Necronomitron

That’s the Machine Robo ambulance. It was imported in GoBots as “Rest-Q”.

Indeed! Robotech Robolinks, “The Most Transformable Robots in the Galaxy”

blockmanlink.wixsite.com/home/robolinks

Now, as an adult, oh absolutely, no contest. But at the time, GoBots were crazy popular with kids, too.

Unfortunately for Tonka, their whole strategy was $2 robots. They really struggled to play catch up, and throw bigger toys together, once they found out the market wanted it.

When the Christmas 85 robot craze hit, EVERYTHING sold well, no matter the price, $35 Omega Supreme or a $2 Leader-1.

Both companies struggled to make enough product for demand, and Hasbro even made fewer Transformers than GoBots, but they still made more money because they had varied price points.

I’m always hesitant about that, because as tempting as it is, sometimes it feels like the winners rewriting history.

Steve the Evil King Macrocranios did a really great deep dive using newspaper articles from the time, exploring how Tonka’s low pricing may have been their undoing.

Using that image in your game, movie, or tv show will get it banned from Chinese release. Because so few of the regular citizens in China are aware of the iconic photo, no one knows to look for him. In fact, if he’s still alive, he probably doesn’t know anyone took his picture that day.

Interesting thing about that photo of the guy who stood down the tanks at Tiananmen Square. He’s never been identified, and one reason it’s been so difficult is how heavily censored the image is in China. Most people who come to the US from China say they’d never seen it before.

Aquaboy DigiRobo came so many different colors:
utdesign.net/tokima/

Those locks got multiple US releases, official and otherwise. Secondary market isn’t awful, $40 - $50 in package. More if you want “Dr. Lock”.

I have the Micro Change lock robots, and agree, what I use them for has zero value.

How did I miss Blockman? Also in armor which are slightly different colors from the commercial release.

I’m not really familiar with it. Are these guys all in the same show?

5/5

I’m 100% sure it’s too late to enter these contests, but to be honest, I’ve also never tried.

You could go ahead and it a shot, I mean, what have you got to lose?

4/5

Wow, this is probably the fifth prototype of Train Robo with slightly different colors I’ve found so far.

3/5

Oh look, it’s a prototype Micro Change Magnum Robo! Not only clearly handmade and sporting a different head, but he’s also carrying the sword which would later be given to Walther Robo, aka “Megatron”.

2/5

I assume the larger images will get compressed, so I’m including some zoomed in shots of the Diaclone and Micro Change stuff.

1/5

Every month TV Magazine ran a contest, giving away toys provided by the companies.

These were colorful fold-out spreads with an overwhelming number of robot toys. Interestingly, the images used were often prototypes.

Nothing really worth translating, so just enjoy some pictures of robots.

I wouldn’t say “they were delayed” as much as “Hasbro was trying to put stuff in the show so fast, they even tried using toys which never left the prototype phase”.

With US demand, Takara almost couldn’t make toys fast enough.

Closest I’ve seen is the Imaginext homage figure, and there are a crazy number of 3D printable files made by fans

After this, he just fully pitched Beast Wars.

Imaginext was shameless

The Skyscraper robot from Big was a kitbash, which doesn’t appear to use a pre-existing skyscraper toy (the arch above the doorway is a peanut butter jar lid).

The main robot components look like they come from one of the many, many Horikawa robot releases.

Do you get it?

Up to the 2000s, it was kinda common to see a TF fan put Autobot or Decepticon logos on pre-transformers toys, especially if it was a KO they got cheap.

Not a lot of fans knew about the old series, and they wanted interesting Transformers OCs instead.

Not a problem. Nice find.

Real one is light grey and dark green. I’d guess that’s this guy. Most of the Taiwanese KOs like Globo and SplooRocket still tried for light grey and dark green, but this one was molded white, and the paint on the diecast was a little odd.

They keep trying to add three dimensionality and integrate the weapons, but, you just can’t beat flat kitty

They hadn’t been made yet. He was available earlier because he was pulled from Micro Change, but new cassettes would need to be designed and produced.

Definitely, but not like that. Blaster was weird when he came out because there weren’t any Autobot cassettes. Those weren’t released until the movie, a year later.

He had the opening chest, but what were you supposed to do with it? Use it as a jail for Soundwave’s tapes?

I hooked an adapter to an MP3 player, so let’s choose a completely random song to test the new speaker….

The right leg is just the batteries and power switch. The speaker is fake, and the wires go to the other leg.

The left leg has the board, speaker, and 2.5mm jack. Since the jack works, and all the connections are fine, that old speaker may be toast.

But, replacing it with a new one is very easy.

It will always amuse me that Blaster is only tall because his right leg had to fit 2 AA batteries. Over on the left leg is a headphone jack, and the volume control.

What you’d expect to be the battery compartment is storage for things like the headphones, the radio tape, or maybe cassette robots.

Part Two!

Today we’re Repairing Radio Cassette Robo himself! As you already know, the cassette is the actual radio, while the robot is really just a speaker.

Inside the tape compartment is a little 2.5 mm jack which plugs into the cassette when it’s inserted, so he WILL NOT hold cassette robots.

Ah, AM gold. We did it! Now that we're all done, let's put the sticker back over the screw holes.

Next time, we'll fix the speaker it came with. Actually, it's not JUST a speaker. It has a secret feature, but I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Thanks for your help! This has been a BLAST….

There's no volume control, and it has a tiny headphone jack (2.5 instead of 3.5).

It actually came with a speaker you can plug it into, but that's broken too, so we'll just have to fix it next time.

Right now, I have it plugged into the aux port of a little speaker. Let's see how we did.

The dial has a tiny little plastic tab that turns in the screw hole-looking recession, to tune in the frequency (AM stations only).

The whole thing is only 2" x 1 1/2"!
Okay, let's put it back in the case and close it up. My helper here has been holding onto the screws.