Figured actions in the Transformers action figure, nonnormative positivism, disability, and transformation

ABSTRACT

Fan studies has discussed the action figure as a significant avenue of franchise and fan expression. However, there has been little discussion about the ways the action figure affects the fan once purchased and brought home. This article argues that Hasbro’s Transformers toy affords the fan ways of being in the world that are unique to the physical play experience. The toy hails the fan in an immediate way, and the fan responds through haptic and auditory engagement. This article sutures theories of affect and embodiment found in fan studies to articulations of nonnormative positivism discussed by scholarship in disability studies. The article uses the methods of autoethnography and sensory ethnography to analyse the toy as a cultural and textual object. Such an analysis has broad potential to illuminate the fan’s countercultural agency as they pick up and play with their toys.

KEYWORDS:

• Action figure
• affect
• collecting
• disability
• embodiment
• fandom
• merchandising
• toy studies
• Transformers

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the kind folks at Continuum and to Suzanne Scott for her feedback and advice on early renditions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See for example ‘Voyager Megatron Premiere Edition (Transformers: The Last Knight) – Vangelus Review 388.’ YouTube, uploaded by Vangelus, July 5 2017, https://youtu.be/F4BLjeKvXWo.

2. Such belief is buttressed by toy studies’ own predilection for aligning the toy with queerness, childhood development, and gender embodiment among other intersectional disciplines (see especially the work of Carlson-Paige and Levin 1987; Levinovitz 2017; Rand 1995; Zachary et al. 2015).

3. See Kibble-White (2016). ‘Kiss Me, Chromedome: How the Transformers Found Peace and Same-Sex Partnerships.’ The Guardian, sec. Books. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/02/transformers-lost-light-comic-same-sex-partnerships; Lilytuft (2022). ‘I Convince People to Read Gay Space Robot Comics.’ https://strayfawnstudio.com/community/index.php?/topic/14364-i-convince-people-to-read-gay-space-robot-comics/; and ‘TRANSFORMERS: THE BASICS on WINDBLADE,’ YouTube, uploaded by Chris McFeely, June 9 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drrUvBM0usM.

4. For a critique of the film franchise’s lack of substance see D Harlan Wilson (2012) ‘Technomasculine Bodies and Vehicles of Desire: The Erotic Delirium of Michael Bay’s Transformers,’ in Extrapolation 53 no. 3: 347–364. Similarly, Marc DiPaolo argues, not without some merit, that

the Transformers franchise in general has little literary or dramatic worth … The multimedia franchise is bolstered by the imaginations of the Transformers fans that imbue the flimsy material with their own potent fantasies of family cars and household devices turning into robots. … None of this makes the Transformers franchise any more intelligent and socially aware, however (Di Paolo 2011 War, Politics and Superheroes, 39).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luke Moy

Luke Moy is a master’s student at University of Texas at Austin in the department of Radio-Television-Film. His research focuses on representations of the body and embodied identities in media, and media as cultural text. His work has been published in Watcher Junior and Modern Horizons.