Whenever 19-year-old Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barbosa tells people his name, they think he is making fun of them. That’s because his name is the phonetic version of how some people pronounce “Optimus Prime” in Spanish. It was given to him by his father, an avid fan of the Transformers animated series.

The Paraguayan teen recently got his five minutes of online fame after a photo of his ID card went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was digitally altered to attract attention, but Optimosprayn recently sat down with Paraguayan newspaper Cronica to confirm that he was indeed the Latino namesake of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

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Santos Churata has been a fan of the Transformers universe since early childhood. Now a licensed home builder in the Bolivian city of El Alto, the 34-year-old uses his passion for autobots and decepticons as inspiration for the design of eye-catching houses for the rich.

The city of El Alto, located at 4,070 meters above sea level, has become well-known for a unique architectural style called “chola architecture”. Sometimes described as psychedelic baroque, it incorporates symbols of native Andean culture, Chinese design elements and all the colors of the rainbow. For the new wealthy indigenous Bolivians, who have made millions in recent years, these modern-day palaces are a reflection of both their social status and their proud Aymara heritage. In 2015, there were over 170 unique chola houses in El Alto, enough for the city to set up a tourist route for the most impressive ones.

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Thirty-some years after making their debut as cartoon characters, vehicle-morphing Transformers have finally become a reality, thanks to the efforts of a Turkish company out of Ankara.

The R&D-focused company, called Letvision, recently wowed the internet with a presentation video for their prototype car-transforming robot, ANTIMON. The recently-released footage shows a red BMW M3 being unveiled and remotely driven toward the camera, where it proceeds to transform into a mighty Autobot-like robot. The whole process takes a bit longer than in Michael Bay’s CGI movies, but it’s still mesmerizing to watch.

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A father-and-son duo from Hunan, China, have come up with a fun and profitable business idea – creating giant Transformers robots replicas from used car parts and scrap metal.

Although they are farmers by profession, Yu Zhilin and his son Yu Lingyun switched to building the models in 2007, when they realised the potential in the Chinese market. And their hunch has proved right – they’ve managed cash in on the nation’s obsession with Transformers, the highest grossing film of all time in China. They now make one million yuan a year (nearly $170,000), selling their army of robots.

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Zhang Wei, a retired soldier from Qingdao city, China’s Shandong Province, is a huge fan of Transformers. The 38-year-old has been collecting Transformers models of varying sizes since 2002. And when he got married, his wife joined him with great enthusiasm. Today, the couple’s home is filled with a massive collection of 380 models worth a whopping US $32,000.

Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Red Spider, Metroplex and pretty much every other transformer feature in Zhang’s collection, neatly arranged on special shelves fitted on to his living room walls. His favorite pastime is to dismantle each model and assemble it again.

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One day, the workers at a scrapyard in China recently decided to get creative with all the metal junk lying around by building a giant Transformer statue. And when the life-size replica of the popular Autobot  started attracting the attention of visitors and passers-by, they decided to keep going. The team built over 40 Transformers in four months, which have now become tourist attractions in their own right.

The scrapyard where the Transformers are on display is located on a remote farmhouse on top of a hill, in Jinan City, Eastern China’s Shangdong Province. As you travel closer to the hill, the sight of these giant action figures in the middle of nowhere is arresting. And once you get there, it’s quite amusing to see the pigs at the farm live happily among the inanimate Transformers.

21-year-old Li Hung, a part-time worker at the yard, built the very first Transformer. The PR and marketing student said he wanted to make something ‘eye-catching’ using discarded parts. “I thought if people could see something spectacular made from junk, it would highlight what we do here and we could get more customers,” he said. Li was right. The robot became immensely popular, winning a lot of praise from locals.

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A man from Jinan, China’s Shandong Province, has spent six months building a Transformer-like robot that morphs into a functional car, at the push of a button. If you’re expecting a real-life Bumblebee, you’re going to be disappointed…

But finally, right!?! A real transformer and it’s not some guy in a suit either. Frankly, I was getting a bit tired of seeing people build all these awesome looking Transformer replicas that didn’t do anything but look pretty, and I was really hoping someone would one day take it to the next level. Enter unknown Chinese Transformers fan with a passion for DIY stuff. According to RocketNews24, the man has wanted to build his very own Transformer ever since watching the first film in Michael Mann’s trilogy, four years ago. He didn’t have any kind of mechanical or electronics knowledge but that didn’t stop him from finally accomplishing his dream. It took the Jinan-native six months and 70,000 yuan (US$11,000) to finally complete his life-size Transformer, but just look at it…

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It might look like the set of a new low-budget Transformers movie, but Mr. Iron Robot is actually a newly-inaugurated Transformers-themed park in Jiaxing City, China’s Zhejiang Province.

49-year-old artist Zhu Kefeng and his team have spent the last 10 years building giant metal robots from recycled iron and steel parts. He started out by making a realistic model of a car, then opened his own studio and began creating more intricate sculptures. He soon started doing commission work for people who liked his art, and for large orders he even set up a recycle bin where people could donate discarded metal parts. Zhu started working on Mr. Iron Robot theme park in 2010, with the money he had raised for selling his metal sculptures and his apartment in Shanghai. He and his team of collaborators worked hard and managed to turn an old abandoned factory into a modern attraction featuring over 600 Transformers-inspired sculptures.

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We’ve posted some pretty cool Transformers statues and costumes here, on Oddity Central, but the Brooklyn RobotWorks costumes created by artist/cosplayer Peter Kokis are unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

When we look around the house, in our kitchens and bathrooms, most of us see a lot junk we don’t use very often, but Peter Kokis sees the perfect materials to build his über-awesome exoskeletons and thus bring our favorite Autobots to life. Looking at his creations for the first time, your jaw suddenly hits the floor as you stare in awe, but as Peter anticipates, looking a little closer you’ll eventually say “hey, I have those at home”. It’s hard to believe, but he’s somehow able to turn a common dog bowl into the perfect cannon muzzle and pooper-scoopers into realistic shins.

