I was planning on going to a comic shop this weekend to buy that plasticpiece Voltron I've been thinking about getting since it came out. Then I came across a piece of Voltron art being exhibited at a gallery in Columbus, Ohio next month and it made me think twice. At first when you look at Scott Campbell's "Super Hungry" you may see a simple cute rendition of green lion munching down, but I believe there is deeper meaning here. I think the artist is communicating a message of how toy robots are like pets in that they are a tremendous responsibility. You have to care for and maintain them and they become a burden on your life, but unlike living animals who do you the favor and die, you're stuck with your Voltron forever.
[I know I've got a couple readers and friends in the Columbus, Ohio area-Dave and Todd (and I think Will)-so you guys may want to check out the 80s cartoon themed exhibit at the Rivet Designer Toy & Art gallery starting September 5th.]
Ever since we moved to Miami I've been living the life of a rock star, except without the music, fame, money or the groupies. I guess all I really have in common with rock stars is I'm staying in Florida hotels and I'm playing video games all day and when I wake up I don't know where I am. Actually that sounds less like a rock star and more like a lost Japanese tourist.
THE SHOGUN WARRIORS FAMILY TREE DON'T BRANCH MUCH IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
Bumblebee's uncle
I am in good company because "lost Japanese tourists" describes the three toy robots lines whose pages I'm updating over at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. I'm talking about Mego's Micronauts, Mattel's Shogun Warriors and Hasbro's Transformers from 1984. It's been a challenging update because Transformers 1984 is the only one of these three old toy robot families that I know anything about. Shogun Warriors and Micronauts are still largely outside of my area of expertise, which makes sorting and arranging their ads like constructing a detailed family tree for lost Japanese tourists I've never met. For Shogun Warriors this was pretty easy because there weren't that many different figure assortments but holy hell Micronauts had me hating my hobby, my life and everybody who has ever worked at Mego.
THIS PAST IS YOUR PAST THIS PAST IS MY PAST
I was wondering why I was going through all this trouble for the Micronauts because like I say, I don't even know those people. Sorting Transformers is several orders of magnitude more complicated than Micronauts but I deal with them just fine because that was an obsession born of childhood. I thought this newspaper ad project was motivated by nostalgia but that can't explain my current devotion to chronicling toys I only had a tangential interest in 30 years ago. This had me questioning the nature of nostalgia and wondering if I'm as stuck in the past as I initially thought I was. What can explain now my fascination with ads for 30 year old Micronauts I never owned or cared much for as a kid? Is a 10 year old boy of today who likes 80s Transformers a nostalgic? You can't exactly go up to a kid like that and rant about how he needs to grow up and stop living in the past (although it would be kind of funny). I have always wanted to be in a situation where I could tell a little kid, "You need to let go of the 80s, Charlie Brown". I think now I understand young people who like 80s Transformers even though they weren't even born yet, or anybody my age who likes Led Zeppelin. This new insight makes it okay for me to like Micronauts and not be saddled with the "nostalgic" label. It also makes Baron Karza the Robert Plant of toy robots rock and roll.
What started all this roboplastic introspection was how I've totally overhauled the Shogun Warriors and Micronauts sections over at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. Previously they were just chronologically listed dumps of ads with no real arrangement, but I figured they were getting too big so I gave them table formatting so the information would be more understandable. Now they're broken up into assortments by size or type so that figures and vehicles are separate from playsets and licensed merchandise. Plus I have attempted to write a few paragraphs long introductions for each of these series as I have done for the various Transformers sections of the VSTP. Except you might notice that the paragraphs I've got for the Micronauts section are actually Lorem Ipsum text (I learned this from Nala). This is because I'm waiting for my next trip to the library to get more Micronauts ads. As it stands now I can't really do a good overview of the line's history in newspaper ads because most of what I've got is from '77. I also wanted a break because sorting through all the Micronauts made my brain melt as I tried to figure out whether some toys in that line were action figures or vehicles (or both) and where to put them. Classifying robots that had "tron" in their name like Biotron and Microtron and other toys based on them but not having "tron" names was also a nightmare. Determining what exactly a "tron" was and which characters qualified as "trons" was equally confusing but hey it's not like I'm working at the Micronaut social security administration figuring out benefits for retiring trons so it's no big deal if I get it wrong.
