[Thugnificent]

I had a number of G1 figures when I was kid handed down from my brother and watched a bunch of tapped G1 episodes in the early '90s so I already loved Transformers, but my full introduction was Beast Wars, in Grade 5. It was just about the deepest & slickest show around when it appeared on YTV in Canada, and was just mindblowing as hell when being 11 & they introduced the Ark at the end of season two , Megatron looming over G1 Prime in his chair. Also the flyover of all the downed G1 characters Megatron did (flyover of Soundwave), just awesome. I was blown away that it was tied to the original cartoon (prior to knowing about the Marvel continuity & now the variety of storylines that exist), and appreciated the little other G1 tidbits (Starscream's spark, Golden Disk, Ravage transforming into a tape & the original G1 noise), giving a sense of vast mythology.

The toys themselves were ridiculously sweet I thought. Real action figures that had poses & pieces that could pop off! The first ones were kinda close to the first season of the show (I remember their weird mutant faces they had, particularly that Waspinator had a more robot head on his figure) but by the Transmetals.... they are still some of the best Transformer figures. The accuracy & transformations on Primal & Megatron were crazy. I still remember the awe that the figures looked exactly like the show both robot & beast (so much chrome) & transformed the same way it looked on screen. Good memories. Beast Machines was cool, but the toys were hit or miss. Never really got into the later Beast Wars series, like mutants & reissues.

I still regret selling my Transmetal Rampage & Depthcharge. God dammit.