 Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of the Sit Rep. And I am here with Sam, also known as TF Collector on YouTube. Sam, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing fantastic, actually really excited we're finally doing this. Excellent. Now, Sam, of course I've sent you the questions and how this works is I have five questions for you as a transformer collector and five questions for you as a YouTuber. So you ready to rock and roll? Absolutely. Excellent. Question number one, sir. What is the appeal of transformers for you? Mainly, I would say from a toy perspective, it's the engineering. I'm kind of an engineering buff. So I really love just getting a new transformer, seeing how it all comes together, making sure it feels satisfying to transform this thing. I love it when they include clever little new tricks to make things work. And then I guess from a fiction perspective, I just, the little boy inside of me just always loves that whole robots fighting each other, the sci-fi aspect of it. Hey, you can't get wrong with giant robots fighting each other. Right? Do I say? All right. Question number two, aside from G1, which is always the right answer, what is your favorite transformer's fiction? I think there's only one real answer, only one thing it could be, and that would have to be transformers energy on. I'm kidding. I was going to say, all right, where's he going with this one? Yeah, I was just kidding. For me, it's a little split again. If we're talking cartoons, Beast Wars is my favorite. It's what I grew up with. I think it's one of the best made shows that they have. I figured on the comics route, probably the IDW comics, just because they're the most fleshed out transformers continuity that we have in writing so far. I've never followed any of the later IDW, but I've got a lot of their first works, and I love how they just took everything we know and flipped it around. Prime example, Galvatron is a different entity than Megatron. I thought that was pretty cool. I hated what they did with Cyclonus. I hate Cyclonus' design from IDW with that jack-o'-lantern-looking, facey-ass. Yeah. That's simply not for everybody. They definitely lost a lot of people, I think, in the second half or what they considered season two, just because it departed so radically from what people think of it as G1. But if that fact doesn't bother you, if you can get past that, I think overall it's really good. I didn't agree with every single direction that they took, especially when they very radically changed characters' personalities. The fact that toward the very end, during the Unicron arc, they just butchered Beast Wars. They threw all these Beast Wars characters in there, but they were just nothing more than evil cannon fodder, like Optimus Primal was just some evil guy working for Unicron, and he got killed off like nothing. And that bug me, as a huge Beast Wars fan, I was like, you have to kid me, that's all we get. I'm trying to think of the series, I think it was the second series of Last Stand of the Records, where it was Tarantulas, or somehow they incorporated Beast Wars in a weird way. And it was this weird scene out of Aliens, where Tarantulas busted out of, hell, I can't remember his name, he was the big tank guy. But I remember reading this going, what is this? Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I like that, I like that they did the three records books, they're all pretty good, kind of went real dark with the Transformers lore there, but that's fine, I'm okay with dark stories. Yeah, I love it, I love it. All right, sir, number three, do you have a favorite figure or grail, one toy that you will never get rid of? Say you have to sell your whole collection, this one's not going anywhere. So, I don't have a favorite figure, because there's so many, I couldn't really pick one, but as far as a grail, I think definitely the Beast Wars Megatron, that was from the final Botcon back in 2016. That was kind of just the final Hurrah that they had for Botcon. It was the centerpiece figure, it was one that people had actually been waiting on for some years when they released a concept for it. And years later, they actually made this thing and it's gorgeous. Actually, I wanted to have it to show on the screen, but unfortunately it's packed away, it's all in bubble wrap right now. But it's just, it's a really cool toy. I'll have to write down this time stamp that way, I will Google it, because I'm trying to remember what that looks like. Okay. And I'll put that on here too. All right. It's basically, it's RID Megatron, like 2001 RID with Beast Wars Megatron's head and it's something like this really cool red and gold color scheme. So it's a gorgeous toy. The head sculpt is fantastic. They really nailed it. But to me, you know, because it was the final Botcon, it was the rarest figure I think, like not many people got one. They didn't sell it on the store afterwards as far as I know. And yeah, it's Beast Wars, so Beast Wars is great. Love my Beast Wars. I used to have, I had every Predacon when I really got into G1. I sold off all my Beast Wars except for all my Megatrons. I've got the Gator Megatron, the Purple Dinosaur, the Transmetal and the Dragon. Love the Dragon. I think I've only transformed it once. Fine. Yeah, this looks great. Actually the other ones. I definitely got to look at one up. All right. Now, we've discussed your favorite. Which figure is your white whale? This is the one you're hunting for the most. If you could get this figure, you could be done with collecting. Can I cheat and name like a group of figures, like a box set? Yeah, like I said before, this is my show. I'll make up the rules. Okay. It's going to be actually fairly similar. The 2006 Botcon figures, which was the first time they did Beast Wars. I was actually, it was going to be the first one I ever went to. I had saved up for it. I was finally going to a Botcon. And