"IT'S HARD FOR ME TO BELIEVE THAT HASBRO CAN SHIP MORE THAN WE CAN SHIP"
K-Mart 12/12/84
That's a quote from Raymond E. McDonald, Tonka's director of marketing in 19841. He was talking about how he felt GoBots would outpace Transformers in sales in '84 because Tonka's supplier Bandai was a larger company than Takara who was producing Transformers for Hasbro. Although Transformers ended up edging out the GoBots in sales I think Mr. McDonald was right about the supply issues. It became very evident to me as I was uploading a dozen new* ads to the Transformers 1984 section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. I've become aware of patterns in how retailers advertised action figure lines in newspapers during the holiday shopping seasons of the early eighties. Usually what would happen is stores would start their toy advertising during the latter half of October and most toylines' ad volume would peak right after Thanksgiving and stay very strong through the first two weeks of December. But Transformers peaks after Thanksgiving and then virtually disappears while GoBots maintain their ad frequency through Christmas. This is because stores would completely sell out of Transformers and Hasbro had already set allocations on wholesale orders for the '84 assortments so retailers knew they couldn't get anymore. All but a handful of retailers stopped advertising Transformers figures in December but ads for licensed Transformer tie-in merchandise continued strong through the Christmas season. This is why the majority of the dozen new Transformer '84 ads I've found are not for Transformer figures but Transfomrer Halloween costumes, coloring books, radios and velcro ball darts. I'm glad I've gotten these Florida ads up anyways because we're approaching the 25th anniversary of the first Transformers ads I've found. Just like I had KRON-DAY to celebrate my earliest Diakron ad, I guess it's time to get ready for TRAN-DAY!?!
WE WILL ROCK YOU (AND THEN GO TO YOUR LIBRARY)
That about does it for this VSTP Update. To see the new ads just go to the Micronauts, Shogun Warriors and Transformers 1984 sections and do a CTRL+F search for "Miami" and "Tampa" and you'll find them. There should be about two dozen new Shoguns, and a dozen each of Micronauts and Transformers for anyone keeping count. My next few library visits will concentrate on '78 and '79 unless I get all excited about Tran-Day and want to do something special for that. We'll see how it goes. The one thing I've learned is that lost Japanese tourist rock stars don't have a plan, they just rock on wherever they are. I wonder if anybody ever started a band so they could have an excuse to visit libraries in different cities, secretly working on amassing a toy robots newspaper ad collection. IF YOU MEET THAT GUY ASK HIM WHAT A TRON IS.
1Sari Horwitz (1984, September 2). TOYS WITH DOUBLE THE FUN. The Washington Post (DC).
In 2004 I was lucky enough to stumble upon the site of an animation pro named John Cawley. He was selling copies of his 80s animation fanzine "Get Animated!". I was drawn to it because issue #3 had an article on one of the greatest toy robots cartoons of all time-Mighty Orbots. I was blown away by that issue of "Get Animated!" so I bought a couple more issues and each was just as incredible.
John has been in the animation business for decades and "Get Animated!" is special because he produced it during the 80s. Reading it is like going back in time and re-experiencing happenings in the animation industry
but from an insider's perspective. I don't have my issue #3 with me but I remember the Orbots article was credited to Fred Patten and Darrell McNeil who are respected historians of animation. It included excerpts from an interview with Orbots writer Buzz Dixon done in 1985 during a meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization. Other issues of GA were full of awesome stuff like that-holy hell even Osamu Tezuka is listed as a contributor! I am amazed that John still hasn't sold out of these after 25 years.
