Sister vs. Transformers

As most of you know, I collect Transformers. I started collecting them about 12ish years ago. This mostly stems from my fascination with them as a child.

For about the past year-ish, my niece has come over and wanted to play with the Transformers. Last Christmas, I thought I would get her introduced to them by getting her Bumblebee from the Bumper Battler series that was aimed at kids 3+. The toy looked like this:




When she first sees it, she looks at it apprehensively. For whatever reason, she had developed this slight fear of toys that make sounds. Although this is kind of cute in a weird sort of way, we do have to be a little careful with showing new toys with her or it'll be tantrum city and she'll not want anything to do with that toy for a long while.

Bumblebee wasn't any different. Pretty much everything it does has a sound associated with it. She shied away from it after the first accidental noise went off. After a couple weeks, I got down on the floor and started playing with her with this toy and she warmed up to it (as long as the switch for the sounds was turned off).

This started a downward spiral my sister was hoping to avoid. My niece had already been showing some strong signs of being a tomboy. There wasn't a dirt pile or a wrestling match she was afraid of. Obviously with her Uncle Chompa Chompa introducing her to Transformers, this tomboy stuff was being taken to a new level. For a few months, I let that particular toy be the only Transformer she could have on her own.

Then a couple weeks ago, she comes into my room and asks:

"See Bumblebee?"

I thought she was referring to her Bumper Battler, so I went to get it for her.

/tantrum.

"See Bumblebee?"
"That is Bumblebee."
"No! See Bumblebee?"

...and then she points to the shelf I keep some of my transformers on. She had correctly identified Bumblebee's actual figure from the Transformers: Animated line.



Seeing this as a little odd, I pulled Bumblebee down off the shelf and instructed her to be careful since she has a penchant for seeing how far she could throw anything that made it into her hands at times. Happy that she got what she wanted, she goes running off down the hallway squealing and saying various phrases I didn't understand entirely other than the word "Bumblebee" in it. I followed her out so I could watch her and make sure she wasn't going to rip any parts off of him. The toy was designed for ages 5+ and given she's just on the north side of 3, I didn't want her accidentally swallowing a part.

When she had gotten into the living room, she set Bumblebee down on the floor on his feet. She then proceeded to crawl around him and study him. Was one of the cutest things I've seen her do. She'd pick him up and start trying to move his various parts seeing what they did. She was seriously analyzing everything she could about this toy.

Seeing this, I went to get a couple other figures for her to mess with.

Blurr:


Jazz:


She gave them the same sort of treatment. She placed them on the floor, then crawled around them analyzing them. She'd then pick them up and move their various parts. Having those three toys out there literally entertained her for an hour. I'm guessing anyone with kids that young probably understands if you get a kid to be entertained for that long, it's a godsend.

A few days later, she comes back over. While my sister is out doing her workout routine, my niece comes up to the child gate at my door and proceeds to recite the following:

"See Bumblebee?"
"See Blurr?"
"See Jazz?"

This all was in rapid succession. I handed her one at a time and she did the same thing. My sister comes back in and sees this and then asks out of curiosity if she can come into my room and look at the rest. I didn't mind, so my sister gets niece to look at her and she says:

"We're going to go into Uncle Chompa's room. You sit on the bed and don't get down. We'll bring transformers to you, but if you get off the bed, we'll leave the room."

"Ok"

Onto the bed she goes. She started pointing at various Transformers she wanted to see. When handed to her, she'd look over it for a few minutes, then lay it down in a rather comically gentle fashion and point to the next one she wanted. My sister and I both took note of the way she was analyzing each figure. We also took note of the fact that when I'd say the name of the figure, she'd repeat it as best she could.

"This is Optimus Prime"
"Potimus Prime"

"This is Wreck-Gar"
"Wack-Car"

"This is Bulkhead"
"Bookhead"

"This is Grimlock"
"Grinluck"

"This is Ultra Magnus"
"Oopa-Magnews"

"This is Megatron"
*stares blankly*

Funniest one though was...

"This is Starscream"
"Fart Steam"

...and so on.

When the bed was running out of room, I went to move some of the figures back to the shelf and was greeted with:

"NO NO NO UNCLE PAD! HE'S SLEEPING!" /tantrum

This whole scenario went on for about 2 hours up until it was time for her to get her nap. As you might imagine...she wasn't exactly wanting to take a nap with all these toys around her, so we got to listen to a tantrum again. After her nap, my sister took her home while she was groggy so she wouldn't realize the Transformers were still there.

A couple days later, my sister calls me.

"I hate you."
"What'd I do now?"
"You got my daughter hooked on transformers."

And I shit you not...the second she said Transformers, I hear my niece in the background:

"See Bumblebee?"
"See Blurr?"
"See Jazz?"
"See Prowl?"
"See Ratchet?"

All in rapid fire succession. I cracked up. This had to be one of my proudest moments as an uncle. Here was my almost 3-year old niece tossing aside all her Disney Princess dolls (Ariel, Belle, Jasmine etc), Disney Cartoon dolls (Mickey, Minnie, Daisy etc), and her Little Einstein stuff wanting to play with Transformers.

Given that, I figured if she had a couple of them to play with while she was at her house, she'd be fine. I ran out to Toys R' Us the next day and found Bumblebee and Blurr on clearance and picked them up. I took them over there while she was napping and when she woke up to see those two figures on the couch, she went joyously ballistic. Keep in mind, my sister didn't want me to buy 'em for her. Mainly because she knew eventually that my niece would figure out that those figures turn into something else and she didn't want to spend hours on end transforming them back and forth for her. The main reason I got them for her was because of how engaged she was in trying to figure them out. Seriously...I don't have a kid of my own obviously, but from what I do know...if a child that age latches onto something that engages their imaginations, you see where it goes.

The next trip out to the house a couple days later saw my sister bringing the new toys I got for her out too. The notion was that she'd leave them over here for her to specifically play with while she was being babysat since they seemed to entertain her for such a long time. While I'm talking about it with my sister, we hear:

"OH NO BUMBLEBEE BOOBOO!"

And the sound of rapidly approaching baby feet clomping down the hall. She brought me Bumblebee with a piece of his leg that had snapped off. So I held out the broken Bumblebee in front of her, snapped it back into place and handed it back to her.

She stared at the piece for a bit, turned it from side to side while staring and what I had suspected originally about her fascination with these toys seemed to manifest itself a bit with her next exclamation:

"OH I GET IT!" /runsdownhallway

Kids really do say the damnedest things.

As they're getting ready to leave, I busted my sister trying to distract my niece from the Transformers long enough so that they could be left there. "She's got enough toys at home, they're rated for childen 5+, and I don't want to spend all day transforming them." So naturally...being the ass that I am at times...

"You want to take Bumblebee and Blurr home with you?"
"Ok"
Sister: /sigh

(And yes, I took off all the small pieces to these things before I left them.)

A couple days later (yesterday), my sister seems to have relented. She sent me a text message saying that my niece had been asking about Jazz every now and then the past couple days. I went to pick Jazz up while my niece was napping again and dropped it off. I couldn't stay to see how she reacted to it, but according to my sister, it was the same sort of joyful ballisticness (is that even a word?) that she did before.

She did get a measure of revenge on me though.

As I'm bragging about how much my niece loves Transformers, my sister points out that my niece also likes to dress said Transformers up with the dresses that belong to the Disney princess dolls...

So close... >.<

It's not a flawless victory, but it's still a victory for Transformers and me. :)