Thursday, January 07, 2010

This site is outrageous!

Remember last year when I talked about how cool that Jem site with all the Jem-specific Hasbro catalog scans was? And how fantastic it would be if someone would do the same for Transformers-scan the pages of the Hasbro Toy Fair catalogs relating to them on a Transformer specific site? Well some other Jem site owner did it! It's called BOTRIOT and it contains G1 era scans of Hasbro Toy Fair and pre-Toyfair catalogs from '86 through 1990. Go check it out if you're into prototypes, line art or just generally pictures of old toy robots.

4 comments:

Colin said...

Holy! That site is insane. So much for original ideas on my part but wow! I love the prototype pics of the Predacons.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

You give up too easily. Remember when we were discussing how a project like this would be best approached? There were so many different ways to tackle it and as it's presented here is the most basic of them. The source material is strong enough that presented without any context it's interesting but there's still much more than can be done with a collection of pages like this. And your collection is expansive beyond G1.

I understand the initial feelings of disappointment that the idea has already been executed in one way, but there's plenty of room out there for different takes. I'm glad the fandom isn't stuck with just one Transformer website or blog or podcast if you know what I mean.

Rob said...

I just checked out Botriot. What are those catalogs from? I only had the fold-out checklists that came with the bigger Transformers.

Also, what is the similar Jem web site? Can you post the link in the ocmments?

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Those are the dealer catalogs Hasbro gave out to toy store owners and company sales representatives that attended Toy Fair in Manhattan every year to figure out what toys they wanted to order. They were never meant for the general public but lately eBay's had tons of them so they're relatively easy to come by lately. This has historically not been the case.

I've found two really good Jem sites with catalog scans so far. The first is Pranceatron.com and the other is Botriot's sister site, TotallyJem.com. There's also a really good Care Bear catalog site at PoseableParadise.com.

 

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