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 as Arcee, and was not produced (as far as I know) but the other bug was produced in the Betras toy line. 

 

I do not think I have pictured of all of them, but know that all of the Decepticons were different colors in their original toy line.  (so in theory of inclusion of variations into there are 5 more deluxe Decepticons to call on…as well as the 3 Diaclone insecticons…

 

At any rate, the artwork in the couple comics I was given samples of was really good!  I was asked not to scan the comics, but I did make some sketches of my own, so far only on the Lady Bug character and the human pilot.  I’ll post some pictures of my scans later.

 

From what I gather, there was the one girl, a heavy set guy, a little kid, a smart guy, and 2 “Hot Headâ€? guys that seemed to argue a lot who piloted the 2 similar robots.  Kinda like G-force only younger and not as severely drawn.  Fortunately the one we didn’t get was featured in one of the mags.  The Lady bug I only have a one small shot of the bug mode, and a couple of the robot, I think 1 of the pilot. 

At any rate, from that I can draw some sketches.  I'll post em later.

Here's some shots of my early sketches.  Did some of them like 3AM New Years day...er the day after new years day I guess...

http://1500bc.com/pretf/beetras.html

 

This place did a GREAT job showing off the toys, catalogs and writing more about the characters than I did here in my meager little post. 

 

Looks like each of them actually had a color variant in mind, so the basic 4 Deluxe Insecticons had (at least intended) 2 other color variants...and the 5th, the lady bug was never made.  :(

 

Good page!  Check it out for the full story details...

I looked at the toy catalog they listed again, it looks like there were 2 repaints, of the first 2, and then none for the second 2.  That MAY have been released. 

They look very interesting...

Yep that site, was where I got my Beetras pics.

http://1500bc.com/pretf/beetras.html

 

This place did a GREAT job showing off the toys, catalogs and writing more about the characters than I did here in my meager little post. 

 

Looks like each of them actually had a color variant in mind, so the basic 4 Deluxe Insecticons had (at least intended) 2 other color variants...and the 5th, the lady bug was never made.  :(

 

Good page!  Check it out for the full story details...

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I'm reasonably sure that the second color set is actually meant for the smaller size in which the four Beetras figures were also produced.  Those smaller version molds were bought by Grandstand and used as Convertors.

 

But again, I only say reasonably sure.