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The difference between boys and girls.
Sunday / 06.01.03 / 01:54AM / Joe
 For years now, we've had a running conversation about a long-lost Soundwave toy of Rhonda's. Apparantly some dopey cousin left the famous Transformer at their house, and Rhonda and her sisters adopted the toy as their own. I never had Soundwave myself... although I do recall friends who did, and, like most Transformers, the general crappiness of the toy just didn't live up to the cartoon version. But the ability to store and eject mini-transforming cassette tapes was/is undeniably cool.
Rhonda's folks never throw away anything (much like mine), so I've been counting on Soundwave to show up some day. And I fully anticipated inheriting it.
The latest ToyFare ran a picture of the Decepticons' communications expert, so I pointed him out to Rhonda and reminded her that we need to locate him on some future visit. (The following excerpts may be somewhat paraphrased, and may have been extended for dramatic weblog purposes.)
Rhonda: Oh. I don't think that was the one we had.
Joe: What? I thought we talked about this! He turns into a tape player, and has little tape robots inside him. He's super-cool. (I cover my mouth with my hand and try to talk like Soundwave.) Ravage, eject. Rumble, eject.
Rhonda: Huh? (She considers.) Ours wasn't that big. It was just a tape, not the whole player.
Joe: OOOOOH. You just had one of the tapes. So which one was it?
Rhonda: What?
Joe: Did it turn into a cat, a bird, or a *sigh* little man. (I specifically avoid the code names, as well as the difference between Laserbeak and Rumble and the color-shifted clone figures Buzzsaw and Frenzy.)
  
(L-R) Ravage (cat), Laserbeak (bird), Rumble (little man)
Rhonda: I don't know. I don't remember unfolding it that much.
Joe: WHAT!? It's a Transformer! It transforms! So, educate me here, how exactly did you guys play with just a cassette tape?
Rhonda: With our dolls. We used to play store a lot, and the tape would be at the store for the dolls to buy. It was always their favorite tape.
Joe: ----
Rhonda: The sides would kinda fall off a bit, so we always had to push it back together.
Joe: ----
Rhonda: And I have no idea where it ended up.
Joe: Well I still want it.
Based on the comment about the sides falling off, I'm ruling out Ravage because his transformation was more along the top and bottom. Also, I think if the girls knew it could be a cat or a bird, they likely would have kept it as a pet for the dolls... so Laserbeak is out too. That leaves Rumble (or Frenzy.) So somewhere on the old homestead, a forgotten Rumble lies. Probably buried in a box of old doll clothes, unless one of Rhonda's younger sisters traded him off or lost him in the backyard.
Rumble. He always was the least trustworthy of the three. |
