A Geeky Nostalgia Tour

Who owned the truck first is unknown. I only know that it was in Nana and Papa's basement.

When I was a kid, Nana and Papa's basement was just about the coolest place in the world. There were huge bins full of toys, dress-up clothes, and dolls down there, just waiting to be discovered. Who could pass up the sheer awesomeness that was The Drum Kit? (Okay, it wasn't a real drum kit. It was three plastic drums with matching drumsticks that we used to make a terrific racket with while marching in circles. It was kind of the favorite toy of the basement.) 

Then there was the Doll House. It was this beautiful little wooden thing with shutters and windows that opened and closed. The furniture had come from a bunch of different places, so it was as eclectic as a real house. The dolls that went with the house were these adorable little fuzzy bunnies and bears with little clothes. I later learned that they were Vintage Sylvanian Families. Nowadays, they're sold in toy stores under the name "Calico Critters". 

Aside from the musical toys, dress-ups, and animals, then there were the dolls...mostly.

See, Nana and Papa used to have a little dog named Shadow. Shadow didn't like the Barbie dolls as much as we did. As a matter of fact, three out of five of them had teeth marks all up and down their arms and legs. One of them was even missing a foot! (For that reason, we tended to bring our own dolls to their house.) 

Then there was a hapless G.I. Joe who tended to get roped into the Barbie games. Usually, he had to drive the pink jeep because we decided that Barbies with foot problems had no business driving. The general thing to do, of course, when one has a jeep full of Barbies with a G. I. Joe, is to send it careening helplessly down the stairs at a breakneck pace. What, don't all little girls do that with their dolls? 

In the mix was a random Power Rangers doll. Now, Meredith and I didn't have cable, and even if we did I'm not sure we would have been allowed to watch Power Rangers as kids. (See, we were the type to imitate what we saw, so there could have been some martial-arts-related injuries...) I'm not sure which version of the show it was from, only that it was the Black Ranger and he had a picture of a mammoth on his uniform. And Meredith loved that action figure. If I wanted to play Barbie dolls, you could bet that the Black Ranger was going to be there, saving the day or going to a costume party-it didn't matter.

Then one day Dad showed us where the HotWheels track that had been his as a kid was.

Meredith and Kayla and I would set the track up at the top of the stairs and send cars flying into the wall with many a cackle of glee. We would trundle up and down the basement, looking for cars to join our flung festoon. 

That's when we found it.

Kayla was upstairs napping, and Mer and I were playing quietly, hunting for cars. Suddenly Meredith squeaked, "This car has a face!" And so it did. A little metal semi truck at first glance, but she turned it over and there was a strange head underneath. Well that couldn't be right! Cars were cars and action figures were action figures. How could it be both? At first, I thought it looked a little scary. Then one of us (I think it was Meredith) discovered that some of the parts moved and that it was supposed to change forms. Slightly concerned, we took the odd gadget upstairs to the kitchen, where our mother was talking to Nana. We held up the truck/not-truck to her and she laughed. "More than Meets the Eye!" she chanted. We were completely confused. 

She explained to us that it was meant to turn into a robot, and that it was something called a Transformer. We shrugged and took it out to the living room. Kayla had woken up and we decided to watch The Little Mermaid. I held on to the Transformer truck, and Meredith and I attempted to force it into robot mode. For a pair of six-or-seven year old girls who had no experience with such matters, I'd like to think we did fairly well. That being said, it should be noted that we never finished transforming him. He ended up some sort of freakish truck-centaur thing, which I left in a basket. I never saw it again, and soon forgot about it.

Then I moved to South Carolina.

We discovered that in the afternoons, cartoons came on, which delighted us. One day, I wandered into Meredith's room and she said, "Hey, check this out! It's called Transformers: Cybertron." I shrugged and sat down next to her as she animatedly explained the story so far and her very favorite character, Hot Shot. (I think he's still her favorite character.) I watched, interested, and found myself remembering the truck from Nana and Papa's basement. Then a firetruck drove onto the scene. The vehicle mode was different, but as soon as it switched to robot mode, I started. "Oh!" I thought, "I know you!" It was the same robot that I'd left in centaur-mode years ago.

It was Optimus Prime.

I settled in to enjoy the show, thinking, "Well, if you're here, this can't be all bad." I'm not sure why, since no one had explained the series to us before, but somehow we already knew who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Somehow we even knew which one was Megatron!

I remember asking, "Which one is that?"

And Meredith said, "That's Starscream."

"What's with him? Is he on the Autobot side or the Decepticon side?!"

"....It's really hard to tell sometimes."

Yeah....ten or so years later and it's still hard to tell sometimes which side Starscream is on. 

I think Starscream is on Starscream's side, and no others.