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It was definitely not a piece of cake, but Cake Boss star, Buddy Valastro, managed to create an incredibly realistic cake shaped like the Chevrolet Camaro-shifting Autobot, Bumblebee.

With Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon scheduled for a July 1st release, the people at General Motors though this was a good pretext to gain some exposure for their gorgeous Chevrolet Camaro, so they asked Buddy Valastro to create a detailed cake shaped both as a yellow Camaro and as Transformers star, Bumblebee. Many asked if he could deliver something impressive enough, but when the rolled in at the 2011 New York Auto Show, no one had any more doubts.

The event was featured on TLC’s Cake Boss, in an episode that aired June 20, and viewers got to see one of the biggest, most incredible-cakes ever made. The Camaro-Bumblebee cake weighed 1,500 pounds, and was made of yellow sponge cake, Rice Crispy Treats, buttercream frosting, and yellow and black frosting for the Transformers figure. The unique cake had moving wings, lights and pyrotechnics.

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Many of you probably know him as “The Transformers Guy from American Idol”, but Drew Beaumier is actually a young inventor who managed to create a fully functional Transformers outfit.

25-year-old Beaumier, from California, has always been a huge Transformers fan, but although the idea of building a geeky Transformers costume hit him a few years back, it wasn’t until he saw the advertisement for a good condition Power Wheels car that he actually began working on it. Using only a box of tools, glue and spare parts from WallMart, Drew took apart the second hand toy car and attached the parts to a sports body suit. It took him eight weeks of working in his garage to finish the masterpiece, but it was well worth the time.

With wheels attached to both his hands and legs, the geeky inventor can crouch into a car and roll down the street, or stand up and pose as a real-life Transformer. Not bad for a guy who not so long ago was struggling for money and doing lousy bar jobs. Now Drew makes a lot more entertaining tourists in Hollywood and taking photos with other Transformers fans. His ingenious suit has also helped him win a big cash prize on Halloween, for the last three years, which actually helped pay it off.

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All geeks love Transformers, but Yang Junlin of Huizhou, China, took his passion for the franchise to a whole other level when he opened the “Legend of Iron” factory and began producing his own robots.

Remebre that uber-cool Megatron Tank we featured a few weeks back? That was one of Yang Junlin’s iron masterpieces, but I had no idea he had created hundreds of other incredible metal sculptures. In 2006, after retiring from the army, Yang went to a concert where various steel sculptures were placed on display. Some of them were simple human figures created from twisted metal wire, but they made such an impression on him, that he decided to try and make his own steel works.

A year later, Yang Junlin opened his own factory, Legend of Iron, and hired over 10 workers to help him realize his dream of building cool robot sculptures. They use all kinds of scrap metal, from old car parts to simple sheets of steel andcreate some of the most amazing looking Transformers replicas I’ve ever seen. Although he admits his work is quite time-consuming, Yang has built over 1,000 iron sculptures since he opened Legend of Iron, five years ago, and isn’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

Check out more photos of the geek eye-candy Legend of Iron creates, after the break:

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A Chinese Transformers fan who goes by the name of “Steel Legend” has designed and built an incredible real-life replica of Megatron in tank form.

Now this is something you definitely don’t see everyday. I’ve seen quite a number of Autobot replicas (most of them built in China) but this is the first impressive Decepticon model I’ve ever seen. Steel Legend and his friends really went all out on building this baby and the result is nothing short of mind blowing. According to the short description posted on Chinese portal Zcool, the Megatron Tank is 4.5 meters long, 3.2 meters wide, 2.5 meters high and weighs a staggering 5 tonnes.

No clues on what Steel Legend plans to do with this spectacular Transformers model, but if he decides to sell it, I’m sure there are many fans out there who would pay top dollar to get their hands on it.

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An 11-meters-high, 21-ton heavy statue of Autobots leader Optimus Prime has recently been unveiled in one of the squares of Shenyang City, China. According to Chinese sources, this is the biggest Transformers replica ever created, beating the previous record (also set by China) by only one meter. Just like all the other Optimus Prime statues I’ve featured on Oddity Central in the past, this latest one was assembled from various old car parts, taken from 20 automobiles.

The world’s tallest Optimus Prime model was completed yesterday and can now be admired outside the “Guangzhou Street” metro station, in Shenyang. I didn’t know Asia was so big on the Transformers franchise, seeing it has its own giant robot creations, like Gundam or Tetsujin, but the most impressive Transformers statues so far were created in mainland China and Taiwan.

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After they took the Internet by storm, last year, with their stunning replica of Optimus Prime, the guys at RoboSteel have done it again. This time, it’s Bumblebee.

RoboSteel came up with the idea for a steel replica of Transformers hero Bumblebee, at the MPH Top Gear Show, back in 2009, where their 2.5 meters-tall Optimus Prime made an appearance. Looking at a gorgeous yellow Camaro, the boys just thought it would be a great challenge, and that good ol’ Optimus deserved to be reunited with his long-time partner.

The 2.2 meter-tall replica of Bumblebee was created from pieces of recycled steel, and weighs a whopping 400 kilograms. While it may not be as awesome as the life-size Bumblebee showcased at the 2010 Cybertron Annual Meeting, in Shanghai, this is one of the coolest Transformers replicas I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few.

As for what Robosteel is planning for the future – they’re giving the Decepticons a chance for a change, with a replica of Megatron.

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