The Sad Tale of Soundwave
Reading through Mark Bellomo’s Transformers Identification and Price Guide made me nostalgic for my younger days of loving Transformers. I never had a lot of Transformers, but I had some damn good ones. Still there was one Transformer that was my favorite that I never got, despite desperately wanting him. It was Soundwave, the most competent and coolest of the G1 Decepticons.
What’s funny is that I’m not sure if I actually told my parents how bad I wanted him. In fact, I’m pretty sure I never even mentioned him. I guess that’s the danger when you make your kid think that Santa is real and that he knows everything, your child might just skip the middle man and try to go right to the source. Hell, I remember talking to my friend Jeremy about it and he said that one time that he wanted a toy for Christmas he wished really hard and got it. After I heard that I wished so hard I nearly blew my brain muscle, but I still didn’t get him from that bearded fat man.
After a certain point, it became infeasible to ever get him back then. In all it’s brilliance, Hasbro would stop making a figure after a certain point, even though the characters were still featured prominently on the cartoon series. There was no eBay at the time and the only other source of second hand toys were yard sales, but they never had them either.
My luck changed when the above mentioned Jeremy came to my rescue. Jeremy had a lot of toys and I think it was because he came from a broken home where love was something you bought. Somehow he ended up with two Soundwaves. I’m not sure what really possessed him at the time, but he decided to offer me the one that was pretty beat ass up. He had no weapons, cassettes, and his cassette deck was broken. At that time any Soundwave was better than none, even one in such bad shape, so I gladly accepted his offer.
He brought it to school and gave it to me. The rest of that day I was happier than a pig in slop. That night I was kicking myself though, because I forgot Soundwave in my desk as I was wont to forget things in those days. Okay, I forget more things than a guy that’s been kicked in the head by a horse multiple times. Not only did I forget my new Soundwave, but I also came down with a cold over night so I had to stay home.
You can probably guess what happened next. By the time I got better and went back to school the Soundwave was no longer in my desk. It disappeared magically or was more likely stolen by Jeremy who didn’t admit taking it. The crime was never solved and I had to live without a Soundwave.
Hasbro didn’t help the situation since they had stopped making the guy by then. The only replacement I could get was during the last year of the G1 run they had these action figure like Transformers. I got the Soundwave, but it was pretty lame considering he couldn’t transform and was only about three inches tall.
I guess the only silver lining in this whole thing was that I was finally reunited with Soundwave when Toys R Us remade him a year or so ago. Still, it doesn’t replace all those Soundwaveless days of fruitless wanting and running around pretending to talk like him in the playground.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:47 am
As with all toys when I was younger my brother and I didn’t get what the other got. He got Soundwave, but I got Laserbeak, and Ratbat. Then I got older and he got most of my collection. Now they’re somewhere in the dump…
Poor G1 Soundwave must feel somewhat dejected after CDs and digital media became more commonplace. (I wonder if Laserbeak ever came unwound and if Soundwave ever had to fix him with a screwdriver.)
July 11th, 2008 at 10:07 am
As a child, I was solely focused on getting only the Autobots. I wanted nothing to do with Decepticons, even Soundwave. It wasn’t much later in my life that I realized who fraking cool he was.
I too was fortunate enough to grab up the TRU Exclusive re-release last year. My only hope is that they bring Blaster back. Dueling Tapedecks FTW!
July 11th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I never had him either, nor Blaster, who today is clearly cheesy but who struck me as cool back in the day.
I did have a bootleg toy of Soundwave, but he looked like ass.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I was born in ‘88 so I was a G2 kid, but I feel your pain. Soundwave has always been my favorite. Like you, I was given a crappy beat up Soundwave that an older friend gave to me. He was so beat up that his head fell off, and when I was younger if a toy broke(especially the head, which is what made Soundwave so cool) I stopped playing with it.
I stopped paying attention to Transformers for years, and couldn’t get the reissue due to lack of funds. I finally got the die-cast version, which isn’t quite as good but makes me content. It and the 5 or 6 variations the of the 25th Anniversary Snake-Eyes I attained have made my toy life complete, as those were the two toys I could never get when I was younger.
Good write up!
July 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Michael, you never had a Snake Eyes when you were a kid?
Isn’t that, like, against the law or something?
July 11th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Well, I did…But it was the *sigh* Ninja force one. So I lied.
I was always a bigger fan of the commando Snake Eyes, which I could never find.
On a relevant note, I picked up the Arctic Snake Eyes today. It’s very cool! And a Johann Kraus fig… Which is also very cool.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Hey, there’s no shame in a Ninja Force figure. I got a MOC Storm Shadow Ninja Force, because it’s the only one I can afford MOC.
July 12th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I had that same Storm Shadow. I just wanted a Snake Eyes that came as he was in the Mass Device mini series!
July 12th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Yeah I hear you. I wanted an original Storm Shadow… oh man you just brought back another bad memory. I had him for about a day too before he became “lost”.
WTF was with people stealing my most cherished toys after I had them for about a day?!
July 12th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I was lucky enough to have gotten both the original Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes and I still have them. My Snake Eyes is so old that it didn’t have swivel arm grip.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Only Transformers I owned as a kid were various knock offs my Grandmother would buy me at flea markets, and a tiny little Purple and green tank Megatron. My grail of TF figures is what I assume is beachcomber a little yellow and aquamarine hovercraft TF with little propellers. I’d love to find another one seeing as the same day I got it I lost it a few hours later during a trip to the local grocery store.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Ninja Force was a lowpoint for GI JOE. But like Paul, I too had a Storm Shadow & Snake Eyes from that line.
@Paul
I think I buried my original Storm Shadow at the apartment complex where I lived. It is probably next to the original AT-AT I inherited from my uncle at a young age. Youth … what can you say?
July 13th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
You were probably spoiled enough your parents would have run out to an all night transformers store and bought it for you.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] would have to be the loss of my original G.I. Joe Skyhawk. Now, I wrote before about how I lost the Soundwave I wanted so badly, but this one hurt a tad more only based purely on the [...]