About TransFans Philippines (The Transformers Club of the Philippines)

The Beginning

Un-officially TransFans Philippines began as a nameless group of 10-year old neighbor kids in a small community somewhere in Manila during the summer of 1986. They used to 'meet-up' every weekends sharing there latest TF aquisition. Not only they show up in one place to share there toys they also catch up on watching Transformers (Generetion 1) on TV as well.

Transformers on TV

The Transformers (Generation 1) original series was first aired on Philippine television (in English) on June 1985 every Tuesady at 7:30PM on CITY 2 (now called ABS-CBN after the Edsa revolution broke out in February 1986), and at that time they have shown the first series in chronological order from Season 1 & 2. There are times they have re-run a particular episode as "fillers", and by the height of Season 2 episodes where no longer aired regularly due to new cartoons coming out on the said channel.

The Dark Ages

By 1987 Transformers was moved from one channel to another from RPN 9 to IBC 13, and so was the popularity of the toys. This is where it had huge competitions on other toylines like GI Joe, Challege of the Gobots, Centurions, The Mask, and other 80's Cartoons that have its own merchandise. So the once proud group of kids have there own particular favorites, and there where only two kids still into Transformers until a few months later there was only one who followed that interest. As the year has followed in 1988 interest on the hobby has died down.

Re-Spaking TF interest

Fast forward to 1997 where Metro Manila cable subscribers were able to watch the Japanese episodes of Transformers (dubbed in english by the chinese). The series of episodes were aired at Star Plus (now Star World), and the dubbing reminds us of those Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan action flicks. This was actually the newest Transformers shows seen by Filipino TransFans, who was treated to see the American series in a long time. The first Filipino to have put up a website dedicated to the Japanese series was Robbie Trinidad an Ateneo University grad student, who started taping every episode aired on Cable TV. The interest of forming a TF community was not originally planned at that time until after five years later.

TransFan Reborn!

In June 2002 a mailing list egroup was formed, and organized by the founding members of TransFans Philippines (The Transformers Club of the Philippines). Officially the group didn't launch to be known by TF fans until four months later when the first Philippine Toys & Collectible Convention came. It started as a 'word of mouth' until new members joined in, and by April 13, 2003 they started to held there first official TF MEET-UP at the Brash Young Cinema in Makati having a private screening of its latest TF series, Armada. When another Philippine Toys & Collectible Convention was held (June 21, 2003) new members have subscribed to the egroup, and poputarity of the group soared in numbers. The group is currently known globally through TFormers.com, and other foreign websites that they now know there's a TF community and its here in the Philippines.