I remember strating in 1988.  I was doin summer work.  I was paid weekely so I had the chance to buy weekly, and got Tyhe whole seacons and technobots then......Now they're gone but I have good memories of that time.

i think it was either '95 or '96. ive grown up with tfs and always bought them as they came out but when it actually turned from "buying toys" to "collecting" was prolly '96. first thing off ebay was a japanese beast wars tigatron. i missed half of the early bw stauff so i was trying to find them.

i started as a little kid with G1...so around 84-85 I suppose.  I had lost interest by the time targetmasters had come out...I was "too old" in my mind heh.  Then when I was about 18-19 I met a friend who still collected them and once he showed me his G1 Dinobots all the nostalgia came back.  Prob about 2 yrs after that we went to a toy shop in Hamilton and I bought a MIB Ultra Magnus(my memories of him from when I was a kid are the most vivid so I guess thats why I've stayed a big fan of his).  The rest is history...and a pain in my money clip.

I bought my first "transforming robot" in 1983 when I was living in Taiwan. It was some train thing, and I have no idea who/what it was supposed to be. I also bought what I remember being a camo version of Leader-1 (?) that ended up getting lost on an airplane. When we moved back to the States in 1985, I started collecting "official" Transformers.

2001 was when i officially started collecting starting with armada

Collected them as a kid (I use the term "collecting" very loosely) in the 1980's and stopped until the introduction of MP Prime 20 years later. Ever since the release of him I have been hooked on Transformers for the second time in my life.

 

I also would like to add that I really do not collect any other toys with the exception of the occasional non TF transforming robot. It’s purely a transformers thing for me.

ok so if we're dating all the way back, then i guess its about 87-88. i was only like 3 years old but thats when it started. first tfs were both mail aways. prime and reflector. god i wish i still had reflector.

As a kid, I bought the toys to relive the adventure. I still have half of them but they're demolished.

 

Then, in 1996, I found a G2 Prime on a Walmart store shelf. It was clearanced after sitting there for 3-4 years so I bought it. Then, in 2004, I bought the G1 DVDs and joined TFans to find out when the other DVDs would be released. Someone  posted a thread about the Reissue line going on sale (As I wasn't willing to pay $40.00 for them) and I went out and bought most of the releases in three installments. After I got every commemorative series on store shelves (Aside from season 3 characters cause I think they suck), I started ebaying for the Takara molds that weren't released here. With all the Takara molds that I want, I now ebay for used figures to finish my collection.

 

 

I blame TFans for my addiction.

I'd say it was probably around 1984. I sort of remember when they first hit the shelves. There was nothing like them out there. Little Huffer was my first bot.

I would say about 85 but I wasn't paying for my own toys and I toy care of them like a normal kid would.....Not at all. 98 during the second season of BW is when I really started collecting. Buy a bot(Rattrap) and get a free 2 episode VHS tape is good marketing I wasn't able to see every episode of BW cause they came on at screwed up times. But once I saw the tape, I started to actively search out the show schedule and record every episode. Then I had to have all the show bots, other cool bots ect.