Hasbro probably just thought “Hey guys, what if we had them turn into ANIMALS this time?”

Well, the originals all came from Japan, and were part of another toy line. I'm guessing Hasbro tried to make something completely new.

The first wave of Transformers toys in 1984 was mostly just toys from two different lines of toys in Japan, one being called Diaclone

Not sure about the other one

But all they really did was re-paint them and change their names

Yep. I don't remember either.

That’s why we got some weird alt-modes like Megatron becoming a gun

Spell check changed “gun” to “fun” 😆

LOL Well, depends on how you use it, I guess...

I ain’t gonna disagree with spell check, gun = fun

But I definitely think the idea for Transformers toys was a genius one

Those guys knew what they were doing back in 1984

Oh, definitely. My dad was thrilled by them. He was a design engineer back then, loved to fiddle with mine.

Hasbro's sort of killing off customers lately, though.

I see these “one-step” change Transformers at the store all the time and think “Man, kids have gotten so dumb and lazy”

You just push a button and it instantly transforms for you, they don’t even look cool

Hey, though, remember the ones from G1, though? Topspin and Twin Twist?

Pull them back, they flipped open?

Oh yes, those guys were one step

They didn't really take off, though.

Yeah, the gimmick gets kind of boring after awhile

I have a G1 Bumblebee on my desk

And an original Snake Eyes from GI Joe

I have G1 Optimus upstairs.

*nods*

I collected both.

Damn, lucky

I collected later, though, when I was a teen.

Walmart has a re-issue of G1 Optimus that’s exactly like the original. He’s a whopping $50

Want to feel some agony? Before I every went online, I got tired of my almost complete G1 collection, and sold almost every single one for yard sale prices.

I didn't know what they were worth.

Oh man, I’d hate myself LOL

I'm hurting still, yep.

I only have about thirty total left, including the cassettes.

A lot of my stuff isn’t worth much anymore since it’s been well played with

Never expected any of this stuff to be worth a fortune

Same. I wasn't collecting to keep mint.

What drives me nuts nowadays are the collecting latecomers.

Modern stuff is *not* going to be worth $500 a pop loose.

Definitely not, I don’t expect any modern “collectibles” to be worth anything

VHS tape collecting is crazy too, they aren’t worth anything but people will pay a fortune for them. We sold all of our cheap a while ago