I just found out John has a CD of the collected "Get Animated!" for sale. I cannot recommend this highly enough if you're into 80s animation like He-Man and/or The Mighty Orbots. Actually if you're a fan of animation in general I'd say go through John's site and buy everything.
Optimus Lime broke down again so I've been using the bus and metrorail train to get back and forth from the library. Saturday night I got off the train and found I had to decide between waiting an hour for the 15 minute bus ride home or I could just walk an hour and 15 minutes myself. Either way would take an hour and fifteen minutes. Just waiting an hour doing nothing seemed like an enormous waste of time but walking three miles in the steamy hell wasn't exactly my idea of fun, either. I decided to walk. The situation paralleled how I would like to go to an upcoming anime convention starting August 28 called Mizucon but they haven't put up their panel schedule yet. I can either keep that weekend open in the hope they have roboplastic related stuff, or I can plan now to do something else with that weekend like take the family to the aquarium. I've always said being 35 with the hobby of a ten year old is harder than it looks.
ROCK ME LIKE A FURRICANE
I don't know why but panels always end up the last thing conventions reveal about their programming, and usually only a week or two before the show. Boy was I shocked when I found there's another nearby convention called Chibi-Pa starting September 4 and they already have their panel schedule up! I can see right now they'll have a Gundam model building class run by a guy called Skippy. Not only that, but they'll have a furry-themed subset of panels in a special room called the FURRICANE SHELTER. I'm honestly interested in some of these panels like "History of Furry" and "Saturday Morning FurToons" (and to a lesser extent "How to Make a Fur Suit"). Plus they'll also be showing the classic movies "Animalympics" and "Rock-A-Doodle". Any Transformer fans goofing on these guys need to shut the hell up because in 10 years it'll be Beast Wars being shown at Furricane 2020.
WINNING A CROISSANWICH AND OTHER UNUSED VERSES OF ALANIS MORISSETTE'S IRONIC SONG
Remember how I made the decision to walk home from the train station? Well 20 minutes into my walk the bus I needed to be on passed me by. It wasn't the bus I would have waited for, it was a late one I thought left already. Boy was I pissed off as I walked for the next hour. If I commit to going to the aquarium August 28 before the panel schedule shows up and Mizucon ends up being awesome I'm going to be equally pissed. Right now that panel schedule is like a renegade bus going by when I'm already walking home. Also when I was walking home I found one of those Burger King cups with an unused scratch off Transformer game piece lying on the side of the road and I scratched the correct side and I won. I don't know how that fits within the Mizucon analogy but I thought it was pretty cool. Except the Burger King game is over.
A library is my casino and when I sit at the microfilm machines looking at old newspapers I'm a high stakes gambler at the slot machines, popping in reels and hoping I strike the jackpot. While "real" gamblers are blowing their hard earned money, what I'm gambling away is my precious precious time. Every reel I pick up is not guaranteed to contain tons of exciting toy robots ads, just like not every lottery ticket is a winner. And if the hours start ticking away and I'm not finding anything then it's just like sitting at a stingy slot machine. But I was feeling lucky as I sat down this weekend with some reels from the year I consider the dawn of the Modern Roboplastic Age-1977!
THAT'S NO MOON! (AND THAT'S NOT DARTH VADER, EITHER)
Do you remember back in 1977 when the question on every young boy's mind was 'How do I join Star Team?' No? That's probably because it was really WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THE STAR WARS TOYS? Toy company Ideal must have been looking to capitalize on Kenner's post '77 Christmas season launch of Star Wars when they released Star Team, a line of figures using their Zeroids robots. Zeroids are officially recognized by the Kingdom of Macrocrania as the first roboplastic toyline ever!Now Star Team may not have been anywhere near as good as Star Wars but people were desperate. This Jordan Marsh ad from 13 December of '77 fantastically illustrates not only that desperation, but also how awesome the 70s used to be for toy robots newspaper ads. It's a gigantic ad taking up half a page and it's devoted almost entirely to Star Team. Why did an obscure toyline like Star Team get half a page? I think retailers were eager to cash in on the sci-fi craze unleashed by the debut of Star Wars that year, but there were no Star Wars figures on the shelves in time for Christmas. Star Team was as good a stand in as any so it got some undeserved showcasing as retailers tried to fill the void. This ad more than any other I've seen emphasizes the overt Star Warsiness of Star Team and even goes so far as to include a Star Wars board game alongside the Star Team figures, as if they were all products of the same brand. Would anyone remember that C-3P0 didn't have a green alien head or that R2-D2 wasn't an upside down garbage can on wheels? Hopefully, but if you were a kid in '77 and you liked Star Wars, the terrible reality was Star Team was as close as you were gonna get.
DID I HIT THE JACKPOT HERE? Well not directly. The only reason this Star Team ad is cool is because of how it's presented. However, while writing this I checked up on Moonstone, the company doing the comic book relaunch of Zeroids and I found out they're also doing the awesomest book I've ever heard of-M.I.L.F. Magnet! I scored some great booty there!
While Ideal was infamous for putting Star Wars-ish toys on the market in '77, it was rival toy company Mego who was infamous for passing on the Star Wars license when it was offered to them! I need to track down the source where I read the reason they did so was because they couldn't handle both Star Wars and their own sci-fi action figure line the Micronauts. Micronauts was a joint venture between Japanese toy maker Takara and Mego, much like how Transformers was a Takara/Hasbro team up seven years later. But imagine if the Mego/Takara team worked together on Star Wars! Could Mego have gotten Star Wars figures to the shelves by Christmas season 1977? Imagine how much money they would have made. Would it have saved the company? Imagine if a joint Mego/Takara juggernaut stayed solvent through Star Wars, making figures from Empire Strikes Back then Return of the Jedi, all the while keeping Micronauts alive. When it came time for Takara to export their transforming robots from Diaclone and Microman would they have taken them to Mego for the US? If the Transformers were a Mego property would they have been an extension of Micronauts? What would they have been called? Microtrons? Megotrons? Autonauts? Sweathogs? We'll never know.
Playworld 12/01/77
But I do know Mego's Micronauts were really popular with retailers as evidenced by all the ads I've accumulated in the Micronauts section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. The bulk of the 42 Micronauts ads I've found though are from 1978 and '79-only four of them are from 1977. This is mostly my fault since I never spend much time in 1977, but I got a little lucky in Miami and found some new* Micronaut ads from '77 with line art I've never seen before. Take for example this Baron Karza ad from Lionel Playworld. What I find extremely intriguing is how I can come across so many different examples of line art for the same Micronauts figures and vehicles. I remember writing once about the Battle Cruiser having multiple different line arts. Now I'm finding evidence of that being the case with Karza. Yet some figures like Time Traveler, Biotron and Acroyear had the same line art used by multiple different retail chains. It's confusing to me because other toy lines from around the same time like Shogun Warriors and Star Wars had consistently uniform line art shared by all retailers instead of different illustrations for the same figure coming from individual stores. Maybe what I'm noticing is the evolution of action figure marketing in newspapers as line art goes from retailer generated to made by the toy manufacturers. Or maybe I need to get outside some more! Holy hell!
Back during Vintage Space Toast Tour El Paso I got extremely excited over a K-Mart ad from late November '77 featuring line art of the Space Glider, Galactic Warrior, Galactic Cruiser, Acroyear, Hydra and Biotron. Well since then I've found that K-Marts nationwide ran variants of that ad during the same time period. Sometimes I'll find either that exact same arrangement of Micronaut line art or they'll mix it up a little depending on the city. Well here in Miami not only did K-Mart run that one but they also ran this fantastic collection of Micronaut line art featuring the Crater Cruncher, Photon Sled, Ultronic Scooter, Warp Racer and Time Traveler. What sucks is that most of the ad is darkened out and I can't read any text. I am going to try to find a better copy of this particular K-Mart circular for the Space Toaster Palace or see if I can channel Photoshop Jesus to tweak the hell out of it and get some product descriptions.
MICRO TYPE!
KMart 12/21/77
Rounding out the Nauty bits is this ad from late December '77 also from K-Mart. What makes it unique is its use of Hydro Copter line art I've never seen before and I think it's the only time I've found the Strata Station in a Micronauts ad. Unfortunately it suffers from really tiny type. Usually if you can't read an ad in these highlights posts I do it's because I only use low res previews and the much better, super legible versions go up at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace, but this ad had type so tiny it caused eyestrain even when viewed at its original newspaper size. Maybe this was a promotional gimmick and K-Mart wanted me to use a magnifying glass to read a Micronauts ad. I'd rather not have to enter the microverse just to see what's on sale, though.
DID I HIT THE JACKPOT HERE? Well these early Micronaut ads are cool but I could name a couple other Micronaut vehicles that I'd really like to see ads for from the tail end of the line. Like the Zeroids I came across something I thought was cool while doing some background checking-the Micronaut Emperor! If that guy doesn't look like a Mego Darth Vader then the secret rebel base isn't on Dantooine.
YOU'LL ALWAYS LOSE THE PASSENGER SEAT TO THE SHOTGUN WARRIORS
JM Fields 11/24/77
JC Penny 12/01/77
It looks like a Shogun Warriors dance party, but that first ad above left from J.M. Fields is actually showing off the articulation of the Shogun Warriors action figures. It's exciting to me how this is just black and white line art but you can still tell these are first release versions by how the figures are bent at the knees and have stickered details-Poseidon has the black "V" below the belt and Dragun has those bands above his arms, etc., etc. The JC Penny ad above right is notable not just because they goofed up the name but because JC Penny in the 70s used to do their own line art different from any other retailer. By now if you're familiar with the Shogun Warriors section of the VSTP you'll have noticed there was some pretty standard line art used no matter what retailer was advertising their selection of large Shoguns, but I guarantee you will never see the illustrations JC Penny used here in any other store's ad. That's probably a good thing if you hate drawings of robots that look like they're wearing bell bottoms. Ah, the seventies.
JM Fields 12/11/77
Zayre 11/27/77
J.M. Fields again comes through in a big way with this 11 December 1977 ad featuring Shogun Warriors model kits. I don't usually find ads for Shogun Warrior merchandise that is not the figures so this was really exciting. Finding anything that isn't the 2 foot jumbos in an ad from 1977 has been uncommon in my experience. I think between this ad and the earlier one for Shogun Warriors dance party, J.M. Fields may be the only retailer I've ever seen advertising non-jumbo Shogun Warrior merchandise in 1977. And speaking of the 2 foot jumbos, this next ad from Zayre is my all time favorite Shogun Warrior ad ever. Again we have evidence of first release versions-Mazinga has the full compliment of 14 rockets with triangle vanes and Raydeen has the red diamond stickers on his thighs. Actually I'm not sure if the red diamond stickers are exclusive to the first release only but there's an example of a second release Raydeen at Collection DX and it doesn't have them. It wouldn't surprise me if after 32 years the stickers on any Shogun Warrior just fell off and the glue disintegrated so it looked like they were never there. There are more definitive ways to tell if a Shogun is first release like the pointedness of the corners and the softness of the heads but it's hard to make out subtle details like that from a grainy black and white microfilm image. Still, it's a beautiful ad from the early days of the line and when the full size version goes up at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace you'll see why it's my favorite.
DID I HIT THE JACKPOT HERE? Yes, most definitely! The jumbo Shogun ad stuck out in my mind as the best thing I found from 1977, followed closely by...
The impact Star Wars made on pop culture is extremely evident in the newspapers of 1977. It was everywhere. It is only fitting that I wrap up here with something Star Wars action figure related, especially after I wrote about the effects its existence had on other lines like Star Team and Micronauts. But I knew there were no Star Wars action figures in 1977 so the last thing I expected to find was this ad that ran in papers on 11 December! It's a newspaper ad for the famous empty box of Star Wars promises that was all Kenner was able to deliver to stores in time for the holiday season of 1977.
DID I HIT THE JACKPOT HERE? You know, at first I thought I did. I was blown away by this ad, especially since in every writeup of the early bird kit the exact date of release for these first figures is never given. People always write things like "they were shipped in the spring" or some vague generalization like that. But here I had proof that the early bird packages made it out by February 15th of '78! It was the best documented evidence of the "birthday" of Star Wars action figures in history! I thought I found something really special that nobody had seen before. But how likely was it that I had really unearthed something not previously known to the collective intelligence of the billions of Star Wars fans on Earth? Not likely at all. It turns out that if you're into Star Wars this ad is old news. But since I never knew about it I figure it must be the Star Wars nerd monolith one must find in order to advance to the next level of Star Warsiness. I may not have made any new Star Warsian discovery, but after accomplishing the feat of finding this on my own I am pretty sure I AM NOW A MEMBER OF THE STAR TEAM! Also possibly, a MILF magnet.
Transformers newspaper ads that have line drawings instead of photographs of the toys are my favorite kind, and line art of the earliest released Transformers is my favoritest kind. Among my favoritest favoritest kind are line arts of the deluxe Autobot cars from 1984.
JC Penny 11/18/84
Not all stores used the same Autobot art in their ads-different stores tended to use different figure art. So I've had to journey to different libraries across the US to try to find ads so I could "catch 'em all" and get a complete set of line art for every deluxe Autobot car from 1984. So far I'm just missing ads with the line art for Hound, Sunstreaker and Skids. I've found some Autobots got featured more often than others-Trailbreaker comes to mind as one line art that Toys R Us and other retailers loved using commonly. I got lucky during Vintage Space Toast Tour Alaska when I found one JC Penny ad that had a couple of Autobots I'd never seen in line art before like Bluestreak and Ratchet. Unfortunately the ad was rather small and crammed so not much detail of the individual robots could be made out, but I thought nothing of it at the time. I should have looked closer!
WHAT'S BLACK AND BLUE AND READ ALL OVER?
Clark Drug 11/21/85
During Vintage Space Toast Tour Pasadena I came across an ad that really tripped me out. It was from Clark Drug and it ran November 21 1985. It featured Bluestreak but the shading looked all wrong. It looked like Bluestreak but the hood was darker than the rest of the car. Now we've all seen the 1984 catalog that came with boxed Transformers and shows the infamous 'blue' Bluestreak. That toy has dark sides and a light hood, but this line art Bluestreak was the chromatic reverse-a dark hooded Datsun with light sides. Was this some sort of loony line art mixup-a printing error of sorts? Or was the toy this line art was based off the often overlooked and lesser known black hooded Diaclone Fairlady Z? How would that even be possible? Why were his arms drawn all stupid? Where did this drawing come from? WHOSE LINE ART IS THIS ANYWAYS?
GHOSTS OF THE MACHINES
Seemingly miscolored or strangely rendered line art is not uncommon. It's just the nature of the newsprint process coupled with the added image modification necessary to preserve the images on microfilm in black and white. Some weird looking renderings are just par for the course, like when I came across a Toys R Us ad seemingly featuring a 'white' Ironhide. Of course since this ad was in the main body of the newspaper where there is no color it is much easier to just go with stark black and white lines, just like how every other line art rendition is done. Even the line arts that originated from color newsprint don't necessarily prove the existence of strangely colored Transformers. Once I found an ad from a store in Alaska featuring a Sideswipe with what appeared to be a dark hood. Without the original color newsprint in front of me it is impossible to tell what that Sideswipe actually looked like or what colors it was, but I'm sure it wasn't meant to portray an actual black hooded white Sideswipe.
