Transformers

So the Transformers movie comes out tomorrow and I’m wondering: Is it just me or did the people who made the movie Transformers ever actually play with a transformer?  Because my son has a couple, and let me tell you, those things DO NOT transform as fast or smoothly as they do in the movie.

Maybe I’m mechanically inept, or simply toy incapable, but I couldn’t make transformers transform when they first came out in the ’80s and I was babysitting kids who played with them, and I can’t do it today either.  Yes, folks.  I admit it.  Transformers have confounded me for 20 years now!

Maybe, if my son hadn’t ripped open the packages and screwed the transformers up before I read the directions, I would have understood how these things work.  But it’s too late now.  He opened them, and not neatly.  He destroyed the back of the package which contained the picture showing what the transformer were supposed to look like.  So now it’s a bit difficult to follow the instructions from Step 1.  Because what I’m holding in my hands looks NOTHING like the pictures and I can’t even figure out how to get it there, not even close.

I don’t understand how they can say these toys are for children ages 5 and up.  Pieces have popped off and I don’t even know which transformer I’m supposed to snap them back on to.

Really transformers should be sold in the puzzle aisle, not the toy aisle.  They remind me of the wood and metal disentanglement puzzles with all their rods and rings and ropes.  Pull this, twist that, push this, twist here, push this, pull that, throw it across the room in frustration and disgust while crying “Forget it!  I don’t want to play this anyway!” 

Remember when Rubik’s Cube first came out?  My brother found a quick way to solve that when he was a kid.  He didn’t read the solution manual, he didn’t need to.  He simply peeled the little color stickers off and rearranged them!

But these transformers, I swear they are actually little brain teasers, Mensa material.  If I ever figure out how to make these transform from vehicle to action figure to vehicle again, I swear to you, I am going to document my success with photos and video, and I’m sending it off to Mensa.  Once they see it, there’s no way they will be able to claim, like last time, that I’m not smart enough.