Dave's Children's TF Book Overview Meet The Autobots Meet The Decepticons Sam's New Car Optimus Prime Versus Megatron Transformers Coloring And Activity Book With Crayons Transformers Coloring And Activity Book And Stickers Transformers Activity Book and Gel Pen Transformers the Reusable Sticker Book Transformers The Movie Storybook Look And Find Transformers Transformers Interactive Sound Book And Game * Bumblebee Rumble * Transformers Gears and Games Not purchased: Prime Time, Quest for the Allspark, Transformers Mix and Match. Update 5/29: got the Gel Pen book Update 6/22: Bumblebee Rumble added. Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/MovieKid1 This will be a departure from my usual format. Instead of capsules and rants, I'm just going to make some brief comments on each product, but there may be spoilers involved, so they're not really capsules despite the length. :) I'll lead of with the ones I *didn't* get, since they'll be less likely to have any spoilers. Heh. Prime Time: This uses pop-up-like technology, where you pull a tab and panels slide over to cover part of the scene with a new scene, used to have various characters "transform". I decided it was too expensive for what you got, and left it on the shelf. Also, the kid I handed it to at one point had problems getting the panels to slide, so it might be something that would break quickly in use. Quest for the Allspark: This is the movie novelization dropped down to elementary school level, with pictures and even more bowdlerization (a quick skim showed they don't even conclusively kill anyone off). Given that it still cost $5, I decided it was too much to pay for such redundancy and poor line art. Transformers Activity Book with Gel Pen: Okay, I passed on this because I thought it was the "with stickers" one I already had. IIRC, it has Bumblebee on the cover and a gel pen blister-glued onto the front. Transformers Mix And Match: Spiral-bound card-page book with each page divided into three horizontal panels. One side has story while the other has art, set up so that regardless of how you flip the fractional pages all the body parts line up. Like Prime Time, I decided it was too expensive for what limited enjoyment I'd get from it. :) But at least it seems less breakable. Now, the ones I did buy. Meet The Autobots: This is an "I Can Read!" book from HarperTrophy, at Level 2 (by contrast, most of the Armada and Energon books were Level 2), "Reading With Help". In other words, skewed for really little kids. Adapted by Jennifer Frantz, with art by Guido Guidi...yes, that's the selling point if you're over 5 years old. He deliberately simplifies his style for the book, and it works well...and he manages to make Jazz look like Scatman. Well, a little. :) Story-wise, it's about half what the title implies, and half REALLY short summary of the movie from the Autobot viewpoint. A slim volume 9" tall and 6" wide, square bound with 32 pages. $3.99/$4.99Cn Meet The Decepticons: Another Level 2 book by Frantz and Guidi. Awwww, Scorponok is kinda cute. Similar to Meet the Autobots, but with more Decepticons to introduce there's a little less plot summary. Also, it has the Decepticons all run away at the end, rather than being horribly killed, melted, nuked and spindled. $3.99/$4.99Cn Sam's New Car: Also from Harper Collins, but not part of their numerically ranked I Can Read! series. These are square books 8" on a side, "saddle stitched" with staples, 24 pages. E.K. Stein writes, Val Staples draws. It's a very simplified version of the movie story as seen from Sam's viewpoint from the start up until when Optimus introduces himself, with about 3 lines of text on each page, give or take. The art is passable. $3.99/$4.99Cn Optimus Prime Versus Megatron: Same format as Sam's New Car, adapted by Sadie Chesterfield, with art by Val Staples again. This one gives the Cybertronian backstory and then picks up where Sam's New Car left off. Like the Quest for the Allspark, it weakens the ending, just having Megatron defeated and dumped in the ocean, omitting the nuke strapped to him. Again, passable art. $3.99/$4.99Cn Transformers Coloring And Activity Book And Crayons: This one is the size of a standard piece of writing paper, and has a blister glued to the front with four thick crayons in black, red, green and blue. They're "Mega Jumbo Crayons." Heh. Megatron is on the cover. The back cover has a cut-out stand-up of Barricade. The 32 pages inside are newsprint and black lines, standard coloring book fare. It's the usual mix of coloring pages, really simple connect the dots, puzzles, etc. Some are insultingly easy, even if aimed at preschoolers. Nora Pelizzari writes, Val Staples draws. $4.99/$6.25Cn Transformers Coloring And Activity Book And Stickers: Same size and basic composition as the previous, but instead of crayons blistered on the front there's a double page spread of stickers in the middle. The back cover stand-up figure is Bumblebee. The stickers are a pretty cool mix...maybe not four bucks on their own cool, but a