More Than Meets the Eye

Ben and Will's most recent obsession-- Transformers! Like most of their other favorite toys, they've had very limited first-hand experience with their tv shows (such as "Ben 10," "Planet Heroes," or "Spiderman"). Since we don't have cable, their viewing is limited to what they can find on Cartoon Network.com, YouTube and other websites. In fact, we have now worked through the first 14 episodes of the old (circa 1984) Transformer cartoons on YouTube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Transformers_episodes and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ16d-qpBEE).

And personally I think it's brilliant. What's better for little boys than cars and airplanes? Cars and airplanes that turn into robots!! Add to that robots that turn into dinosaurs and insects and you have Dinobots and Insecticons!! I'm telling you, it's marketing genius.

And for Ben it's even better. "How?" you may ask. Not only does Ben absolutely love cars, robots and dinosaurs, he loves puzzles. The harder, more complex, the better. Ben will sit there and transform his Optimus Prime and Bumblebee back and forth between robot and automobile over and over and over. It's impressive.

And now the icing on the cake: it sparks conversation between me and my boys. I tell them about how I used to watch Transformers on tv when I was a kid, and that I actually used to play with my own transformers, including Gremlock (the T-Rex Dinobot), Megatron (that turned into a gun) and Soundwave (the boombox that had two cassettes that turned into a dog and a bird). The other night when Ben was getting ready for bed, he sat with eyes open wide in amazement listening and asking me questions about my favorite Autobots and Decepticons from when I was a kid. It was great. Male bonding at its finest, I tell you.

There's a special bond between fathers and sons... indeed, "more than meets the eye."