Now I've seen (through) everything OR: I love how these fake boxes bring back all those memories I never had

Lately the best Transformers items I've bought aren't made by Hasbro. Case in point is this clear plastic Mirage toy. Mirage was an Autobot toy and character in the Transformers cartoon from 1984. He was a spy and in the show he'd occasionally use his power to become invisible to save the friggin' day. Of course the actual Mirage toy couldn't become invisible and the most transparent part of Transformers back then was their clear plastic windshields. This bootleg is an homage to the fictional character's invisibility powers and is an almost exact reproduction of the original toy except that it's cast in transparent plastic with a very slight tinge of ghostly blue. What trips me out is that it looks and feels like the tires are made of clear rubber!

While Takara and Hasbro have reissued many of the original 1984 toys and made many translucent figures in the years since, there has never been an official transparent plastic version of the original Mirage mold. Hasbro representatives have claimed that the original molds for Mirage were lost so I doubt that they will ever do anything like this. Actually, since clear plastic tends to yellow over time I don't think the official manufacturers would go as clear as this figure is even if they had the mold. This means I'll probably have a nice pee color Mirage in a few years. But as Chuck Palahniuk wrote, even the Mona Lisa's falling apart.

When this thing popped up on ebay a couple weeks ago I bought it for $74.95. That may seem a bit steep to a lot of people, but what made it worth it for me was the reproduction box the thing comes in. The fake boxes being manufactured nowadays are stunning, if not perfect, copies of the originals. What I'm going to do is put a spare Mirage I have in the fake box and keep the clear one out. So I reasoned I was paying half for the repro box and half for the ghosty figure, which seemed like a good deal. Then again I just blew $250 buying this and some other fake Transformer boxes so my grasp of the concept of "deals" or even "reality" is suspect.

On top of that box I've also bought fake boxes in the past for Bluestreak, Smokescreen and Prowl. The Mirage seller also sold me fake boxes for Wheeljack, Soundwave and the Devastator giftset. I never had Smokescreen or Soundwave as a kid and I got all my Constructicons one by one back in 1985 so I also never had the Devastator giftset. I guess you could say I'm doing this out of nostalgia for pieces of paper and styrofoam I never even owned in the first place.

I never had the means to spend thousands of dollars reacquiring the original toys I broke to hell when I was a kid. And even if I did have the money to blow like that, I'm not going to be opening a Transformer museum anyways so it's pointless to have pristine originals hiding away in my laundry room. These fake boxes are a great, relatively low cost alternative to the high secondary market prices nowadays. Yeah I guess that makes me Mister Fakey McFakeman of Transformer collecting but I never was a real serious collector and its not like the internet is going to inspect my house for Transformer box authenticity. I hope.