Transformers: The Fortress

Here is the fort! It's finished!

I made a stop-animation of my 10yo daughter's Optimus Prime transforming. She enjoys him so much she ordered the movie edition of Jazz online for $10. I ordered Jetfire / Skyfire from the Classics line for $20.

More on Playing:
Well playing with my brother is interesting; the men in my wife's family do not like to lose, even when playing Transformers. I don't think I ever saw Megatron shoot so many devastating rounds so quickly, or so accurately. Flying jets, racing cars, Optimus Prime, you name it, it was shot repeatedly.

Fortunately this only eggs on my oldest daughter, so she put up Prime's shields (the spoiler on his roof becomes a great shield looking generator once transformed; we figured that's what it was in both modes), ducked for cover and converted his shields to a really big gun:
See that monster in his left hand? That folds out into a shield in truck mode, and can be a shield generator on his back that you can put above his head or behind him in robot mode, or take off, convert into a super-powerful sniper cannon, and go blast some Decepticons.

That would work in a fair game; unfortunately we didn't have one of those, so the Autobots retreated for the day.

The Fortress:
Jose Francisco loves the new fort. Esteban did the paint job and it came out great (see previous picture). Usually the Decepticons inhabit The Fortress.

When Jose Francisco first saw it he gave a confused look; I think he recognized that it was one of his sisters' doll houses, recolored, but when he realized that we did it so he could have a fort (by taking a Transformer and putting it on the Fort), he smiled and ran straight for it and started setting up Transformers.

The Princess:
Dulce Maria has decided she likes Brute and Recon best, because she can transform them and they "look cool." Here they are on the right:
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The Tank and the Jeep are Brute and Recon.

Alejandrita loves to play with her baby brother and prefers any of the small white ones, especially the two white jets.

Always Ask "Why?"
I have asked my lovely lady why our daughters enjoy Transformers when they don't enjoy toy soldiers, and she wasn't sure.

Behaviorally, they all seem to "click" with Transformers. Good guys, bad guys, who are cars, planes and other vehicles. Robots who shoot, fly and talk. They seem to appreciate the feeling of "doing it" when they learn a transformation, and enjoy repeating the process, once learned, many times during play.

However, I can't enumerate why the girls enjoy Transformers and not toy soldiers. Is it the slight abstraction of giant robots? If the human brain feels pleasure in having power, in doing something, accomplishing something (even if it's tipping something over, for babies), then some part of these toys certainly speaks to them in this aspect.

I'll think on it a bit more, but mostly I'm glad everyone is having fun.