then, you know, I found out it was Beast Wars, so I was stoked. And then car breaks down, all that money I saved up went to fixing that, never ended up going. And now those things, like they're just a grail universally. I mean to buy like the main box set, cheapest I've seen it for lately is $1,200. Wow. And then you got the main box set, plus you have like the Megatron and Waspinator and some other random figures. And they're all really expensive. They made very few of them. But I've been wanting them for years. And, you know, honestly, if I could gather those up, because they're primarily the main cast from the opening episode of Beast Wars, just in mechanical alt modes, I'd be happy. I could just put those on a shelf and walk away. I feel pretty good. Is that the one where Megatron is the re-tool of Cybertron Red Alert has that giant missile? Yes. Okay. I know the ones you're talking about. I think they did that. Yeah. Optimus is a crumple zone. He ends up looking really good like that. He's got the shoulder cannons. I've seen those. I know exactly what you're talking about with this one. Cool. All right. Number five, and this is our last transformer question. What is your favorite Transformers character? Any media? Any fiction? All right. I'm going to be really repetitive, but I think I got to give it to Beast Wars Megatron again. I just, I love his charisma. I love the commanding presence he has. I love David Kaye's portrayal of him. I geeked out really hard when I went to the Baccon and David Kaye was there and he started doing his Megatron voice during the script reading. I just, I don't know. I've never, I mean, there are all these different colorful Transformers characters out there. They have these very distinct personalities, but I feel like he's just commanded a presence that like no one else ever has. You know, certain men have a toss like everything that he says. And he was so cunning. I just, I love it. He was so different than the G1 Megatron. I've always been a big Megatron fan coming from a guy called Patriot Prime, but yeah, Beast Wars Megatron, that was my favorite character too. And like you, David Kaye's voice, I mean, same package, new product loser. I mean, I just love it. Yeah. I mean, if I had to give like a slow second, probably Transformers Prime Megatron, mainly because he's so similar. Basically G1 Megatron given more depth, like a little more competent than like the cartoon guy where his plans get foiled easily. And he's like, oh, I'll get you when he flies off. Like this guy won a lot of his battles. He was really very cunning, also very charismatic. So I would have, it'd be between those two. Yeah. That was a good one. I didn't like that at first. I hated his Bay-ish looking design where he looked like a monster. But the more I watched that show, yeah, that was awesome, especially the ending of that when Bumblebee got him. That was so cool. I'm not, no spoilers, no spoilers. All right. Spoilers. All right. Now these are the YouTube questions I have for you. I was watching some of your reviews, really bigot. What possessed you, a grown-ass man to do toy reviews on YouTube? Primarily just not having anyone to talk to in my real life. I wasn't fortunate enough to run into like native bodies that cared about this at all. My wife having to sit down and listen to me talk about Transformers like a form of torture for her. She's just not interested. Like she knows it's my thing. She's okay with the hobby for the most part. So maybe they had a cost. But she's just, she's not interested. It's very rare that I'll tell her something and she wants to hear anything that I have to say on it. So that was the main motivator. There's like, well, if I can't find a local audience, I'll just make a captive audience on the internet. So, you know, people just tune in and listen to me talk about plastic robots for 20, 30 minutes at a time. So it's kind of a way, I don't know, kind of a way to like document your collection. Some way to kind of have a time to say. Yeah, yeah. I did, I used to take pictures. I'd made like some dinky website where I did like photo galleries, but that's defunct now it's gone. Is it just between time investment and everything and the fact that they want to charge me like 120 bucks a year for the website. Yeah, forget that. And move the way. Yeah. But that's really just to have a community and people will talk to about it. So that's it. And it's amazing how, of course, this will lead into another question later on, how tight-knit this YouTube community is. I've only been doing this for just over a year and the people I've met and the friends I've made doing this blows my mind because I'm like you. I live in the rural West Virginia. There is nobody around here that's into this. I'm talking to them. They're bored out of their minds. So I feel you on that. All right. Question number seven. What keeps inspiring you to get in front of the camera? The biggest thing I think are just the comments that people leave, the engagement. You know, I just, I like getting feedback. I love when people tell me I did something wrong. I mean, I hate myself for it, but I like when they point that out because they're always, they're cool about it. Like I just, some guy was telling me my seed Starscream review. There was a panel that I had no idea it was for. The instructions make it look like it's useless. And he's like, oh no, actually that plugs into his shoulder ornaments and holds them in place. I'm like, well, now I feel stupid. Kind of want to delete the whole thing and start over. But yeah, people are really cool when they do make the corrections. Now they're like, oh, you're an idiot. Which actually, it kind of scares me because I've never, I've been doing this on like a year and a half now and I've never received a negative comment. Which can't mean that I'm amazing. It just means I don't know what I'm doing wrong. You know, like nobody's ever tells