COLLECTOR INTERVIEW #94: Anthony Brucale

We’re back for another Transformers collector interview!

Many fans will know Anthony Brucale as the driving force behind TFU.INFO, a long-running and invaluable resource dedicated to documenting every Transformers figure ever made. As the host of the Transformers University podcast (and its TFU News & Views companion), Anthony has spent years exploring the history, design, and legacy of the brand with a level of depth few can match. Today, he’s here to talk collecting, community, and what it means to document Transformers history from the inside.

Who are you and what do you collect?

I am Anthony Brucale, and I am a dad and husband, and in the fandom I am known as the owner, operator, madman behind the website TFU.INFO and the podcasts Transformers University and TFU News & Views.

Because of the nature of my website, I try to collect a bit of everything, as the goal of the site is to house images of every Transformers figure ever made. Lately, especially since the price hikes and tariffs, I’ve been much more selective in what I purchase.

I do have a soft spot for Wheeljack figures, clear redecos, oddly colored G1 molds, Beast-era toys, Seekers, and Siege Sideswipe variants.

What do you love most about Transformers and the hobby?

Primarily, I love the friendships this hobby has afforded me throughout the years. The friends I’ve made in this hobby are ones I text with every day, send DMs on social media, and hang out with at conventions. Nothing really beats that. One of my favorite things in my collection is a photo a big group of my friends and I took at BotCon 2007 in front of the Movie Optimus Prime truck.

Secondarily, I love the hobby because it can be so many things. The toys are action figures, cars, and puzzles. They’re representations of characters in media… and sometimes not. The fiction can be fast and fun at times, and deep lore and mythology. And then there’s exploring the design and marketing of Transformers. All of it is super interesting to me.

How has the collecting scene changed since you joined the fandom?

I’ve been a fan since the early days of G1, but I joined the online fandom in the fall of 1996. Over the last 30 years, the collecting scene has changed tremendously. There’s so much more product, so many lines to collect, so many different versions of characters. We’ve gotten figures of characters we would have never dreamed of seeing in toy form back in 1996. I also think the fandom has become much larger, much more diverse. There are times I need to remind myself that I’m not simply addressing people who have lived through the history of the brand for the last 40+ years.

How do you see, or hope to see the scene changing over the next 5 years?

What I would hope to see change is Hasbro’s approach to the brand. To some extent, I feel they are over-licensing Transformers (and their other properties), making the overall experience less special year-to-year. It’s not to say they aren’t doing a stellar job, because I think the Transformers team has been doing great.

They have been doing an interesting tap dance with Generations and Studio Series, hitting major characters while still dropping a deep cut and non-G1 stuff along the way. My one major concern is that we’re going to spend the next 20 years reliving the first 30 years of the brand. I really want to see something like Transformers: The Next Generation — no Prime, no Bumblebee, no familiar faces. Or, at the very least, a screen adaptation of MTMTE/Lost Light.

What is the most surprising or outrageous collecting story you have heard?

I really had to rack my brain on this one; there are a lot of stories. I once had a friend drop-test an original Shattered Glass Starscream off of a hotel balcony during his bachelor party… 12 stories up! Starscream was surprisingly durable.

What has been your single biggest success as a collector, or your greatest ever find?

My single greatest find wasn’t Transformers-related, but it certainly helped me build a large part of my collection in the early days. Back in the late 90s, I worked for a big publishing company doing tech support: installing printers, updating computers to cutting-edge Windows NT, teaching people how to log… next-level stuff! While I was there, they let go of their science fiction department.

One day, I was asked to pick up any technology at their cubicles. Someone was cleaning out their promotions closet. Among the books they published were novels about Magic: The Gathering, which I played in the early days. The person cleaning out the closet asked if I wanted some cards; when I went over to them, there were cases of 4th Edition and The Dark expansion. They were already a few years old at that point. I asked what they were doing with the cases, and they said, “throwing them out.” I asked if I could have them, to which they said, “if you can get them out of here, you can have them.” Shortly thereafter, I had something like 30 cases of Magic cards behind my desk. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I flipped those cases to a local dealer. Suffice it to say, it was a good Christmas that year.

As far as successes go, launching the website and being a creator in the community has afforded me opportunities I would have never dreamed of — from attending Hasbro press events, to getting mailed promotional boxes of swag for review, to working on Netflix’s The Toys That Made Us. It’s made parts of my collection incredibly unique.

If you could pick one item from your collection to keep, what would it be?

It would probably be my G1 Wheeljack. It wasn’t my first Transformer, but he’s always been my favorite character. I got him as part of the S.T.A.R.S. mail-away program back in the 80s, long after I thought I could get him in a store.

If you could have one item out of someone else’s collection, what would that be?

I don’t really look at other people’s collections that way, but my immediate thought would be the Beast Wars Neo Unicron. I’d assume that’s in Takara’s vault somewhere — that counts as someone else, right? Of all the unreleased figures I’ve seen over the years, that one has captured my imagination the most.

What advice would you give a new collector starting out today?

Explore. Transformers fandom has a lot to offer over its history. Part of why I do my Transformers University podcast is to explore parts of Transformers history I’ve never experienced. From a collecting perspective, find what really appeals to you and lean into that; I always find those sorts of purchases are much more satisfying than completing a certain collection or toy line.

Special thanks to Anthony for their words & photos! Be sure to give them a shout on Twitter and Bluesky, or check out TFU.INFO or the Transformers University podcast! Here are some bonus pics of his amazing collection…