I did when i was 5 years old and i remembered seeing it 2 times yet first time i felt sad when Optimus died as it was one of the most powerful moments i've ever seen in animated movies.

I also had the soundtrack, the Marvel comic adaptation and poster.

 

I saw it when I was 5 as well. The main things I remember about it was being sad that Prowl and Ironhide died (much sadder about them than Optimus), Megatron being reformatted into Galvatron, being wowed at the size of Unicron and wondering where Snarl was.

 

I'm sure almost half the boards weren't born before 1986.

 

And the other half were.

Yes. It was awesome.

 

Yes, I remember it quite well. My dad took me and we went to Asda afterwards. I remember the aisles of toys there - loads of them - and I remember I got an Astrotrain that night. Was a huge aisle of Masters of the Universe next to that.

Can't say as I felt sad at a lot of the characters dying - I guess I didn't have much of a concept of death back then, perhaps - but I remember some of the really cool sequences like Hot Rod and Kup racing around and around in the Sharkticon pool, Slag politely saying "excuse me" to the Quintesson he flattened, and some awesome fights with cool music. We had the LP of The Touch with Dare to be Stupid on the B side, and I also had the Who's Who book and the large single volume Marvel UK adaptation comic at around that time.

 

I saw it in the theaters...still remember the kid next to me crying that Prime died. Was amazed at how the mom took it...almost like she couldn't believe a cartoon could affect her kid like that!

 

I now know how Kup felt in that movie, the old timer.

 

I'm obviously not from 1986, but I have a question for you older fans: were there any scenes from TFTM that didn't show up on the DVD? I see comments a lot of times on how the older fans remember certain scenes that aren't found on the DVD releases.

 

Saw it when I was 5 and I wept like a newborn when Prime died.

EDIT: "Oh shit what are we going to do now?!"

 

Yup, went to it about 3-4 times. Guess I would have been 9 or 10 years old at the time.

 

Not sure but there are definitely deleted/unfinished scenes lying around including a Diaclone coloured Magnus inside Autobot City and the Autobots post-battle standing around Prime.

Probably more too.

 

Hold on. I gotta get out my time machine...  

 

My mom took me to see it opening weekend when I was 7. It's hard to articulate how much of an impact it had on me at the time. I'd never seen anything like it! The quality of the animation, the soundtrack, the character deaths, the swearing, Unicron... the word "epic" is overused on the internet, but that's exactly what it was. I had chills down my spine pretty much the entire movie. It just blew my brains out of the back of my head. For a lot of kids, their interest in TFs started waning around this time, but the movie made me more obsessed than ever. I wanted more!

And you bet your balls I cried when Prime died.

 

The first time I watched it was when it became available at the video rental store.

 

Saw it in the theaters, but only after I already knew that *SPOILER ALERT* Prime dies.

They maybe remember things from the Marvel comic adaption. For years I remembered the scene with Biggs speaking to Luke on Tatooine in A New Hope. Turns out the dialogue was from a story book. (Though I did eventually see part of the scene on Entertainment Tonight.)

 

I was 12 when I first watched TFTM. This should have been about 2 years after it was released in theatres in the US. I don't think it ever had a theatrical release in my country, but my friend at school got himself a bootleg VHS that found its way to me. This was the same friend whose bedroom was the size of my entire living room and kitchen combined and who had Metroplex, Predaking, Scorponok, Trypticon etc, while I had Brawl, Swindle and Sinnertwin - but that's another story entirely  

I watched TFTM. It took my pubescent mind into space and spun my consciousness around the sun several times before returning it to Earth in a blaze of awesome. Everytime my friends came round, I popped TFTM in the VCR and made them watch it. I watched it something like 30 times before losing count. I memorised huge chunks of dialogue (Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles ftw) and was that kid who would say the lines out just before they were spoken. I still do that to this day.

Dat animation. Dat rocking soundtrack. Dat Galvatron. Dat Starscream getting what for during the coronation. I liked Hot Rod, who seemed like a nice-enough all-American bot. I hated Springer, that bird-dogging, Arcee-stealing, I'm-too-cool-for-schooling Han Solo wannabe. I gave no f***ks when OP died. I rooted for the Cons to finally kick some tail after all the stupid defeats presented in the regular cartoon. I wailed when Megatron caught a slow-motion double axe-handle to his Decepticon symbol. I was furious when the Junkions put Ultramagnus back together with glue and spit.

Yeah, I'd say TFTM had an impact on me  

 

Movie came out a couple weeks before I turned 14.
My mother and "step-father" weren't the kinda folks who took their kids to movies [I had no idea were the show was at that point; I'd be watching TV and suddenly I was watching something else as my step-father had walked into the room and changed the channel on me without a word].
Movie came out in August, me and my little brother's birthdays were both in August so after nagging for a while they surprised us by saying the four of us were going to the movies to see The Transformers.
The step-father was not making the slightest effort to get there on time [because they weren't really planning to see the TF Movie] and when we got there he turned around and said "Aaa, I want to see this other movie instead".
Me and my brother got real worried [we're already in line and these were the kind of people who really would make their kids sit through some shit "adult" movie while The Transformers played in the theatre next door and not bat an eyelash about it] so we went to work with the begging.
They eventually agreed to go to their movie themselves and let us go to ours.

We walked into it right after the fishing scene as the big battle is getting going. [Didn't get to see the stuff I missed till years later, still pissed about that].
It was just a rollercoaster!!
When Optimus died I had a lump in my throat due to the sheer "realism" of the bedside death scene, but I was too wide-eye, stuck on the rollercoaster, trying my hardest to absorb everything as fully as I could to get sucked into any grieving [and 14 so too cool to cry in public] but took a quick glance down at my little brother afterwards and he's got tears full-on streaming down his face.

The changes were what threw me. The whole movie I had all these questions to keep addressing in my mind-
Is Optimus REALLY dead and gone forever for real?
Is MEGATRON really gone for real??
Did that actually just happen to Starscream?!

When Unicron started transforming I didn't see it coming. I don't think most of the rest of the theatre saw it coming either, it was like "Holy shit what a good idea!!".

 

My parents were (still are) homebodies that NEVER go to movie theaters. I was only able to go after I was able to get my own job and pay for it, which made the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie one of the first cinema experiences I ever had.

But the moment that TFTM was on VHS, I was at my cousin's house (they were cool enough to have a VCR, not us) and watched it two times in a row. It was awesome.

The first time I saw TFTM in a movie theater type setting was at Botcon 06... and frankly that didn't quite feel like I thought it would.