me what's bad about my videos. Scares me a little bit because I'm just going to keep making mistakes till I do. But yeah, really, I mean, most of the time though, people are just like, oh awesome review. I love looking at this toy and then they want to talk about the toy. So that's a way of kind of getting that community feeling. That really keeps me going because sometimes you get demotivated. There have been a few times where I'm like, you know, is this worth my time? Because it's incredibly time consuming. Yeah, a lot of people don't understand. Prime example, you know, they'll hop on there and they see, oh, he's got a new video up. It's a 10 minute video. That 10 minute video can take anywhere from three hours to two days. So it's a lot of work into it. And mine's all with the editing because I like to put those little histories of the figures. I'm looking for pictures and research and make sure, like you said, I don't want to get it wrong because they will call me out on it. Yeah. All right. Here we go. Question number eight. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different than the rest? Okay. I didn't think about that one a bit. I don't know, particularly unique, but I guess the things that are, you know, kind of comprise the channel. All my reviews are done off the cuff. I don't pre-record my lines or anything. I'll read from a script on the reviews because I feel like it just kind of injects more of my personality into it. I have, you know, I've tried reading off of scripts and I just have a hard time not sounding too robotic, sounding too, I guess, detached from the review itself. So I do like to do that. It does leave a lot of jump cuts where I, like, lose my words. And if I didn't edit these videos, as much as I do, you would see a lot of points where I'm just holding the figure for, like, 10 seconds saying nothing because I kind of remember what I was going to say. I was, like, seen out here. You've done it so many times. Oh, yeah. And you're trying to be really still because I've got to pick up right where I stopped. Exactly. You want to, like, try to not make it really obvious that it's a jump cut, but sometimes it can't be helped. I've likely used the blur fade. So it'll be this, I'll screw up, so I'll have this light blur that kind of comes in like, oh, he's shifting to something else. I'll have to take that on board. I might use that. And then I guess maybe the other thing is just the fact that it's not solely a review channel. That's what it largely turns into just because reviews, believe it or not, are the least time-consuming videos to make. And when my time is limited where it's pretty much, I get home at, like, 7 p.m. Probably don't start until, like, 10 at night. I don't have a whole lot of time before I got to be back up for work. But I also do, like, discussion videos. I've done a few, you know, beast wars, combiner, stuff like that, which they seem like they're not that big a deal, but they actually take forever to make because those actually do script. So I have to come up with the script. I have to record the script, and then I have to come up with, like, a bunch of different images. And it's just, my God, I'll work on one of those for days. And it's a shame because I like making those. Those are probably my favorite types of videos to make, but because they're so time-consuming, I usually just end up defaulting to reviews. So I'm trying to keep it expanded, try new things. I have a few different things planned for this year if I can get around to them. But I think it's just the fact that it is more than just a review channel. I think maybe it's what sets apart for most others. Excellent. And that's something I try to do too, is just branch out. And, of course, if you branch out too much, you have certain followers that are like, why are you doing this now? Because I dabbled in movie reviews, and I don't think I'm going to do that anymore. Yeah, I'm still debating, like, if I'm ever going to, like, just jump the shark and talk about something not Transformers, and then just watch my subscriber base just cut itself in half. Yeah, I'm making like a Zelda video. They're like, oh, whatever. That's where your playlists come in, or you'll make the announcement, hey, we'll try something different, but I'm still going to be doing this. Yeah, that's what I like to do eventually, because there's a few different things I'd like to talk about. I have a couple other nerd passions. Excellent. Yeah, I got Star Wars there behind me too. So, every now and then I'll throw that in, and big Marvel fanboys as well. Okay. We touched on this lightly, but question number nine is what's your thoughts on the Transformers social community, i.e. YouTube, Facebook, and do you have any special shout-outs? Okay. So, as far as the community, where I have the most engagement, aside from my comments section, are actually like the websites, you know, the sabertron.com, T-formers, TF World 2005, because they have their forums. They're a very passionate community, for better or for worse. I mean, you see it, you know, Hasbro is like, oh, look, we made a new figure. And everyone's like, oh, this is the best thing ever. Everyone else is like, oh, my God, my life is ruined. I hate you, Hasbro. And then they just start screaming at each other back and forth. And some people hate that. Some people are like, oh, my God, this is so toxic. I love it. I want to say back to some popcorn, just watch the fur fly a little bit. Sometimes I'll just say something in there, you know, like when the we insert a little comment and then just watch everyone to start going at each other just for fun. That was crazy. I remember when that happened, I was like, oh, my God, you people are ridiculous. Let's see this made up language and just, yeah, it was funny. Just get everyone gets real mad at each other. And it's funny because at the end of the day, we're fighting over plastic robots, which