Transfrormers 1987-1990: The Decline of Roboplastico Civilization Part II: The Metal Ears

I've been uploading about three dozen new* Transformers ads from the tail end of the 1980s to the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. The period from 1987-1990 is when the number of ads for Transformers got smaller and smaller while their robot hats got bigger and bigger. I SEE A CORRELATION HERE. I've also never spent much time looking through papers from those years because I never liked the toys from that time. That's why the VSTP has been rather anemic in the Transformers 1987-1990 era. My interest in Transformers started trailing off after 1987 because when I hit fourteen in '88 I started getting into Iron Maiden. I figuratively traded Monster Pretenders for Monsters of Rock, Sixshot for Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I had other hobbies during my teenage years, too, most notably terrible driving and car crashes. I drove about as badly as I took care of my Transfomrers. The one constant through all the stages of my life has been broken pieces of car, just at differing scales.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PLAYING WITH MADNESS I DON'T NEED TO ASK

Lionel Playworld 11/29/87

Transformers did not let go without a fight and it was during 1987 that I first began collecting newspaper ads of toy robots. Although I stopped getting the toys as much as I used to, I started cutting out Transformer ads from the Sunday newspaper circulars. I didn't used to write down where the ads were from or what day they came out so until very recently I didn't know any of that. Lately I've uncovered this information for a lot of my childhood ad collection so I put them up and they're the only color ads at the Vintage Splace Toasters Place. Those are now in the Transformers 1987 section and I also started a section for Transformers 1988-1990. At fourteen years old I could not have imagined that a handful of newspaper ads clipped in 1987 would evolve into a webpage with over 700 toy robots ads twenty years later. I guess Iron Maiden never really cured my roboplasti-holism, but that's the nature of the beast. Roboplasti-holism can't be fought, roboplasti-holism can't be sought. It just mutates into other scary roboplastico fetishes.

NO PRAYER FOR THE DRIVING (WHILE ROBOPLASTICATED)

Lionel Playworld 11/06/88

While I was off Powerslaving, Transformers was Powermastering (and Headmastering and Targetmastering and Actionmastering). And while they were doing that from 1988-1990, toystores were busying Nintendo-ing, Ninjaturtle-ing, and STILL friggin' GI Joe-ing. As the 80s gradually came to an end so did the toy robots ads and this is reflected in how the makeup of my Transformers 1988-1990 section is 12 from '88, seven from '89 and only one from 1990. Coincidentally this is also the number of car crashes I had in each of those years. It's always sad to see how the Toy Robots Wars of the 80s ended so -mastery and plasticky, but I will always remember the golden years when my favorite robots were metal, my favorite music was metal and my favorite cars to crash were also metal.

*20 year old