1995 when I got BW Armordillo as an birthday present.

February 22, 1997 (my 18th birthday).

 

I was waiting to get a table at Olive Garden w/ my girlfriend. I decided to go across the parking lot to TRU to kill some time and there they were... new TFs!!! I saw my first BW TFs and fell in love w/ them. I bought Airrazor, became enthralled w/ the detail and articulation (waaaayyyy better than anything I remembered from G1), and started collecting TFs at that moment (I still have Airrazor btw).

 

Granted I had some TFs when I was a kid, but they all got broken, lost, or given away so I don't really consider that when I started collecting. I don't have any of those figures anymore, but I have kept them all since Airrazor (and since completed American BW, the first 2 yrs of G1 and a bunch of other lines).

 

I recently hit 500 figs and I am still going strong.

Got Beachcomber in 1986.  Loved him to death, but being from a family that didn't have lots of cash most TFs were out of my pricerange as a kid.

 

Then about two years ago I see the Energon Combiner Devastator.  Buy him up with joy because I always wanted the original as a kid.  Then realizing I now had the cash as an adult to buy all my childhood dream TFs I went on a EBay run for several months.

 

Almost done my old TF pickups.  Now its jsut grabing he Cybertrons I like and looking toward a very expensive but happy future:)

1983. This is when they had the Mini-cars and cassettes out before Christmas. After that, the rest was history.

 

I can't believe before 1983, I thought Go-bots were the coolest thing on Earth...

Had some TF as a kid back in '84 '85 and had some BWs, but as far as collecting I'll say 2002 with Aramda

Were Alternators first released in 2004? If so then that's the year I started. Once that line goes away, my collecting of Transformers will as well.

As a kid I had a fair few Tfs, but went off them for a good few years. A couple of years ago a friend of mine brought me to a comic shop on Free Comic Book Day. I picked up the Transformers: Armada issue and was all like, "Woah, I remember these things!" So I went on to buy an Optimus Prime headknocker statue for €15, went home to raid the attic for old Tfs and the rest is how they say history....

I didn't start collecting until I was 21 and when I got my BM Blackarachnia and Thrust toys then it just blossomed from there.

hmmmmmmm...............I didn't really own any has a kid, always wanted too but couldn't afford it. I purchased some G2 figures, but the line had me confused. New and old figures released together had me scratching my head. Of course I didn't really understand what "Generation 2" meant. So I gave up on those.

 

When Beast Wars figures came out I initally shook my head in disgust and ignored them for a time. But then I saw the wolf figure, so intelligently named Wolfang, and I thought he looked cool. So I bought him and claimed that would be the only one.

 

Well, my brain kicked in and told me that I needed a bad guy. So I went back to the store and picked up a Blackarachnia. That was going to be it. Period. Yeah right.

 

About a week later my younger brother came home and he had a beast wars figure. Well, I wasn't going to stand by and let him jump on a line I bought first.  Besides, at this point I started liking the figures. well back to the store for another purchase. (Don't remember who). I just kept buying them a little at a time.

 

Then the show aired, and it was great. I just had to have the figures on the show. And the characters not on the show just helped to flesh out the line. From then on I was hooked! My collection has grown at a nice steady pace ever since.

 

This all happended around 1996ish. This is also why I'm excited for the Beast Wars 10th anniversary figures. I never go a Waspinator.

i bought transformers, G1 joe, and any other toys since i was 5.

but 2years ago  i bought TF over again