Pre-Transformers

Picture that, a world of Macross like Transformers, driven by humans, running around fighting hoards of Insecticons and weird monsters, most of which would probably be made up things like tree monsters, or rock men that were never produced as toys. I had a fan fiction bits and pieces that ran with the Diaclone series, like like Starblazers, but anyway. Would anyone be as into TF's as they are now? For me, I probably would not. Megatron and Optimus are classic characters, since there would probably not be a Megatron character, and if there was an optimus he'd be like that Hi-Q and THAT would be rather lame. Minibots and Microman's would not be included, and…

I rearranged my collection shelf pretty good. Have the variants of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe standing in sequence. Its a shame, I had a repro sideswipe gun made in yellow and the damn handle broke. Was a lot nicer with the Yellow Sideswipe then plain white. Also had black gun and missile made, but the missile does not sit in the launcher properly. Black gun looks good with the G2. Check it out.

Always wanted to know/compare all the different versions of known Shockwaves there are out there. There are a couple I saw once...just once and can never seem to find again. We all know the top 3 or 4. TF Shockwave in purple Pre TF Astro Magnum in gray Shackwave from Radioshack in gray and the 4 star Shockwave. Then there are other fakers out there... with pink clear plastic and gray body mainly white body with blue and red parts Multi slide sound channel electronics (instead of the switch there is a speed control on the back, only saw one once). Searching out pictures. If you find any post a link or them here.

I love starting off the new year, making the list of all the things I wanted to do, and coming up with each and every little thing, especially productive, yet procrastinations like this. At any rate, Betras. The Deluxe Insecticon series, which featured 6 robot insects, against all sorts of monsters and creatures. Lobsters, Spiders and crabs, just to name a few evil (non transforming I believe) creatures. I said SIX, because yes there were 6 featured in the B+W comics. Obviously the 4 we know as Decepticons, and 2 more, a beetle that is very close to Barrage (the green one). AND a girl robot that turned into a Lady bug. The Girl bot suffered the same fate…

Check these picts out. I believe one shot has the stunticons and aerialbots working with metro (have no idea who is riding up on top, 6 gun?)

Domo?

Just to kick things off for this year, I started to rearrange my shelves and came upon my copy of Takara SF Land. Flipping through the pages, I caught something I overlooked in the past. Focused on the toys and anything directly Diaclone related, especially to TF's. I did not take a close enough look at the COMIC section. Took a picture of the pages and cut out the comics scans. Clearly it shows Manga styled comic featuring little kids in Driver suits, with Diaclone related robots and machines, along with wacky adults, going on adventures. Check out these scans. I found a sample, a friend of mine shared with me of other Diaclone manga, and it shows p…

How they released SOME of the toys with Character art, and SOME with just pictures of the robots. And then the TF versions we got SOME of the original art, and SOME new stuff (like Magnus which was not as good.) Magnus for example. The DIaclone Powered convoy came with some really good artwork, was released as a TF with different artwork, no where near as good. THe sketch of the original art was used in the instruction manual cover though. Blaster pretty much the same thing. They did release Tracks with artwork that almost matches the Diaclone RED version, cept they changed it to blue and moved the gun for some reason. Its just STRANGE. …

Going over some more olf and new picts for Pre TF items, I was reminded of several odd Pre TF differences of functions that got lost in translation. Megatron had several differences so I will start with him. First off, he came in 2 colors, the chrome silver version we grew up with, and the stealthy black version (minus the stock and scope mounts) Both came with a big chrome sword, along with the silver handgun. They could also as you probably know by now, shoot little plastic bullets. It is not clear if the toy could actually fire bullets from the rifle extension or not, one picture of Megatron in his “Sniperâ€? mode using the scope as a scope…

I know it was an offshoot from Microman...