 Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with my second episode of The Sit Wrap. And my guest tonight is Burt from Burt the Stormtrooper on YouTube. Burt, how are you doing this evening? I'm good, sir. How are you? Thank you so much for inviting me on. Oh, you're welcome. I myself, I'm getting over the flu and I know you're getting over something as well, so yay. Yeah, yeah, it's going around. My wife has got a currently laryngitis and bronchitis. Nice. Yeah, this week has been really good for me to buy toys because I come home with entire collections and she can't say anything. Yeah, but you post them on Facebook so she can see them later, right? Yeah, well, she'll say something when she can get her voice back. If she says enough with her looks. Oh. That's funny. I know, I know. Well, first off, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell my people about you. Okay, so 40-something year old nerd dad, I guess. Married father of three daughters. Gotta, it's nuts because the age gaps are crazy. We got an 18 year old daughter. She's off to college. She just left last year. I got a 14 year old daughter and then we have a six month old daughter. Just when we thought we were going to become, start becoming empty master's surprise, here we go again. So that's fun. That's kind of how my son was. He was my 40th birthday surprise. We didn't give up. I said, oh, we're not going to have any. But I like your setup behind you. It kind of looks familiar. Yeah, isn't that cool? Something familiar there. There seems to be a running theme with us. Yeah, that's old. Oh yeah, also you are an army vet just like myself, correct? Yep, yes, sir. Yeah, so I was going to say that's another thing we got in common. Army vet, US Army from 94 through 2001. I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne and then I was in a tank unit after that. And then finally finished out in a transportation unit. Hey, sorry about that guys. We ran into some technical difficulties but I think we've got everything ironed out. So you were saying you went into transportation? Yeah, so that was my last duty station when I came back from Korea. I went into transportation. That's where I met my wife. My wife was a medic in the cavalry. Oh, cool. Then I ended up getting out from that station that was in Fort Polk, Louisiana. I ended up, she was stationed in Fort Campbell after that. And that was her last duty station. Excellent. So yeah, eight years each of us. Cool, I got in nine myself. My vacation to the desert's what kind of changed my mind and that one day where you're right by your head and you're like, yeah, I'm done, I'm done. All right, now how this works, I've got 10 questions for you. Five questions are regarding transformers and then the last five questions are regarding you as a YouTuber. So are you ready? Okay, let's do it. All right, question number one, what is the appeal of transformers for you? So I don't know, it's kind of one of those things I've been a fan since the beginning. It's great school and I remember when the transformers first came out and it was such a big deal. Every afternoon, these shows to watch were transformers and G.I. Joe. If you didn't come home from school and watch those shows, you had nothing to talk about with anyone the next day in school. This is on WGN, right? WGN, she came in. I think so, I think so. I think it was WGN and they had the Bozo show in the morning. Yes. Man, we're old. Yeah, great, prize, game. So yeah, so I kind of was there to sound like an old fart, I was there from the beginning. And you know how life goes. You just kind of get into high school and you grow out of that stuff and then I went in the army, I wasn't paying attention to it. And I didn't really pay attention to it again until about 2000, 2001 when robots in the skies came out. And I never paid attention during the Beast Wars era. I remember everybody in the army was in the Star Wars in those days. But when robots in the skies came out and Optimus Prime was made a truck again and this time he was gonna be a fire truck. It was such a big deal. It caught my attention. I started watching and I was right back into it all over again. That's awesome. Yeah, I kind of got back into it during the Beast Wars phase. So I just something about that purple Megatron dinosaur that just drew me back in. All right, question number two. Aside from generation one, which is always the number one answer, what is your favorite Transformers fiction? Ha, ha, ha, ha, hmm. This is probably gonna be very unpopular but I was a huge fan of animated. I really, really liked that story. I really liked the designs. A lot of people had a problem with the animation style because it was very little kitty and I get that. But the story itself was really good and I really liked the toys and I found the engineering on the toys so good because what you saw on screen was almost exactly what you got in the toy. The toys were near perfect in both vehicle and in robot modes. They hid all their car boggards. It was just such a cool era for Transformers. And it was a story that my kids and I would watch it together. The girls were still little so we just kind of watched that show as it was coming on brand new and it was kind of like G1 was for me, animated was for them and I got to live through that with them. So that's probably my second favorite fiction would have been animated. See I was in the same boat. I did not like the art style at first but I stuck with it because that story really got good and I love the voice actors. I thought the guy, I can't remember his name, who did Megatron, that was a perfect Megatron. He