nice incentive. I especially like Barricade's badge stickers, "To punish and enslave" and "Pacis Quod Alcedonia" ("Peace Through Tranquility" is the translation I'm seeing online, although "alcedonia" also means halcyon days, or better times). Lana Jacobs writes, Val Staples draws. $3.99/$4.99Cn Transformers Activity Book and Gel Pen: Same size as the other activity books, this one comes with a silver gel pen blistered onto the front. Bumblebee is on the front cover, and the back cover has a cut-out postcard with the movie's teaser image (the eye over Earth). The pages are black paper with white ink. No writer or artist credits. Other than the color inversion, it's the same sort of stuff as in the other activity books, no great shakes. Decent pen, though. $4.99/$6.25Cn Transformers the Reusable Sticker Book: 12" high by 9.5" wide, with glossy pages so that the stickers can be peeled off and reused. Two pages of stickers with page number references, for use in various simple puzzles and games. Lana Jacobs writes, all images from various movie CG and logos, so there's no artist credit. Mostly robot mode images, but there's a chunk of Autobot and Decepticon symbols for a tic/tac/toe game, and some speech bubbles and sound effects for a "make your own comic" section. There's only 12 pages plus the two pages of stickers, kinda lightweight for what you pay. $6.99/$8.75Cn Transformers the Movie Storybook: A hardcover at standard writing paper size, 48 pages. Kate Egan writes, Marcelo Matere draws. The order of scenes is shuffled a bit, but it's at about the level of Sam's New Car, maybe pitched a little higher. And there's at least one My Little Pony. A little classier looking because of the hardcover, I suppose, better to get this one than the two smaller half-story ones. $8.99/$11.25Cn Look And Find Transformers: Another hardcover, 12" tall and 10" wide. No, not a "Where's Waldo" sort of thing. Rather, on each two-page spread you're given a number of items to try to find, plus the last two pages give a bunch of secondary goals (like count the "hidden" Decepticon symbols on the first spread). The center pages pop up into a large battle scene, like a birthday card. The final battle scene shows a bunch of devices coming to life due to the Allspark, so I guess we get that after all (it was left out of the Junior Novelization). The story is very sketchily laid out via these scenes too. Gaaaah, poor soldiers fighting Scorponok, they're covered in scorpions! One on this guy's head, one in a backpack, etc. They've come to cheer on big bro. One to pick up, IMO. $7.98 (no Canadian price listed). Transformers Interactive Sound Book And Game: This one's shrinkwrapped, and has a bank of sound effect buttons along the right side. It's essentially a hardcover book with the front cover narrower than the back cover, the whole thing is 12" tall and 11.5" wide. Comes with an order form to get replacement batteries (plus screwdriver and spare screw). It's another illustrated movie storybook, written by Shawn Currie and drawn by Guido Guidi and Josh Burcham (no specific credits on who drew which bits). The story is pared down to just the parts Sam is involved in, and at various points in each text box you're shown the symbol/picture of which button to press to get appropriate sound effects. There's 18 total buttons, and some of the sounds last several sections or even have music clips. The five at the bottom go with the game on the last pages, and most of them have a randomizer effect (spaces to move, whether you're successful in battle, etc). This falls into the "grandparent gift" category...something you'd never get for a kid you had to live with all the time, but you know the kid'll love it because it MAKES NOISE. Takes three AG-13 batteries. $15.98 Bumblebee Rumble: A smaller "Play-a-Sound" book in the vein of the previous entry in this review. It tells the story of the fight between Bumblebee and Barricade in five double-page spreads on heavy cardboard pages. There's seven buttons to press during the story for sound effects (peelout for Bumblebee, siren for Barricade, a generic transforming sound, generic fight/clash sound, and musical stings for Frenzy and the two faction symbols). The credits have Guido Guidi and Josh Burcham on art, but I suspect Guidi only did the button art repeated from the other interactive book. Shawn Currie writes the adaptation. $8.49. Transformers Gears and Games: A little carry case with six colored markers (primary and secondary colors) that holds closed with a magnetic clasp. Closed it's 5" (13cm) wide, 5.5" (14cm) tall and 1" (2.5cm) thick plus a handle at the top. The front half is a 100 page tablet with the usual sorts of coloring and activity stuff, useful for having pre-simplified movie character designs a fan artist can adapt. The back half holds the markers. And in between is a modified "peg removal" game using little tokens you can cut out from the last couple of pages. $4.49. Dave Van Domelen, keeps pushing the stomping sound button in the big Play-a-Sound book.