The Vintage "Lesser" Brand Robots Thread. "Give me your Converters, your Androform, your huddled Zybots yearning to transform."

Been thinking we needed a thread like this for a while. Basically, a place to show off and/or discuss old 80's toylines that aren't knockoffs, so to speak, but also aren't major brand releases like Transformers and Go-Bots. Releases from smaller companies trying to compete/cash in on the transforming robot craze of the time.

Especially for those of us that were growing up in the mid 80's, these things were everywhere. They were usually cheaper than the "main brands," so these were the kind of thing you might be able to talk mom or dad into on a trip to the grocery store (I have a distinct memory of talking my mom into a KO Converters cash register by telling her I could use it to store/count my money at home. