Interview: Dave Van Domelen

Transformers is doing spectacularly well as the franchise celebrates its 25th anniversary. One of many 80s brands that waned during the early 90s, it was reinvented in 1996 as Beast Wars to great success, and had a phenomenal year over a decade later with the release of the 2007 movie. In Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner‘s words, “That brand will never be the same.”

Fanmode interviewed long-time Transformers fan and long-time Transformers reviewer (400-plus reviews over 15 years!) Dave Van Domelen to get his thoughts on Transformers and Transformers reviews.

One of the quirkier things of your reviews is you write bios for Transformers that lack them. What would the Dave Van Domelen bio look like?

DVANDOM comes from a rather creative home. Father was a band teacher, mother an English teacher, little brother an artist/athlete/musician and little sister feeling a bit put upon having to follow all of this (although she ended up the first to marry and own a home). DVANDOM himself excelled in just about all academic areas, and ended up with a PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University, but he followed his parents at least in that his specialization was education research. He’s currently the Director of Undergraduate Labs at Kansas State University.

DVANDOM’s TRANSFORMERS fandom was only sporadic at first, getting Bluestreak for Christmas in 1984 and buying the occasional TF over the next few years. It wasn’t until graduate school and the discovery of alt.toys.transformers in 1993 that he really dove into the fandom. From the time new molds started coming out in Generation 2, there’s barely been a TRANSFORMERS mold that he hasn’t bought…and reviewed. Reviewing first on Usenet, and then starting to archive his reviews on the web in January 1996, he runs one of the oldest TRANSFORMERS fan pages out there.

While not physically impressive, he has a keen analytical mind, taking things apart both metaphorically and literally, then putting them back together again. He started modifying toys around 1994, and as a result got used to the sight of his own blood (oops).

STR 3 INT 9 SPD 3 END 5 RNK 8 COUR 5 FRB 2 SKL 9 Avg 5.5
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March 12, 2009 · Filed Under Interviews