FEATURE: LoEB ''Geek Confessions''

I'm late to the party this week (stupid real life stuff...) but here's the That Figures contribution to this week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers assignment.

This week, Cool and Collected's Brian posed the following question:

What is something you absolutely hate or love or just don’t get, or maybe it’s something you have never even seen or read. What is your deepest, darkest geek confession?

Mine can be summed up in four simple words: I don't get Transformers.

Argh! What's wrong with your... everything!

I know a lot of people probably aren't into transforming robots either, but the thing is, on paper they should be my dream obsession:

• I love robots.
• I love sci-fi (pretty much a given, I guess)
• I dig cartoons about good guys and bad guys being locked in epic struggles
• I'm an obsessive collector and - given how many Transformers lines there are - that means lots of toys to collect
• They're a spin-off from the Henshin Cyborg/Microman line, which - in it's Western form, the Denys Fisher Cyborg/The Micronauts - was my favorite toy line as a child

And yet, I think the Transformers toys - and the associated movies, TV shows and other spin offs - represent some of the largest, most festering piles of monkey butt ever produced.

You see, I've never been a gear-head, so toy cars/vehicles don't interest me (unless they're used by figures to ride around in) and the fact that the potential awesomeness of the robot is sacrificed because of the transforming feature really, really annoys me. Maybe I'm just too black and white in my thinking but for me, I'd rather have a line of car toys and a line of awesome robots. By trying to combine both you're left with an OK toy car that turns into a robot that sacrifices its cool design because it's forced to include a stupid shape-shifting gimmick.

Exhibit A: Nice-looking toy car. Crap-looking walking pile of junk robot.

Maybe I have some resentment to these toys. After all, it could be argued that the Microman's shift in focus to include transforming robot sidekicks - which then became more popular than the Microman figures themselves - is responsible for the end of the line. Or maybe it's because as a child there were few ''geek'' toys that a fantasy-loving kid could really get into and having a line of figures hijacked to become cars (which were real and therefore boring) annoyed me. I don't know. But whatever the reason, I really, really don't understand what all the fuss is about with these toys.

And then there's the movies: infantile to the point of making Baby's Day Out look like Shakespeare, yet also featuring profanity, gags about masturbation, horrifically offensive racial stereotypes and a surprisingly high death toll. And then there's the action sequences. When you have protagonists that are - essentially - walking piles of metal sh!t leaping around fighting each other in slow-motion-to-regular-speed-to-slow-motion, transforming from car-to-android-abortion-to-car again whilst everything else in the shot explodes you're left with sequences that are not only impossible to follow but also impossible to even care about. But I guess I'm missing the point of the movies: namely to ogle at the ''hawtness'' of Megan Fox between posting Facebook updates from your smartphone about Megan Fox's hawtness.

OK, so I will admit that the Transformers: Prime toys look OK in robot form but beyond that, I'm really struggling to see the appeal.

Now The Gobots on the other hand...

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So what else did my fellow League members come up with?

Brian at Cool and Collected has a pretty stunning revelation
Michael at Memories of Tomorrow isn't somebody to play games with
TL at Flashlights Are Something to Eat introduces me to a horror previously undreamed of
Reis at Lair of the Dork Horde is just so wrong on Point #1

Check-out these contributions and more at Cool and Collected