The day before yesterday I did something I planned on doing for quite some time now and that was to group all the MB Transformers from my collection together on a large table so that I could take some kick ass photographs. Whenever I see more than, say, 5 vintage G1 Transformers in their original packaging grouped together on a photo my heart starts beating faster. It’s just such a sight to behold.

The total amount of MB Transformers in my collection, at the time of writing this, is 39, so I could only imagine how cool that lot would look together! Easier said than done though… The large table and my collection room are seperated by two flights of stairs. Not only that, but we’ve been having some exceptionally beautiful, warm and decidedly un-Dutch weather here in the Netherlands for the past two months (April and May) with temperatures reaching summer averages. Two days ago was no exception with the mercury hitting 27 degrees Celcius. (If you want to know what Dutch weather is usually like, just think of English weather, only a little less bad)

Running up and down stairs many, many times carrying (literally) thousands of euro’s worth of vintage toys under those weather conditions tends to break out a sweat for me. More than I would usually have on a nice summer day, oh, let’s say sitting down and drinking beer, which is what I would have been doing had I not been doing this. I was sweating like a pig when I finally managed to move them all down. After I caught my breath I started arranging all the Transformers on the table in a half circle, so that I could fit them all on one photograph.

I took a shitload of photos and then started the task of moving them all back into my collection room. What seemed like a job that could be completed in an hour when I originally though of it turned out to be a 3 hour ordeal. Damn me and my neurotic impulsiveness.. Worst of all, when I was finally done and looked at all the photographs, I only counted 38 Transformers instead of 39. I forgot to include Trailbreaker!

Ah well, I knew in advance that this group photo would be outdated in a few days anyway, due to the impending arrival of several new MB Transformers additions to my collection, so I didn’t really sweat it (see what I did there? A witty pun!). Now, you might be forgiven if you had assumed that the above four photographs of MB Transformers are from some old and worn out 1980’s catalog. As a matter of fact they’re close ups of the group shot photo that I made! Here’s my collection in full:

As you can see my living room table has a square grid and is located in some martian landscape with a faint sun shining over the horizon. Well, no, not exactly. I got inspired by the absolutely stunning UK Dinobots commercial and tried to recreate some of that style in this photo by flexing my Photoshop muscle. It’s just a quick and dirty low resolution concept of what could be done. There are loads of rough edges there. The lighting of the original photograph especially was a problem, due to the fact that I did not have controlled lighting in my living room the same way that I do in my collection room. The right half of the photograph, featuring the Decepticons, had lots of sun light which I tried to fix with colour correction. Also, the table surface looks too clean and the perspective is a little bit off. Also, Grimlock and Snarl are invisible in this photo, except for a small part of Snarl’s box to the left of Roadbuster and Whirl. The MB Transformers catalog that you can see in the front of the picture was digitally added, by the way. I could’ve done a better job there as well, but all in all it was a nice learning experience. I really dig the early G1 catalog photography style due to its simplicity and its simple use of colours and I hope to create some more custom catalog style photos of my collection in the future.

Above, for reference, I included a screen capture of the UK Dinobot commercial that inspired me into embarking on this project. You can find the complete commercial on YouTube if you’re interested. Just search for ‘UK Dinobots commercial’ and it’s bound to come up as the first result.

Right. The mail man just dropped off a huge box of vintage G1 Transformers on my doorstep that I ordered from BBTS two weeks ago. I am now going to open it up and take out all the pretty European Transformers inside and lose myself in a wave of nerdy nostalgia!! Good times.