Inspired by the box-office success of Transformers, we pulled out five of our old action figures, Autobot and Decepticon both. We distinctly remember playing with Transformers for thousands of hours in Tom Ross's rec room between 1983 and 1987. Surely, transforming these figures from their vehicle forms to their robot forms would come naturally to us, thanks to accumulated muscle memory, right? Um, not so much. The Triple Changer Decepticon was a particular disaster.

There's a metaphor here for what happens when a grown-up gets his hands on a beloved artifact of childhood, but we haven't seen the movie yet so we're not sure what it is.