Transformers and the Target Market
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007Last night, about 3 AM, I woke up completely wide awake for various reasons:
- My foot was itching like a son of a bitch.
- You people were getting me all stressed out about MastaG and his freaky tattoo scar (gee, thanks)
- I was excited about something, like a Christmas morning excited, but couldn’t remember what.
I thought maybe the excitement stemmed from a dream I had that BJ wasn’t really dead, that it was all some sort of mistake, and she was back home. Sounds harsh, but I have that dream a lot, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. I wake up happy for the opportunity to have spent a little bit more time with her, and thankful for the time I had with her. The days of me painfully missing her are over, for the past month or so, and hopefully for good, but thats not what this post is about.
No, I was thinking. I couldn’t remember what it is about today that I was excited about. It wasn’t a Friday, so I had to work. I had to figure out when to get G to the doc, which is never something I look forward to, but still, there was something I couldn’t get my fingers around.
I finally figured it out. I had bought tickets for me, the kids (along with Realtorchick’s youngest, who’s been kinda living at my house lately), and Jimmy from the Time Out Deli, to go see Transformers at 4:35 PM today.
Now, I wasn’t excited about it, other than seeing the boys’ wide eyed enthusiasm, because I kinda think I’m going to be disappointed about the movie. I mean, Michael Bay, c’mon. He can’t do Transformers.
But still, there was something deeply ingrained in me about the Autobots and Decepticons, something thats been with me longer than my wife, my kids, and some of my siblings, and I realized that I was kid-in-a-candy-store thrilled about seeing this stupid movie.
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I was Pigpens age, five years old, when I first saw the Transformers. I remember sitting in the Den of our old house in Chattanooga, the one I grew up in, before I moved out and the folks bought the Blueberry Farm, watching cartoons as was my early morning wont, when I saw the commercial. I don’t remember much about it, just sitting transfixed, with my bowl of cereal, looking at this big massive red truck turning into a bigger, massiver robot, with these sweet jet planes turning into robots and shooting at him.
Now, I loved trucks, planes, and robots. I was the target market.
I was hooked.
That Christmas, I got my first Transformers, Cliffjumper and Thundercracker. The Biscuit (Dad) and 
I worked for 30 minutes to get Thundercracker, one of those sweet planes, transformed into its robot mode, and man, lemme tell you, it was 30 of the best minutes of my life.
The Transformers cartoon show started around that time, and I was absorbed into the stark desert landscape that the Autobots rolled around in, protecting power plants and whatnot from Megatron and the Decepticons and their evil schemes to transform all this stuff into glittery energon cubes so they could do something with them that I didn’t really comprehend (world conquest, or something, hell, I dunno… they were freakin Transformers man, who cares!)
The next Christmas, about all I wanted were Transformers. I was the target market.
I prayed, begged, whined, cajoled, whimpered, and schemed to get Omega Supreme. As the name implies, he was the end all/be all of Transformery excess in the winter of 1985 (or was it 84?). He cost $50. I went to K-mart frequently to look at the massive box, drooling at the awesome mural image of Transformers in space, blasting each other. I read the little stats for him printed on the box, with the maxed out firepower and strength rating, and hyperventilated on the few occasions Omega Supreme appeared on the cartoon.
Problem was, there wasn’t a whole lot of money going around growing up, and I knew he was too expensive. 
Still, I prayed, and hoped, and begged.
I opened my presents that Christmas Eve, and he wasn’t there. That night tho, I snuck over to see what Santa dropped off (again, as is my childhood wont), and damned if Omega wasn’t sitting there, out of the box, in robot mode, big massive gun hand pointing right at me.
It was the happiest day of my young life.
Time went on, and in the summer of 1986 the Transformers animated movie came out. The ads would come on TV, and I’d be transfixed, taking in all the awesome. The colors were brighter than the show, the explosions were more explody, the robots were shiner. There were new robots, and rumors of huge changes to the Transformers pantheon!
I never saw that movie in the theaters. I heard, tho, as time went on, that Optimus Prime, that mighty red truck, the leader of the Autobots, the savior of little boys, died that summer.
Man, I tell you what, that hit me hard. I was afraid to admit it, because who wants to admit that they’re crying over a cartoon, but I had a hard time. That summer, my favorite teacher moved away (she taught the gifted class at Mountain Creek Elementary), and my cousins friend, who I had met a time or two in South Carolina, died in an automobile accident. The three things combined, and weighted my little 3rd grade heart down.
But I really think it was Optimus that did it. He was a hero to the target market. He was a massive truck, who turned into a massiver robot, who’d get down and play basketball with orphan kids. He cared about all of these little puny creatures on Earth, and died defending them. Wired called him the father to a generation of latchkey kids. I don’t think I’d go quite that far, but then I had a Dad, and wasn’t necessarily a latchkey kid.
I was just in the target market, and he was the hero.
So, today, at 29, in 2007, 21 years after he died the first time, I’m excited about seeing him. Bay may well screw it up, but I’m not expecting much, except to maybe see my boys have the enthusiasm and happiness that I had at their age, with a bowl of cereal, and a badass robot.
