So it's the 13th of October which means that it is day 2 of our 17 day celebration for the forthcoming 16th year anniversary of Transformers At The Moon being launched. The celebration sees us take a look back at the events of year where we will cover what was happening within the Transformers brand, this website, the wider fandom in general as well as which toys we were buying and some general world events. We shall also be holding spotlight gallery focusing on a toy that was released within that calendar year.
Click the headline to read this article in full as well as seeing a new gallery of the toy we chose to be our spotlight for the year 2000.
The world in 2000
So we all survived the dreaded millennium bug and even worse Windows ME. Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the first 1Ghz Processors were available on home desktops, Dan Marino won his last NFL game, Bill Gates stepped aside as CEO of Microsoft, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich filed a lawsuit against Napster (eventually leading to the movement against anti-file sharing), Gladiator premiers in LA, and Concorde crashes in France killing 113 people.
The Site
We moved away from using Frontpage as our web development tool to use Dreamweaver instead. Code wise we began to introduce our own Javascript libraries as well as introducing some Java applets onto the site using the promotional artwork produced by Benchpress Publishing for their unreleased comic book. Traffic wise, we saw continued growth throughout the year and decided to introduce our first message board (I think it was powered by EZBoard). There were only three members, ourselves and our friend Gareth. We dropped the message board after a month and pondered bringing it back in the future. We were members of several Transformers and retro “web-rings”, to help cross promote sites as search was still very basic at the time.
Away from our site the year 2000 was the start of the “big bang” for Transformers sites. With sites including TheTransformers.net, Seibertron and TransformerWorld 2005 (now TFW2005) all launching, the latter two would go on to become the powerhouses within the Transformers online community.
Back on our website we continued to use white photo card as the backdrop for our images, something we kept until 2014. This allowed us to easily identify our images and ensure that the figure remained the focal point of the image. During 2000 and some later years, this allowed us to identify when our photographs were being reused without permission which happened quite often including some of the major fan site and auction sites. It would not be long before most sites would use this technique, later moving onto other materials and lightboxes / photo tents
Our TV debut
In April 2000 we were filmed for a television show for Channel 4 focusing on collectors. It took a few hours to get all of our toys, comics and merchandise ready and then several hours to film. The program aired in November at midnight with our 5-7 minute segment following on from a man who collected images of pylons. On the day that our footage was shot, we received a delivery from Digital Toys containing Wave 1 of Car Robots figures.
In case you are wondering why we are not using a Car Robot figure for this year’s spotlight it is because we are using the US release dates as a reference.
Toys, toys and more toys
2000 was a massive year for us in terms of Transformers purchases, though we would buy more in later years. We purchased 120 in total that year with some big purchases being made. On June 30th another order of Transformers figures was delivered that contained a boxed Grand Maximus, Leo Kaiser giftset and our 2nd and 3rd Trainbots (Yukikaze and Seizan). 18 days later Multiforce arrived, what a month! October saw the arrival of Metal hawk, some European Action Masters and the BotCon Japan 2000 toys, whilst more Trainbots, Galaxy Shuttle and Brave Maximus were delivered in November. For Christmas our family helped us pay for Black Zarak, Metrotitan, the Big Powered Giftset and some Beast Machines toys! What a year, two Maxs, Black Zarak, Metrotitan, Big Powered, Multiforce, Breastforce and most of the Trainbots all in one year, wow.
Focus Toy for the Year
Our chosen toy to focus on for 2000 is Beast Machines Blackarachnia. The design of the toy shows quite a shift from the Transmetal II figures a year before and, in hindsight, has more in common with Transformers Animated than Beast Wars and some of the other Beast Machines figures. Beast Machines was, and still is, one of the more controversial shows in the Transformers universe. I have a far greater appreciation for this toy now than I probably did at the time of its release.
In Japan Car Robots was released, we will talk more on that tomorrow, and the first Transformers Encore figures meant that G1 toys were on sale once again.
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