One of the weirdest-but-coolest of all Transformers collectibles came to us not in toy stores, but at carnivals, sideshows and boardwalks. I've never been able to firmly conclude if it's a bootleg item or not, but it certainly looked official enough...

Commonly and crudely known as "the Jetfire carnival glass picture," it was around 8x6 inches of sharp, shiny Autobot art. In my youth, this was a very common sideshow prize down at the rough and grimy amusement park in Keansburg, New Jersey. It was just one of countless glass "photo" prizes that ranged in too many topics to mention. It'd typically be handed over in a white paper frame/folder, which was a necessary protector not only for the picture, but also for its carrier: The edges were quite sharp. Now that I think about it, it probably was a bootleg -- there's no way any big, traceable company would offer kids something so rife with hand-slicing opportunities.

Keansburg had nothing on the Jersey shore points further south, but its roller coasters were in the closest vicinity to our house. We used to go down there pretty often with the neighbors, and as I recall, the Jetfire picture was winnable for quite a long period of time. It was probably crafted in 1984 or so, but I had to be winning it closer to 1989 or even 1990, as I distinctly recall the pride felt on the car ride home with my Jetfire picture in one hand and a rolled-up Barbi Twins poster in the other.

If I remember correctly, the Barbi Twins were photographed in a giant champagne glass. Getting such posters had less to do with prepubescent lust and more to do with the fact that there was this one game where all you had to do was throw a dart on any one of 40-50 different posters. Whichever one you hit, you won. In this case, it was either the Barbi Twins in a champagne glass, or giant-sized versions of cat calendar pictures.

Jetfire was one of the earliest Transformers figures available, and even by today's standards, he was one of the nicest. His animated onscreen counterpart was known as Skyfire, who had the same general body but a completely different head. This was because the original Jetfire figure came from an entirely different Japanese toy series, and while licensed for Hasbro's use in making toys, they couldn't legally make a cartoon character out of him. Skyfire was also the first character to die on the show. There, now you know everything.

As for the glass...well, it broke easily. If you've ever taken a stained glass class, it was only as thick as one of those big colorful sheets. While it was always a bitch when a Jetfire picture got its first crack, all complaints were put aside as I happily broke the rest of it into as many pieces as possible. I can still hear that satiating crunch if I try hard enough.

Posted by Matt on 08/03/2007. E-mail me!