I grew up in the 1980s and as such I still have a box of toys leftover that I’ve ferried from one residence to another ever since I left the parents’ nest. Mostly, I was obsessed with all manner of robots in the same way that I am obsessed with multimedia hacking these days. Anyone who still hangs on to boxes of paraphenalia from their youth occasionally entertains the idea that these old toys might be worth something these day.

I pulled out my box of robots from the 80s recently and quickly disabused myself of the notion that any of this junk could be worth anything. In fact, I resolved to dispose all of it all just as soon as I exercise my reprehensible photography skill (or lack thereof) to capture them all in a more efficient form. And since this is my blog, and I haven’t had that much to say about the blog’s chartered topics lately, I will document the robots here, in case there is anyone else out there who cares. Plus, maybe someone else can identify some of these robots that I used to be keen on but can no longer positively identify.

I’ll start with some Transformers, always my favorite robots. Here’s Megatron, the villainous Decepticon leader who looked ever so menacing in cartoon form but looked somewhat silly as a toy:

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He was a Walther P-38 when transformed. I didn’t even understand what “Walther P-38” meant until a few years ago.

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I can’t forget Wheeljack — he was the first Transformer I ever got, for Christmas in 1984.

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And his car form (back when “Autobot” meant something). Rear spoiler has gone missing over the years.

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I think these dudebots were called Jumpmasters. There were only two of them as they were both Autobots.

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One was supposed to be a jet craft and the other a drill. Their gimmick was that you could pull them back on a hard surface to wind them up, let them go, and they would race forward, flip, and transform. It usually worked, too.

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Astrotrain, a Decepticon Triple Changer. Quite the value-add vs. the typical Transformer with only 2 forms. This is his robot form, though I’m pretty sure that his legs were supposed to split and the shuttle tail on his chest was supposed to swing through his crotch and up to his back.

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Astrotrain as a sinister-looking space shuttle:

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Astrotrain as a choo-choo:

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Plenty more robots on the way…