Gen X | The Ramblings of Bob Christian

Who is your favorite cartoon character?

Who is your favourite cartoon character?

That’s an easy one.

Although the answer might surprise you.

It’s Transformers.

No, not the Michael Bay films.

I’m talking about the original Transformers.

The Saturday morning Transformers.

The sit in your pyjamas with a bowl of cereal while your parents repeatedly tell you to do something useful Transformers.

You see, I’m an old man.

Well…

Gen X.

Which is basically what happens when you leave a child from the 1980s unattended for long enough.

I remember the original series.

Optimus Prime.

Megatron.

Bumblebee.

Starscream.

Soundwave.

The Dinobots.

And that glorious moment when a robot transformed into something completely ridiculous and somehow nobody questioned the physics of it.

Because why would they?

It was a cartoon.

And it was brilliant.

The original series arrived in 1984, alongside the Hasbro and Takara toy lines, and for a generation of kids it became much more than something to watch on a Saturday morning.

It became part of childhood.

There were the toys.

The comics.

The stickers.

And yes…

I had the toys.

I had the stickers.

I probably spent far too much of my pocket money trying to get the ones I was missing.

There was even the Panini sticker album.

256 stickers.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable.

Until you’re a kid and you’re staring at your album with three bloody stickers left to find.

Then the maths changes.

Suddenly 256 seems like an unnecessarily cruel number.

You’d go through your pile.

“Got.”

“Need.”

And then you’d swap with your mates.

Or try to.

Because there was always that one kid who somehow had about fourteen of the sticker you needed.

And absolutely no intention of giving you one.

If you know, you know.

And then there was the VHS.

Google it.

I’ll wait.

For younger readers, VHS was basically YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ rolled into one.

Except you had to physically rewind it.

And if someone forgot?

Well…

You’d find out pretty quickly when you put it in and the bloody thing started halfway through an episode.

And I still have all of mine.

Which probably says something about my inability to throw anything away.

But that’s the thing about Transformers.

When I think about them now, I don’t just remember robots fighting robots.

I remember being a kid.

I remember Saturday mornings.

I remember cereal.

I remember sitting far too close to the television.

I remember that feeling when the theme tune started and you knew you were about to disappear into another world.

For twenty minutes, the rest of the world didn’t matter.

Back then, we didn’t have endless streaming services.

There wasn’t a catalogue containing practically every television programme ever made sitting in your pocket.

If you missed something…

You missed it.

Unless you were lucky enough to have recorded it.

And if you had?

You guarded that VHS tape like it contained the nuclear launch codes.

There was something wonderfully simple about it all.

Good guys.

Bad guys.

Robots.

Cars.

Spaceships.

Dinosaurs.

And a giant transforming robot called Optimus Prime who somehow managed to be incredibly cool while also being strangely reassuring.

Looking back, though, I don’t think Transformers was ever really just about the characters.

It was about what they represented.

Childhood.

Freedom.

Imagination.

That little bit of magic we seem to lose somewhere between being a kid and becoming an adult.

Because that’s the funny thing about growing older.

The toys get packed away.

The sticker albums disappear into cupboards.

The VHS tapes gather dust.

And life carries on.

Work.

Bills.

Responsibilities.

Emails.

Appointments.

All that grown-up nonsense.

Then, completely unexpectedly, you hear a piece of music.

Or see an old toy.

Or find something buried in a box.

And suddenly…

You’re eight years old again.

Sitting on the carpet.

Bowl of cereal beside you.

Pyjamas on.

No responsibilities.

No bills.

No emails.

No bloody grown-up nonsense.

Just Saturday morning.

And for twenty minutes, everything is alright.

I suppose that’s why nostalgia can be such a powerful thing.

We’re not necessarily missing the cartoon.

We’re missing the person we were when we watched it.

The version of ourselves who could be completely absorbed by something as simple as a cartoon about alien robots.

Before life became complicated.

Before we learned that sometimes people leave.

Before we discovered that adults don’t actually have all the answers.

