Retro-fit
Anyone who went through their childhood during the mid-1980's will remember the Transformers. The ultimate excuse to spend your parents' money on cool plastic toys, which transformed into cars, planes and (gasp) even audio cassettes.
Mechanical beings from the planet Cybertron, who had inadvertently become stranded on Earth (wrong turn at the roundabout perhaps?), the Transformers were divided into two camps. In the red corner were the Heroic Autobots, fighting for all that is good and decent in the world. In the purply-blue corner The Evil Decepticons, sporting a natty line in fighter jets and campaigning for the forces of dastardly evil.
Then there was the early-morning tv slot on Wacaday, the comics (352 issues of which are still clogging up my bedroom) and eventually in 1986 Transformers: The Movie which saw lots more funky variations such as Ultra Magnus (more bad latin), Galvatron and the bizarrely named Wreck-Gar who came from the planet Junkion a planet made entirely of, er, junk (much like my essays then...).
As we grew up so did our beloved Transformers. With more makeovers than the average Spice Girl, those wonderful folk at Hasbro brought us Special Teams, which combined into bigger Transformers, Targetmasters, whose guns became little Transformers and even the slightly macabre Headmasters. Nothing to do with the bald guy in Morning Assembly, these were Transformers whose heads became little robots. For little boys who were specially good there was the two-foot high Fortress Maximus, whose head became a little Transformer whose head became an even littler Transformer whose name, incidentally, was Spike.
Of course there were always some which stood out for Ultimate Cool. Dinobots - of course - were the greatest variation on retro-chic (6 million-year retro in this case). Grimlock, part T-Rex part musclebound warrior, was ably supported by his co-horts Sludge, Snarl, Slag and Swoop (the Pterodactyl which for some irritating reason was never released in Britain). Out of the Movie Cyclonus and Scourge made waves with their sleek lines, and Hot Rod (or, in his more rampant personification, Rodimus Prime) was always a hit among the ladies (Arcee included). But who could ever forget the big Mr. P himself, Optimus Prime, who could even make truck-trailers look funky - though his motto was rather naff. "Life is the right of all sentient beings." And yes I do still remember it by heart. That's dedication for you.
7th Oct 1999