I was so excited for that movie. I loved the animated TV series. The movie previews looked awesome. My friend and I waited for months and then finally the day arrived that my mom drove us to the theatre for a matinee showing.

I had built a pretty good collection of the coolest Transformers toys using my paper route money. And by 15 minutes into the movie, they had killed off all the old cool transformers that were my favorites. They killed Optimus Prime and killed Ironhide and Ratchet and they turned Megatron into that stupid looking Galvatron toy, who then killed off Starscream.

Most of the rest of the movie was spent on this obnoxious new transformer called Hot Rod, and another new guy who transformed into some kind of stupid-looking truck.

And to cap it all off, the new Autobot Leader was Rodimus Prime, who transformed into a ridiculous motor-home with flames on it.

When the movie was over my friend and I were furious. We walked out of the theater and promised each other we would never ever buy or play with a Rodimus Prime toy under any circumstances.

And that’s when it hit me that the whole point of the movie had not been to tell me a cool story. I realized they had made the movie specifically to kill off old characters and introduce new ones, so that they could sell me more toys.

I wanted nothing to do with any of the new characters or toys. My interest in Transformers waned very quickly after that movie.