was right up there, David K. and Frank Welker. And Megatron's the only one. And you know David K. did Optimus Prime. Oh yeah, I remember that. I know animated helicopter Megatrons, the only one I have from that series. I have a near complete collection. The only one I'm missing is the Japanese exclusive blackout is the only figure I'm missing from that side. So it's a really close call between animated and Beast Wars which like I said, I didn't pay attention to Beast Wars when it first came out and it wasn't until years and years later. And it probably after I had seen the Cybertron trilogy and animated that I finally went, you know what? Let me go back and watch Beast Wars and see what it is everybody's talking about and I ended up loving that series as well. So it's a really close call between those two. Excellent. We ended up getting the entire collection of Beast Wars when I was in Iraq and we just shared that amongst my 10th of guys. So I got a whole bunch of Beast War fans over there. We made sure we watched them all in order too since it's like a soap opera and you have to. All right. It really is, yeah. Number three, do you have a favorite figure or Holy Grail? One figure you will never let go of. Hmm. Really difficult question. Really, really difficult question. Yeah, well, I mean, as far as Grail's scale, they're always changing. For a long time it was Fortress Maximus. And then they put out the Encore Fortress Maximus and I got it right over there and then, okay, I got Fortress Maximus, now what? I guess Scorponok would be the next one to go after that. But as far as figures that I'll never, ever get rid of, I probably have to say it would be G1 Optimus Prime at Mumbo Bee because those are the first two Transformers I remember ever owning. Good deal. All right. Now here kind of going with that same thing. Number four, what figure is your white whale? What is your most wanted toy? Again, that's one that changes all the time because for years it was Fortress Maximus then I got Fortress Maximus. I wonder, I got a trip to come up there. I know, right? It was so good and that's a thing. It's like now we're getting these reissues and when we don't get an official reissue, there's the, what do we call them, unofficial reissues like that Wheeljack that I just got. Dude, he was awesome. That was a figure, that was a white whale, that was a white whale for me for years. That one, I'm looking up on my shelf, I got Sunstreaker, Mirage and Hound and Wheeljack. Those four figures were four G1 figures that for years I thought I was never gonna own because they were so difficult to get, especially complete and they were so expensive. And now they're readily available. Oh yeah, I got a reflector up here as well. That's a KO and they're such high quality figures and they're relatively inexpensive and affordable. So it's a good time to be a fan of G1 because you can go back and get a lot of these figures. I'd say right now probably, yes, yes. But I'd say right now probably the figure that I really would like to get my hands on. There's, I can think of two things. One would be Scorponok, a G1 Scorponok complete. I'd love to get my hands on one of those because I got all of the city bots except him. And then I'd like to get a complete set of pretenders. And the non-show pretenders tend to be rare and expensive. Yeah, well I've got, you know, I've got the four classic pretenders and I've got the three American released show Autobots. And that's it. I don't have any of the Dastron's. I don't have obviously a wing, it's not a wing sabre. I forget the name, Metalhawk. Yes, that's drug drool. Metalhawk. And so I don't have a Metalhawk. I don't have any of the Dastron's and I don't have any of the non-show the large pretenders cause they can be very expensive. Yeah, when I was doing my pretender collecting, I just stuck to the Decepticons and actually completed that entire series. The only Autobots I have are the three main ones. I guess they were from the Generation 1 comic book, Landmine, Cloudburst and Wave Rider. The Wave Rider never appeared much. At least not American. Yeah, and those are the three Autobots that appeared on the show besides Metalhawk as far as pretenders went. There was only four Cybertron. We know them as Autobots and Decepticons over there, they're Cybertrons and Dastrons. So there was only four Cybertron pretenders on the show and there was only four Dastron pretenders on the show. Anything else was just kind of added fiction. Okay, now I'm gonna put us on pause. All right, my friend, question number five and I know I know the answer to this already. What or who is your favorite transformer character? Any fiction, any media? Lee, 100% without a doubt, post-movie, wheelie. No, obviously. I couldn't keep a straight face. I tried. If I'm not mistaken, it was that polished turd that you guys first met. Yeah, let me think about that. Actually, what did I show on that one? Did I show my, I think I showed Go-Bots on that one, didn't I? I think so. That was another challenge. That was the one with all the questions. I think I showed off this guy right here. Side kill, which I broke on camera. I broke him on camera. That's where your Uber real there. So, favorite character, of course, it's Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime. There's a shelves, plural, with all the primes. Yeah, that's what's been consuming my life for the last four or five years on YouTube. Hey, but it works. What do you have one that hit 50,000 views a day? Oh, yeah, I think that was, yeah, it's another video. And I was surprised when I saw that because I got this notification. Your video