The Memory Of Play

How Transformers 'Missing Link' seeks to reimagine toys for adults - and what that says about us

The Hot New Thing amongst robot collectors right now is Transformers: Missing Link - in short, faithful re-releases of the original 1980s toyline, but near-invisibly reengineered to add a level of articulation (and solve ancient design problems) to meet today’s toy standards.

Which is to say, a toy that originally allowed as much movement as a stale sandwich can now do all the superhero landings and Cobra Kai face-kicks you could ever desire - despite still looking like a dated toy car meets a Japanese boomer’s boxy vision of a tomorrow that never came to pass.

Missing Link is so much my jam it’s not even funny. The thing I’ve, unknowingly, been wanting Transformers to do since I first helplessly fell down an adult collecting hole in 2001. (There was even a time, not so long ago, I thought I might finally climb my way out of that hole - but just as I glimpsed daylight, this happened).

As alluded to in the recent exploration of faceless freaks Ironhide and Ratchet’s true origins and design intentions, there’s something of a schism between ‘toon’ and ‘toy’ Transformers collectors.

The former desires toys that conceal essentially a little man wearing ill-fitting cosplay inside a incredibly accurate replica vehicle (or gun or boombox etc).

Above: the cartoon is notorious for its errors, despite being the Holy Bible for many.

This is in order to precisely recreate the Transformers’ greatly simplified appearance in the ‘Sunbow’ cartoon series of yore. For many kids, especially in the US, this was their main awareness of most of the Transformers cast - after all, a six year old didn’t have the capacity to burn all their rent money on toys, like this dumb shmuck does today.

Above: the one Transformer I have never transformed. Just can’t face the pain.

So they’d attach to the pared-down animated version of a character, rather than the more detailed (and, admittedly, often awkward) toy.

The other faction in the toy design cold war is those who feel modern Transformers styled after the original figures are the only game in town. After all, it began with toys - the cartoon, let’s be honest, was just an extended advertisement for them, a faintly sinister product of a bygone Reaganite age in which exploiting kids for commercial gain was a national way of life.

The toys, this camp feels, should evoke how the original toys made us feel - the sheer robotiness, rather than a bloke made of colourful marshmallows and with a window stuck to his chest, and the dopamine-prompting tactility of a logical transformation.

Above: the original 1984 Starscream toy

I incline more towards the Toy ethos, for what it’s worth, though not to a fault. That’s another story. The story here is that the Toon faction won. Oh lord, did they win. For years, Transformers both official and unofficial (that latter also another story) have been obsessively focused with trying to recreate those wobbly cartoon characters to the Nth degree, despite them often having a clear incompatibility with the vehicles (and guns and boomboxes and - look, please don’t make me qualify that every time) they’re supposed to transform into.

The net result was figures that either a) have dispiritingly ‘eh, it’ll do’ vehicle modes or b) were often horrendous to transform. It’s one thing to turn a realistic car into a robot with lots of bits of said car hanging off it. It’s another entirely to turn a realistic car into a slightly dumpier Marvel superhero.

The engineering required for these ‘Masterpiece’ figures is remarkable - but frequently antithetical to fun. (N.b. there are many exceptions to this: I talk more about the overall experience of collecting these things en masse rather than any individual figure). For these reasons, a lot of people collecting these ‘toon’ Transformers effectively do so to just stand ‘em on a shelf forever in robot mode - museum-building rather than play. Which is perfectly valid: if it sparks joy, it sparks joy.

But it’s not why I got into these thrice-cursed things in the first place, nor why I still dig them today. I want to feel like they made me feel when I found one under the Christmas tree in 1986, or when parents told me to piss off and entertain myself for the fourteenth weekend running. I want to play.

Above: Missing Links Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, with their original incarnations.

But wait. That sounds meaningful: but what does it even mean? I’m 46 years old. I may be a helpless case, but I’m not truly going to wave toy planes around going woosh, or bashing two tiny plastic faces into each other and bellowing “bam! Pew-pew! Die die die!” To mis-quote Stellan Skarsgard, my imagination is a sunless place now. Oh, I can and do write fiction, but I can’t live and roleplay within a fiction of my own creation in the way I did as a child. I don’t know how many truly can.

And so to Missing Link, which is not really about giving us the chance to play with our toys as we once did - it’s about the memory of play. It adds all these fantastically-engineered micro-joints, so that we may pose these robots like the heroes they were in our young minds, and makes Optimus Prime’s fists tuck away neatly in truck mode, rather than be removed then lost forever down the back of the sofa. And, importantly, it achieves this magic broadly without losing what the toy was in the first place.

Above: You vs the guy she told you not to worry about.

Missing Link Optimus, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper and the just-released Sunstreaker are everything I’ve dreamed of for twenty years. The original toys, held to modern standards. I can make them look so cool. I’m awed by the little tricks to overcome ancient design obstacles - an elbow here, a waist-swivel there, a peeling sticker replaced by moulded-and-painted detail there. Super-deluxe.

And yet… I didn’t need any of this when I was 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I cannot sincerely say that I even noticed Optimus’ head didn’t turn or Bumblebee’s only pose was ‘queuing up for his turn at a service station urinal.’ I know I lost Prime’s left fist and felt true despair - these days I could hit eBay or pester someone with a 3D printer, but in 1985 buying a whole new toy was the only, and impossible, solution. Missing Link’s integrated hands solve that woe - and yet, wasn’t plugging in those little blue haymakers all part of the fun?

Above: the newly-released Missing Link Sunstreaker.

Which is a very roundabout way of saying - Missing Link gives me what I want. These are incredibly pleasing objects: robots, not cartoon characters, and instinctive fiddle-toys that don’t take an hour to transform. But it’s also the final nail in the coffin of play. It’s the toy taking on the burden of imagination for me.

Yes, I can put them in these dramatic poses, these vibrant battle scenes and heroic gestures. But, once upon a time, I didn’t need to. My Transformers were bricks, and I loved them all. Their lives, their poses, their wars without end all happened in my mind - and so much more besides. Look at how much has to be engineered, and how much I have to spend, to achieve just a faint simulacrum of that ancient, joyful feeling.

Because - let’s open a vein here - that is what this is all about, isn’t it? Trying to feel as we felt decades ago. When we were free. When there were no bills or burdens, no enraging politics or social media controversies. Just play.

The memory of play. That’s all I can hope for.

I’ll look more closely at the actual Missing Link figures themselves in a forthcoming newsletter.