For those of you keeping tabs, or just wondering about the new Netflix series The Toys That Made Us - focusing on eight toy brands that made a big impact in the 80s and their legacy - we have a small update from the official series' Facebook
page.
The Transformers episode, which along with with Star Trek, LEGO, Hello Kitty will form the second half of season one, is currently in post-production - and will feature not only our very own Seibertron / Ryan Yzquierdo, but also movie director Michael Bay, and a whole roster of Transformers-related people, such as Cullen, Budiansky, and more! Additionally, we have an interview with show creator Brian Volk-Weiss explaining more in detail his intention with the show, and how he chose what he did for the series, courtesy of
Fatherly. Stay with Seibertron.com to find out more about the actual release date of the next four episodes, and read an extract of the interview below!
You focus on the history of a different toy for each of the eight episodes. What did the process look like for picking which toys to focus on?
In picking the toys, we sort of created four categories that we would pay attention to when we were asking whether or not a toy belonged.
Category one: Are the toys still being made today? We didn’t want to look at a toy that was great for three years or even ten years and then went away. We wanted to be covering toys that were relevant 30, or, in some cases, even 50 years ago and are still relevant today.
Category two: If there was a Mount Rushmore of toys, would this toy be selected? Could Optimus Prime be up there? Yeah, so that makes the cut. It means there needs to be a personality or a face.
Category three: Does the toy have a fanatical following? I wanted to find out the history of toys that had conventions where people were dressing up.
Category four: Is there a good story to tell? If there was a toy that became a hit and that was that, we didn’t want to cover it.
Why do you think toys can play such a strong role in shaping us even as adults?
Everyone has an imagination and toys allow you to utilize your imagination more than watching TV or reading books ever could. When I was a kid, there were no toy versions of the ships in Star Trek so I would make my own out of LEGOs. And eventually, I started designing my own Star Trek ships with LEGOs. When I started drawing Star Trek ships in eighth grade, I’m drawing the ones I designed as well as the ships from the show. I wouldn’t have done that without LEGO. Toys allow us to manifest our imagination in a physical way.