just hit 50,000 views and I'm like, what video? Oh, and it's the rollout command speaking of animated, you know, Transformers animated. It was a rollout command prime, which was this gigantic, I mean, he's bigger than leader. He's just an absolutely enormous monster of an Optimus Prime. And he's got this gimmick where he rolls. He's got to switch in the back and then you roll him. And as you roll him, the front of his cab will start spinning. And as it spins, the arms come out and then the head comes out. And then you straighten out the legs and he's in robot mode. He doesn't do anything, he's just electronic. He's got this gimmick where you move his shoulder and he punches and he makes sounds and it's really more of a little kid's toy. But it's one that I did not get with the original release of the series. I kind of, you know, put that one, kept putting it off, kept waiting for it, because it was big, you know, it was one of those big giant gimmicky little kid toys and I just kept putting them off because it was so expensive, waiting for him to go on clearance and then one day he was gone. And then I never got him. And then a friend of mine at a toy shop in business a couple hours south of here, he got one a few years ago and when I got it from him, I made the video. That's the one that just made the 50,000 today. That's awesome. I saw where you made the announcement. I haven't watched that one yet. I'm not familiar with that toy at all. All right, here comes the YouTube questions now. Number six, what possessed you, a grown ass man to do toy reviews on YouTube? Okay, well, I was already watching a lot of reviews online. And I went over a lot of this in my first episode. So at first, I was still very heavily collecting Optimus Prime, it's more so than I am now because back then I was still filling in a lot of holes. You know, when the first runs of, like when Armada came out, I picked that, you know, I was picking up those figures as they were coming out. But then later on for like Anorjohn and Cybertron, I wasn't picking them up as they were coming out. And a lot of stuff before that, like G2 had several figures that I'd never picked up. And there was just all these holes in my collection that I was still filling in. And whenever I got a new figure, or I ordered a new figure online, I could always go online and watch review on it. And that kind of scratched that itch. Okay, I'm waiting for my figure to arrive. Let me watch reviews on it. And just kind of, I guess, virtually play with it. And so with a lot of the older figures that I was filling holes with, a lot of those G2 primes, the Action Master primes, the Anorjohn and Cybertron, a lot of these older, more obscure figures, there was just very little, if any, content on YouTube. At the time, YouTube was a lot smaller place back then. So there was a finite number of reviewers. So a lot of times I would think to myself, I really wish there was somebody that reviewed this figure. Or I would find a review on a figure and nothing against, I don't wanna speak negatively of anybody, but sometimes it would be like little kids that were literally just had a camera and they had, you could see the figure was on the floor because you could see the carpet and their bed behind there. And they were literally just shooting their phone at something that was on the floor and was little kids. And everybody's gotta start somewhere, but they weren't like that format that I was used to watching or that I, you know what you like to watch, that wasn't what I like to watch. It was either that or if it was some of the more obscure stuff like that, Action Master Prime, all I could find was videos of people just talking about it and how much I hated it. And so it occurred to me one day, you know, wouldn't it be nice with as many Optimus Prime figures as there is out there if somebody just made, I just really wish somebody would make a collection, a comprehensive collection in one channel of every Optimus Prime figure there is and it would be a certain format that I like. And then finally when they went, oh, I just know it, I know what I like. I know what I'd watch. I have the material behind me. I can't be the only one that wants to see something like that, let me put a shot. And that's kind of what kind of started. There you go. All right, now in going along with that, question number seven is what keeps inspiring you to get in front of that camera every week or every other day or how often you film? Well, it's grown. Yeah, well, it's kind of grown because originally it started out without the Michelle Christina doing at the time because I knew the question was gonna come, would you do Ultra Magnus, would you do Rotomance Primes? And at the time I had plenty on the shelf. And I even said, I'm just gonna focus on this stuff and if the time comes then maybe I'll focus on something else. And eventually I did a Ninja Turtles review for a podcast and that just kind of started, okay, well, I have all this other stuff that I also collect. Let me start showing some of that often. It's just really rewarding. A lot of times, the comments, people. There's those days where you just, you do yourself, why am I still doing this? I don't have time for this. I wanna spend time with my family, whatever the case might be. Do we have a special guest? Hey, Dylan, how you doing, buddy? Good. That's Mr. Burt. He is Burt the Stormtrooper. He reviews Transformers too. Look at all the Transformers behind him. Yeah. You getting ready for bed? I like drinking out of Bumblebee cups. Do you have this? I'm not granddaddy. I mean, he has the same one. Yeah, guess who sent me this