THE GHOST OF PICS: MECHS PAST
And with THAT tortured pun, December's Patreon-backed @tfwiki picture batch is all stuff we've kinda needed forever, all stuff from the prior century, and all stuff from outside the US market!
We start with Takara's original DEATHSAURUS, Decepticon leader in 1989's Victory, who just had his Legacy Haslab toy start showing up on doorsteps. And of course, new separate pics for his Breast Animal partners EAGLEBREAST and TIGERBREAST (yes, get them giggles out, go ahead).
Let's jump back a year to 1988's Super-God Masterforce, and the Godmaster RANGER. This mold is the only one of the three Powermaster Autobot cars to get recolored for its Takara release. Sadly, the MIB copy I bought back in 1996 was missing its gun, thus my general reluctance to add a pic to the wiki. But lord, that tiny, crunchy book scan we were using suuuucked. Made Ranger look white when he's a very light stony blue. Still using the scan though, just now in an inset panel to show off the gun I don't have.
And now we bounce ahead to 1990's Zone, and the Micro Transformer base SKY HYPER, piloted by Deadwheeler. I took these pics forever ago at some BotCon, and have long lost the notes as to who owned this piece a few hard drives back. This sample was also missing the three ramps, thus both the length of time it took for me to get comfy going ahead and adding these to the wiki, and the new book-scan inset to show the missing ramps.
Let's shift over to the European market, with 1992's THUNDER CLASH, the leader of the Autobot Turbmasters. His gravity-feed missile launcher was, like all the Turbomaster and Predator launchers, very much not US choke-gate compliant.
Fun fact: Thunder actually did get a Japanese release! He and Skyquake were straight imported to Japanese stores in Hasbro packaging, with just some necessary legal info changed to Japanese on the boxes. This was the Operation: Combination year, where Takara released the small Turbomasters and Predators in 2-packs.
And now we're going much further back, and much further south. No, that's not Brawn, that's OUTBACK, the 1987 Mexican version by IGA. Apparently, IGA was unwilling or unable to pay for the new '86 Mini Vehicle molds, thus they made their own versions by simply recoloring the '84 originals and slapping them on new cards for the '86 characters. Sometimes with alternate decos to boot!
Sadly, I don't own this toy, and like Sky Hyper, this was a BotCon pic taken with original owner info lost to time. (I always try and credit the toy owner when they let me take pics.)
Now here's the ones I'm super-happy about. These are two of the three Eletrix, ESPORTE and PORSCHE, exclusive to Estrela's 1985 Brazilian Transformers line! These toys transform and walk/roll forward via remote control, attached by a wire over 4 feet long. I'm keeping an eye out for the third one, Jipe.
None of the '85 Brazilian toys have any faction markings, but the Autobot-style packaging leads one to assume "all good guys". As do the bios of many of the toys in the line... but the Eletrix lack bios, sadly. Which is weird, as Estrela made up new bios for some toys in the line, and just straight-translated others from their Hasbro bios.
These molds were released in the US, but as the "Pow-R-Bots" in Village Toys' TF-wannabe line Convert-A-Bots. Like Estrela, Village licensed them from Japan's Yonezawa Toys, where they were the Remote Change Robo Series. All of these releases use the same plastic colors, but give them new stickers for branding and language.
I bought these two MISB (cellophane still there!) earlier this year, but was a little gunshy about opening them, worried the electronics might have somehow rotted. Schrodinger's Electronics. But no, since they didn't come with batteries, no corrosion, and they work as well as a 1984-mold cheap electric gear-powered toy can (that is to say, loudly).
And of course, since I got the boxes, I took the opportunity to take 600dpi scans of the box art unique to Estrela's packaging!
Man, I love going through these older, not-US corners of TFdom, and hope you learned something new about the vast TF universe. And if you'd like to help make that just a little bit easier and get more pics out a month, consider joining my Patreon! "gregstfwikipics" there, every little bit helps, plus at higher pledge levels you can pick a theme for the month!
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Chloe is back on AO3 so a reminder to Transformers Victory, Super God Masterforce, and Beast Wars/Beast Wars II/Beast Wars Neo writers to set your fics to approve comments yourself and maybe set them up so only registered users can comment/see them and be sure to block NonToxicPerson so Chloe can't harass and suicide bait you
EDIT: She is on tumblr on the urls idkwhyimnicetotrolls and die-fighter-spirits Be sure to report and block!
EDIT 2: She made another account report and block idkwhyimnice
EDIT 3: She's made another account fuckyoucreativefandomminds
EDIT 4: New account is TransformersRPer
EDIT 5: idkwhyimnice and die-fighter-spirits have been deleted
EDIT 6: fuckyoucreativefandomminds has been terminated and she has a new blog at killyourselvestransformerswhores
EDIT 7: Killyourselvestransformerswhores has been taken down
EDIT 8: New blog is TransformersFangirl1986 where she is stealing fics and art and her old account anti-iotaxguyhawk is still up as well
EDIT 9: She is now at Transformersfangirl2
EDIT 10: Transformers-Fucker
EDIT 11: she's also on Cars2Lover2011 and Cars2Lover
EDIT 12: She's on Transformers-Fucker3 now and is continuing to steal fics and art
EDIT 13: Transformers-Fucker-4-Life
EDIT 14: 80sCartoonLover2
EDIT 15: She has a new AO3 Anti-Lias-Adam-everyone
EDIT 16: Crystal1995 on AO3 and II-5222 on Discord
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