Situation Update

Being out of work and stuck at home except for local shopping excursions hasn't quite galvanised me for making progress on this blog the way I'd hoped... At least, not initially. Until May, I could barely get anything done. A big part of the problem was that list of existing drafts that I felt obliged to plough through but, no matter how I tried, none of them were grabbing my attention well enough.

I have finally got that original list down to 10 remaining ancient drafts, but I've been adding new ones as I go. Sometimes, I can get away with using the original images, rescued from Photobucket before I finally closed my accounts. A lot of the time, I'm finding that I have to take new photos, either because the original set were incomplete, uninspiring, or just crappy quality. Taking new photos, occasionally, has reminded me how cool the toys were... or how terrible the toys were... But, along with those 10 remaining millstone drafts, I've so far added 10 new drafts, either of new toys (all bought prior to the COVID-19 lockdown/unemployment austerity kick), or old toys where I either decided to replace the old photos for one reason or another, or had simply neglected to photograph in the first place (and there's quite a surprising number of those, all things considered!). What I'm (still) hoping to do is work through these 20 drafts, adding as few new ones as possible, till they're all, finally, complete.

And, by and large, I'm doing it... I've certainly done pretty well over the last couple of months.

Progress is being marked via the My Collection page, wherein I have tables listing all the toys in a particular franchise or subdivision, once I've written about every toy I currently own in that franchise or subdivision. It's coming together quite well.

Progress is also being marked by use of such arbitrary yardsticks as Femme-Bot Friday, which will reach an adjournment this coming Friday, because I'll have run out of Femme-Bots to write about for the second time (so far), the last time being just a few weeks short of five full years ago, following an unbroken run of posts lasting 29 weeks from its inception. Have no fear, though: Femme-Bot Friday will return, at some point. Not least, I'm very keen to get my hands on Big Firebird's Nicee and FansHobby's Athena, to name but two, but when I'll be able to comfortably afford them is anyone's guess.

Part of the reason for adding these new posts is that, every so often, I'll open my display cabinets, pick up a toy that I've not yet written about and think to myself "This toy is cool, I should write about this while I'm enjoying it!", and part of is that I've been planning, if not exactly scheduling, additional ways of working through my collection in a more constructive and organised way - for example, aiming to post about one Binaltech figure each month, in numerical order. Previously, I just picked them at random, beginning with one of the last releases in the line, back when I first started this blog, almost twelve years ago. I now have only five left to do... six if I decide to write about one figure that's been another kind of millstone.

Much of my posting of individual lines has been pretty scattershot, resulting in a huge backlog of older figures stretching back years, while newer figures - by and large - now get written about within a few months of acquiring them. By setting a goal-per-line, as with Binaltech, I think I've been getting through them all a little more efficiently.

I've still got plenty of material to get through - 80+ toys before even resorting to G1/Commemorative Series... it's really just a question of knuckling down and focussing on one post at a time. Weird thing is that I've got several drafts on the go where I've written about everything but robot mode. Most of the drafts are just images and placeholder text, which seems to cause some sort of psychological block that can be difficult to break through... but I can see that I'm making progress, even if the newly-added drafts sometimes make it look like "one step forward, five steps back".

I do sometimes wonder if I might be better off just taking a handful of shots and posting them on Instagram with some brief notes, or joining the billion or so TF YouTubers... but I'm really not keen on the format. I can't stand most YT video 'reviews', and get riled up when the host moves the toy out of shot as they fumble their way through some critical part of the transformation (which still happens, even when these people have been at it for years - seriously, these people need to know about the Six Ps!).

There are three TF YouTubers I watch regularly (it could be five, but the fourth tends to be pretty bland, repeats the same phrases over and over again, and misuses a lot of words, so I have to really psych myself up to watch his output, while the fifth rarely uploads anymore for reasons of his own), and the rest, frankly, are a bit shit. Plus, I stay out of the forums (apart from occasionally dipping in to read - I've no plans to join any) and the 'fan communities', not least because of the toxic shit that inevitably happens (witness the testosterone tsunami anytime someone expresses their genuine concerns at the apparent over-sexualisation of Femme-Bots).

There are times I'm not even sure there's a point to this blog, except inasmuch as I (sometimes) enjoy writing about TransFormers toys. There's just this abiding impression/nagging feeling that there's something disingenuous about a middle-aged man talking/writing about toys targeted at the 'Age 8+' demographic.

TL;DR: I don't see this blog developing beyond its current format... but hopefully I'm not going to end up paring it down.

Also, I've gained one follower this year, and seen some good feedback, so I must be doing something right... even if my italicisation apparently causes headaches in some - largely anonymous - readers.