More than is to be meeting the eye

OK, this'll be a complete and totally geeky entry...

I guess around 6th or 7th grade a kid named Cooper who played 2nd base on my baseball team had an awesome looking toy car that transformed into a robot. I recall the toys way before I ever saw the show. I was waaay too old to be hanging around playing with toys but for whatever reason (interactivity, coolness, arrested development) I got into it. I think my kid brother brought home one that was a red Lamborghini, and it also helped that one of my second cousins about my age bought some, too. Anyway, I was a Transformers fan, despite being 11 or 12 years old (and older, I'll admit).

Of course, lots of us recall the show. I got into it. I really did. The great leader Optimus Prime who talked like John Wayne and his loyal noble Autobot followers juxtaposed with the malevolently brilliant Megatron and the power-mad Decepticons.... plus cool theme songs and all that Japanimation. Again, they all changed into cool cars or jets or (for a time) guns. Every episode consisted of both factions at their secret base planning stuff....fights ensue wherein miraculously NO ONE AND NOTHING is killed or seriously injured...and the show ended with some character making a "joke" and everyone laughs....end scene.

It was something I never would talk about at school, my classmates seemed to have moved away from childish pleasures and were interested in girls and looking cool for their benefit. I had this huge crush on the aforementioned Cooper's older sister - it was, like most of my crushes - unspoken --- but I suppose it was a way to connect with my younger siblings and (I'm guessing here) indulge the kid in me that didn't want to grow up. I watched it just about every day with them (and the other junk that was on-air: GI Joe, Thundercats, whatever) and at the time I thought it was ....really cool. Anti-climactic I know.

I recall hanging with the show (and to an extent the toys) till I got my first job. Something about working 10 - 12 hours in the summer heat left me uninterested with kids' toys. Oh, and I guess it also helped that I fell into a relationship with a young lady and my attentions were drawn elsewhere. Yeah, I know they'd made a movie at some point, but I didn't go see it.

I only had a few, and the few I had I kept. No real reason. Perhaps I liked the cars, still. In any case they sat at my mom and dad's house for a decade and then-some. As we know these days, the Transformers franchise is a money-printing endeavor. The movies, the toys, the games, some decent comics, Megan Fox, blah blah blah.

Hooray for Hasbro. Really, bravo. The movies were OK. Not great, kinda awful in spots, and I didn't care for the fact that the robots were practically indistinguishable. (yes, I know how dumb I sound).

But along the way, my kids picked up the old toys I had and read the old comics and (now) are playing the latest game and watch DVDs of the old show and...well.....it's kinda cool. I'm not exactly sure why.

Just today, my sons (10 and 4) are sitting on our floor playing with toys my brothers and I had nearly 25 years ago. Of course, they've also got some of the newer versions of the old stuff but by my count there's something like 10 "old hands" that were there when I was a grade-schooler. I'm not exactly sure why that's cool. Perhaps it's akin to the closing of Toy Story 3, where the older kid realizes his stuff is in good hands and he's happy to see that his childhood possessions are going to be played with all over again with young imaginations.

And, I guess that's what it evokes, watching my 4-year old son push a tractor-trailer around on the floor and (loudly) stating "roll out"). Sometimes history repeats itself.

If I wasn't a bastard, I'd think about tearing up.