The Unofficial Guide to Japanese and International Transformers (Schiffer Book for Collectors)

Rating:
Summary: A good history lesson, but an uneventful book.
Review: What I learn was the Transformers were put together by Takara from combining many different toy manufacturers line in Japan. Later in the early 80s a storyline was conceived through the cartoon series and a seperate comic from the existing toy products. This simply mean the story had very little to do with the early toy design. The problems I had with this book is it is not a very good as a toy catalog nor did it described the history in great detail. The writing is not very deep nor long, it just give you a lot of surface information that make you ask for more questions. Each chapter writing contents averaged only about a page long. There are no in depth analysis on the individual toys at all. For the image qualities: The photographs were horrible. The photographers need to learn about lighting and angle. You get a lot of pics of Transformers' boxes, unsharp close-up, reddish tint, redundancy, and a lot of white empty area. As a history book there is not enough for you to own this book, more of a library checkout. Takara's own "Welcome to the World of Transformers" as a toy catalog is much better. There is writing for each toy products and the photo is very professional, but it is in 95% Japanese's' text. I am somewhat happy with this book, but can not recommend it to a casual fan and it was done very generic.