EVERY DESERT DOG HAS HIS DAY
What haunted me about the Bluestreak was that there was precedent for that color variation but I'd never seen official Hasbro Transformer materials, promotional or otherwise, that used the black hooded Fairlady-Z. (Except of course for how he was portrayed in the cartoon.) I also noticed something else about the line art for all the different figures-no matter how they were colored the toys were always in the same poses! It never changed from store to store and chain to chain-everybody was using the same line arts all over the country. I don't know how line art was made but this all points to the existence of some central source for these images. There had to be some master diagram or picture reference from which these newspaper ad drawings were made. Once I found that I would know for sure if it was indeed a black hooded Bluestreak depicted in that ad. But what were the chances that a total nobody like me with no connections to anyone in the toy industry would ever come across official, behind-the-scenes Hasbro documents from over 25 years ago like the basis of the advertisement line art drawings? WELL ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD THANKS TO EBAY.
Man if you thought pages 64 and 65 of the 1984 Hasbro toy catalog were cool, imagine my surprise when I turned the page and there were all the answers I'd been searching for all laid out in a two page spread. Every Autobot car from the initial assortment in '84 were all there in the same poses I'd seen countless times before in newsprint ads. And there amongst them was the black hooded Bluestreak in that same awkward pose with his arms all stupid. I am hesitant to state that this is the only instance of the black hooded Fairlady in Hasbro literature because a) I'm sure there's one guy somewhere who would point out that it got used all the time in catalogs from New Caledonia and b) I am dumb about Transformers as evidenced by this whole episode.
THE MORE THE ADS TRANSFORMED THE MORE THEY STAYED THE SAME
Although I still don't know anything about how the 1984 Transformer line art was made, I'm pretty sure all those drawings came from these pictures. I think what happened was Hasbro generated the black and white line art and product descriptions and sent copies to all the toy shops and retail stores that sold Transformers back in the day. Then the individual stores would pick and choose which figure illustrations and text they wanted to use in their ads. Some stores might only use one robot drawing with a large description while other stores would use multiple robot drawings and no description but everybody was picking from the same set of drawings and descriptions originated from Hasbro. This two page spread from the '84 toy catalog was the genesis of all those deluxe Autobot ads. Actually I think all of the Transformers pictured in the '84 catalog are the basis for their line art counterparts. Mysteries solved! Or are there now more questions?
I think what we're mostly seeing here are toys from Takara's Diaclone line dressed up as Transformers. That's why black hooded Bluestreak is included. But there are still other little idiosyncrasies about these Autobots that are harder for me to explain. Like why does Sunstreaker have red shoulder missiles and why does Ratchet have a chubby little cross? The Japanese Diaclone versions of those two figures don't match up exactly and neither do the later US releases, either. I try not to think too much about this stuff because a total nobody like me with no connections to anyone in the toy industry would ever come across official, behind-the-scenes Hasbro documents from over 25 years ago that could explain it all. But you never know.
I LEAVE YOU NOW WITH TRANSCRIBED POETRY FROM THE BOTTOM OF PAGE 66
NEW 5750 The Transformers Autobot Cars Cool, sleek cars that transform into robots! They're powerful, fast, and smart. Pull out the wheels, open the trunk, swing out the doors and they become mighty warriors! Each Autobot comes with attachable weapons, bio card, Tech Specs chart and decoder. Assortment includes two of Mirage Autobot, and one each of the 10 other cars.
8 1/2 x 2 3/8 x 7 1/4" PACK: 12 WT: 8.6 lbs. CU. FT. : .75
Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.
What can explain now my fascination with ads for 30 year old Micronauts I never owned or cared much for as a kid? Is a 10 year old boy of today who likes 80s Transformers a nostalgic? You can't exactly go up to a kid like that and rant about how he needs to grow up and stop living in the past (although it would be kind of funny). I have always wanted to be in a situation where I could tell a little kid, "You need to let go of the 80s, Charlie Brown". I think now I understand young people who like 80s Transformers even though they weren't even born yet, or anybody my age who likes Led Zeppelin. This new insight makes it okay for me to like Micronauts and not be saddled with the "nostalgic" label. It also makes Baron Karza the Robert Plant of toy robots rock and roll.
