By CHANG MAY CHOON

AS A child growing up in the 1980s, one of my favourite toys was a Transformer robot that never left my side.

So what if I'm a girl?

I was fascinated by how I could, with my very own hands, transform a cool toy car into an even cooler "more than meets the eye" robot.

Needless to say, the Transformers cartoon series kept me glued to the TV, following the adventures of heroic Optimus Prime and his Autobot mates on earth, fighting against the evil Decepticons led by Megatron.

But when the real-life movie version came out in 2007, I was aghast to find that my cute robots had turned into mechanical killing machines. Granted, the CGI was impressive.

But, somehow, I felt the animated version had more heart.

Two years on, the Autobots and Decepticons return in the movie sequel, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Despite my reservations, I went to see it and only ended up feeling disappointed again.

Seriously, two hours and 20 minutes of mindless mega explosions left me numb. Too much of the same thing, even on an epic scale, is never a good thing.

The majestic pyramids in Egypt provided a nice backdrop, but the camera moved so fast I couldn't tell which robots were fighting and, after a while, it didn't matter any more because it was just one entangled mess of metal.

I prefer the simple, two-dimensional moves in the original cartoon series, thank you very much.

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