one? Yeah. This used to be in that room right there where you're sitting. This used to be in. It's good seeing you. Thank you. It's very good seeing you too. He watches your reviews. Who's your favorite Transformer? I'm Optimus Prime and also Bumblebee. Yeah. The big three. You like Bumblebee? Yes. Yeah. Have you reviewed this guy yet? Who is it? That's Bumblebee. That's the movie Bumblebee. No, I didn't. That's Bumblebee. I didn't video him. I don't have him. How many times did you see the Bumblebee movie? You don't have him? Free. Yep. Nope. You've seen it more times than me. Yeah. Did you see it one time? I saw it one time in the theater with my daughters. Well, you were heading to bed? Yes. Okay. Well, tell him, Mr. Burt, night, night? Night. You'll see him when he gets through you, won't you? I hope you have a really good night. The model is in the Lego movie. Thank you. You too. And I hope you're feeling better. Thank you. What's that? I said thank you. You're welcome. All right. You're very welcome. The Lego movie is out tomorrow. The movie feeders, you wanna go? Well, he lives in Florida. Yeah. He's kind of far away from us. Okay. Okay? Yeah. It's nice seeing you. My mom's waiting in the bed. Okay. It's nice to see you too. Bye. Night night. Give me a hug. Bye. All right. Get to bed. Hey, daddy. What? Tell the snack and Tim you give me some medicine. Okay. Well, I think we're gonna put this on pause for a second so I can get him some medicine. And I'll be right back. Okay. Okay. I'm recording again. Okay. Our special guest has now just left the building. Question number eight, my friend. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you different? I honestly don't know. Like, why do people even keep watching me? I don't know. Well, it started like, it started out with the uniqueness, I guess, of the Optimus Prime thing, you know? I really wanted to do that most comprehensive as possible. I mean, I think it's impossible to say I'm gonna do every Prime figure there is. It seems like everybody wants to make an Optimus Prime from a Hasbro to a Takara to the third party. So it's just one of those things. It's kind of like Star Wars collecting. No one will ever have a complete Star Wars collection. That's an impossible thing to do. I like what people have in mind. Even Steve Sandswee hasn't been able to. Do you have every one? Yeah, exactly. This used to be a Star Wars room. And then now there's only that one shelf. Well, you can see, there's my corner of Star Wars that used to, this room was half and half. Yeah. Yeah, this entire room used to be Star Wars. And then I had on this wall over here, this was mannequins with my armor, my clenchraber armor and my stormtrooper armor and my type fighter pilot. And this wall was just lined. It's my review table now. So it's one of those like, even Steve Sandswee has the biggest collection in the world that he knows. He's never gonna have a full collection. Same thing with Prime. I mean, it may be possible, not as impossible as Star Wars, but it's just one of those things. But let's try to do as many as possible. If somebody's looking for an Optimus Prime, they know that it can probably come to me and find one. And then, as the years went by, I started sprinkling in some other stuff. And now I just kind of do whatever. I look around my room and I go, hey, that would make a cool video. Let's do that. Or, let's go put some peppers in my mouth and everybody will watch me burn up and suffer. Yeah, those are funny. I enjoy them. I should be making another one of those here pretty soon. Jeremy from Good Ground Peppers, I'm actually, I'm meeting with him tomorrow and I think we're gonna be shooting something. Because he said he's got something special for me that he just ordered. So I don't know what it is, so I'll find out tomorrow. Send me some of that jerky. Oh, it's so good. That's a good, he said it wasn't as hot as he wanted it to be. He said he's gonna make it harder next time. Interesting. All right, sir. Number nine, what's your thoughts on the Transformers social community such as YouTube, Facebook, and do you have any special shout-outs? Transformers and such, which is a group that you introduced me to. I used to be a big, not contributor, but I guess, we're gonna have to edit this out because I just for some reason forgot English. I cannot think of the word I'm trying to... Well, you saw what I tried to say. I lost it. Differentiate my last review, so yeah, I feel you. Yeah. Man, I can't think of what I wanted to say. Oh my God, but I used to participate. Why can't I think of the word participate? I used to participate a lot in forums and just about any forum. Transformers, Star Wars, Ghostbusters. So those kind of message boards and forums I used to participate in those a lot. And over the years it started to seem like they started getting more and more negative. So I kind of shifted away from forums and really started shifting more into groups and communities, smaller groups, smaller communities. So it kind of started with a local group, Tampa Bay Collector's Association, which used to be a forum on one of the popular Transformers sites. And then we all collectively just kind of moved away from the forum and started our own group on Facebook and started communicating there. Most of us know each other personally and get together on weekends or during conventions. We'll run into each other, that kind of thing. And then I started learning about a lot of these buy-sell trade forums and groups, not forums, but groups rather, on Facebook that are really helpful when you're looking for, to fill in those holes. Maybe you're looking