Before we started worrying about mortgages, pensions, politics and whether we’ve remembered to put the bloody bins out.

Back then, Optimus Prime had the answers.

Well…

Most of the time.

So, who is my favourite cartoon character?

Transformers.

Not because they were the greatest cartoons ever made.

Not because the animation was perfect.

And certainly not because every storyline made sense.

It didn’t.

Not even remotely.

But because they were part of my childhood.

And sometimes that’s more important.

Because when something can survive forty-odd years of technological progress, adulthood, responsibilities and everything else life throws at you…

And still make you smile?

That’s more than just a cartoon.

That’s a memory.

And perhaps that’s what was really hiding underneath all those robots, cars and explosions.

Something more than meets the eye.

Stay safe.

What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

There are certain things from childhood that, for whatever reason, stay with you.

For me, one of those things has to be Bonfire Night.

The Fifth of November.

Cold November air.

The smell of woodsmoke.

Fireworks going off somewhere in the distance.

And, inevitably, some bloke standing far too close to the bonfire while somebody’s mum shouts:

“MOVE BACK!”

Of course, when you’re a kid, you don’t see a giant pile of burning wood as a potential health and safety incident waiting to happen.

You see an adventure.

You see something bloody enormous.

And probably wonder how close you can get before your eyebrows become an optional extra.

Then there was the Guy.

We’d make one from whatever old clothes we could find, stuffing them with newspaper, rags, or basically anything that was vaguely flammable and not currently being used.

It didn’t have to be particularly good.

Actually, thinking back, some of them were probably less “Guy Fawkes” and more “slightly suspicious bloke who’s been found in a hedge.”

But that didn’t matter.

We’d proudly put our creation on top of the bonfire and stand back, waiting for the flames to do their thing.

And then came the fireworks.

Now, modern fireworks are spectacular.

Absolutely bloody enormous.

But there was something magical about those childhood displays.

The first rocket disappearing into the darkness.

That moment of anticipation.

Then—

BOOM!

A shower of colour exploding across the sky.

Golden sparks.

Red.

Green.

Blue.

And for a few seconds, the whole night seemed to come alive.

Maybe they really were better back then.

Or maybe that’s just what childhood does.

It takes ordinary things and makes them enormous.

Then, of course, there was the food.

And I’m not talking about fancy street food, artisan burgers or anything else that somebody has decided needs to be served on a wooden board.

Give me a jacket potato cooked in the embers of a bonfire.

That was food.

You’d wait.

And wait.

And probably wait considerably longer than you had the patience for.

Eventually you’d pull it out, brush away the ash, unwrap the foil, split it open and add a ridiculous amount of butter.

Simple.

Cheap.

Perfect.

Funny how food seems to taste better when there’s a memory attached to it.

That potato wasn’t just a potato.

It was part of the evening.

Part of standing outside in the cold.

Part of waiting around with family and friends.

Part of being a kid.

And, if you were lucky, somebody had remembered the hot chocolate.

Happy days.

Now what’s my rambling got to do with cultural traditions..?

There’s actually a fascinating bit of history behind all of it

Bonfire Night commemorates 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding barrels of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament as part of what we now call, the Gunpowder Plot.

Although here’s something I didn’t know until relatively recently. The person being burned on the bonfire wasn’t always Guy Fawkes.

Apparently, in the seventeenth century, the Pope was often the unfortunate chap being thrown onto the flames.

Which seems a little harsh.

Eventually, Guy Fawkes became the familiar figure associated with Bonfire Night. Mainly because Parliament met in January 1606 and passed the Thanksgiving Act. This made services and sermons commemorating the plot a regular annual feature each 5 November.

Except at St Peter’s School in York, where they never have never burnt an effigy as Guy Fawkes was a student there.

And I suppose that’s one of the interesting things about traditions.

They change.

They evolve.

They get passed down from one generation to another, with each generation adding its own little bit to the story.

Stay safe

The Ramblings of Bob Christian

Tag Archives: Gen X

“Optimus Prime, VHS Tapes and the Slow Death of My Childhood”

Remember Remember