is the great part. But so, yeah, I mean, they are very passionate and they have a very diverse set of, you know, opinions and beliefs, you know, politically, sociologically. As far as shout outs, there, I don't know a whole lot of people on here haven't, you know, got to, there's one guy, his name is T.F. Fangig. He's a very, very quiet guy. Sounds very shy, but he just does, he does a lot of really just different random videos. It's not like review channel or anything. He just talks about Transformers and, you know, does all sorts of different segments. So he's a really nice guy. And then the other one you probably heard of, I didn't mean to interrupt, but T.F. Fangig has been commenting on my videos since day one. He is, he'll make it a point. You're always ready for him to comment. Yeah, he is a very nice guy. So I've watched some of his stuff. Oh, it's all caps to a bunch of exclamation marks. Yeah. And how awesome and amazing your review is. Yeah, that's the guy. He's just an incredibly nice guy. And then the other one you probably heard of, Rodimus Primal. Yes. He does a lot of those like long form, like essay type things. Actually, I met him. I ran into him when they did the screening of the Transformers, the movie. Like the 86 one. We just happened to be in the same movie theater. I saw you like sat down in front of his recording. So of course I had to like say something after the movie like, Hey, I'm a big fan. Like I really like your stuff. And he, you know, came out and he talked to me for a bit. You actually see me like creeping in the background of his video he did because a bunch of people came up. I was kind of, I was kind of annoyed with those people because I want to keep talking to him and then just kind of hijacked. So just see me standing there like looking around. But he, he was really cool too. So I mean, if, you know, if your viewers don't already know who he is, they should definitely look him up because he has a lot of well researched stuff. I like his, his videos. Excellent. All right. Last question. Do you have any channel goals for yourself and where can our viewers find you? This is your time to plug yourself. I'm sending my people to check you out. Okay. Channel goal. So my channel has, it's been growing since I started it, but it's been a very slow burn. Currently sitting that like little 50. Very, very slow burn. So I want to set a goal for myself. Hit a thousand by the end of the year. And I'm not really, you know, based on trends, not tracking to it, but I figure you might as well set your goals high, right? Cause worse than happens, you fall a little short. You know, and just, just I want to see that growth because I do want more people to see the videos. I want to be able to share with more people because in your comments section, there'll be a lot bigger is more engagement. So that's, that's definitely something I'm looking forward to is hitting that thousand mark. As far as where to find me, obviously I'm on YouTube as TF Collector. The three websites that I mentioned earlier, the sabertron.com, T-formers, TFW 2005. I'm on there as Lorekeeper is my handle. So you'll see me. I posted my reviews up there too. On Instagram as the TF Collector Net, I think, because TF Collector was apparently taken. I can demand to have my TF Collector. Yeah, I know. But Facebook is just TF Collector. Where else? Twitter, I'm on there. It's like TFMR Collector because TF Collector was also taken. I feel like I'm missing something, but those are the main ones. I'm kind of lurking everywhere a little bit. I'm like one whole Twitter follower. I can't figure the damn thing out. I get on there and I just I don't like it. I just go on there to post the links to the videos. And it went a really long time without any single person following me. And I find I like one guy. So I'm getting there, moving up in the world. I do like Instagram. I have an Instagram account too. I keep forgetting to plug in my videos, but I like taking pictures too. You know, just random things I get and I'll throw them up there. I have to laugh because I have family members that will see pictures of like my son. So they're signing up for my Instagram and then they're sending me messages like, why are you taking so many toy pictures? I was like, well, that's why it's not my name. It's Patriot Prime Reviews. It's not me. And I'm going to do a shout out for you as well. We got to give our boy Tatumus Prime props because he's the one that sent me your way. So I think he really digs your video. Oh, is that what that is? I just saw his regular name on the okay, that's Tatumus Prime. That's Tatumus Prime. Okay, very cool off to thank him for that. He sent me a message one time. He said, I want you to check this guy out. And I think it was the first video of yours that I discovered in the comments section was him saying, this is the guy you need to contact me. And I was like, I'll get him. I'll track you down. Well, that's awesome. I definitely got to thank him for that. Excellent. And there's your shout out, Tandy. It's like, we've come full circle with this thing. He's the one that helped me start this. I bounced the ideas off of him for like two months. He, my first sit rep was with him and what started out as a practice round went so good. I was like, oh, hell, I'll just post it. All right. That's great thing about experimenting. Except for this damn Skype trying to figure this shit out. All right, Sam. Well, I really appreciate you talking with me tonight. Sam, of course, TF Collector. I am going to put a link to his YouTube channel in the descriptions of this video and at the very end where you see Optimus Prime carrying that flag, I'll have links to his videos as well. Once again, guys, if you like what you see, hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe. I try to do sit reps at least twice a week now, uploading on Mondays and Fridays. This is Patriot Prime, signing out. Bye.