for a specific part or something like that. There's a real good place just to go to as well. Yeah, I made a lot of good deals and made good friends, including you, on Facebook with the Transformers groups. It's amazing and the negativity has gone way down. Of course that, you gotta get a big hand to the moderators of those groups and the admins. Yeah. Give them a check. Yeah. All right, last one. Number 10, do you have any channel goals and where can viewers find you? Plug yourself. Okay. I used to have goals. Therefore, a while the channel started getting really serious for me. And I have a very addictive type of personality. When I get into something, I'm very passionate about it and I just jump in full and I tend to lose sight of other things. So therefore, a while my only purpose in life was to make the channel as big as possible and I would spend, you know, every day of the week I would just run home, run in here, shut that door, and shoot videos and ignore my family. And they started getting fed up with that real quick. I started like, I would start going out toy shopping for the purpose of I need to find something that I can review. I started buying things for the purpose of reviewing them, things I wasn't even interested in. So that started getting really old, really fast, especially for the family. So I had to take a step back. In fact, I ended up taking a break from YouTube for a little while and said, let the channel sit. Let me focus on what's important. Let me focus on the family. Stop spending so much money on the channel. And then letting, okay, let's just do it for fun. This originally started as a fun project. This is not something I want to make a living out of. Let's just do it for fun when I can do it for fun, right? So it became one of those things. If I can make a video, I'll make a video. If I can't make a video, I don't make a video. So I've reduced my shooting schedule to the weekends. I typically get up early. I'm used to getting up early. It's a military thing. I usually get up at six in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It just happens. And I'll come in here, I'll shut the door and I'll shoot a couple of videos on the weekends. If I don't have time to shoot one or the girls are competitive dancers, if we're off in competition or whatever the case may be, then I don't shoot anything. If I can do it, I do it. If I can, I can't. And let me, I have this room full of stuff. Let me just grab something that I have. If I see something that I want to buy, I'll buy it because I want to buy it, not because I want to review it. Somebody, another fairly well-known reviewer, Vangelos, I don't know if you're familiar with him or not. A little bit. But he once said buying something for the purpose of reviewing it is the dumbest reason to buy something. And he's absolutely right. So, I had to bring it down a notch and it's been a lot better since. So the channel slowed down a little bit but it's starting to pick speed up again and I'm getting a lot of really nice comments. In fact, I was just going through the comments a minute ago and comments like, I'm gonna call this person out because I literally just got a comment from this person a couple of minutes ago. Bert, I thoroughly enjoy your videos. Thank you for taking the time to make them. It's stuff like that that keeps coming, making me come back, keeps bringing me back to these videos because it's fun for me and people are enjoying it. So, as far as goals go, this is never something that I wanted to do as a living. Even when I was making money on YouTube, which we won't get into that. But when I was making money on YouTube, it was never so. Yeah, well, it was never money, like enough money to make living off but it was good play money. This is guilt-free money that I can spend on toys or video games. This is great. But I knew this, I don't wanna do this for a living because then the moment I have to start paying bills with what I'm doing on YouTube, it's no longer gonna be fun. So I guess the goal is that I hope people keep watching and enjoying the videos and as long as people enjoy them and I enjoy making them, you know, it'll just keep going. Where to find me? It's YouTube, Berks of Stormtrooper on YouTube. I've got a Twitch channel, it's not very big. I've been trying that out. Every once in a while, I'll run out to the garage and shoot a video of myself playing a video game but I don't have the capture devices or the setups or anything like that. It's really quite make a big Twitch channel yet. Twitter, Berks of Stormtrooper and then YouTube or sorry, Facebook, Berks of Stormtrooper as well. And for you guys watching, I will put link to Berks of Stormtrooper in the comments, not the comments, in the description of this video and I'll link it at the very end. So you'll be able to click on it and subscribe. You'll enjoy these videos, lots of Optimus Prime stuff and they're fun. They're fun and very informative. I've learned a few things. Well, that's it. Thank you. That's it for the questions, my friend. I appreciate you coming on and I appreciate everything you've done for me to help my channel grow. Thank you. I appreciate the invite. That's certainly a lot of fun. We got to do this again. Oh, definitely, definitely. Guys, appreciate you watching. This is Patriot Prime signing out. Who are? They're born. Hey, I really appreciate you guys stopping by my channel. Don't forget to like and don't forget to subscribe. Also, check out some of my other videos that I've done on Generation One Transformers, Modern Era Transformers, and Toy Hacks Reprolabel 6. Once again, this is Patriot Prime. Who are?