This post has been edited by Fighbird: 26 July 2007, 22:44

Reason for edit: Added G1.5/G2 shot...

[Fighbird]

Alright, on to some of the newer lines:



Takara was in financial trouble around the turn of the millenium, and decided to that if they were to go down, they would go down with a bang. So they put all their effort into this line, Car Robots, and did so well, that Hasbro -- who initially wanted to continue with Beast Wars/Machines -- decided to get these toys over for Robots In Disguise. Personally, I was sold with Fire Convoy and the three car brothers. Ruination is a pretty good repaint, even though the new names were awful.



Armada/Micron Legend didn't do much for me. Very kiddified toys, especially when following after CR/RiD, but a few stood out like Wheeljack and Tidal Wave. Didn't particularly like the idea of the Mini-Cons, even though there were some very good Mini-Con designs here and there.



Energon was more to my liking, especially the japanese Superlink packaging with their gestalt giftsets. This Prime did blow serious energon chunks (fiddled with him again the other day to see if I had changed my mind after all these years, but no such luck).



Cyberton/Galaxy Force. Arguably the best of the "trilogy" line of Armada/Energon/Cybertron, if you think about how many toys I have from this line still.



THE best line in recent years, IMHO. Not complete yet (especially with those far-out-expensive BotCon toys still missing here). The blue character in the front is a custom of mine based on the BotCon character Glyph.



Movie toys. Not much in here that we haven't seen before (besides maybe Arcee). Anyone seen Legend Prime locally, BTW?



Originally wanted to collect Binaltech, but deemed it too expensive in the long run, so I decided to only get the ones I thought were cool. And, of course, needed the two leaders as well (since Prime is in scale with the BTs), so those were the two I got from Masterpiece.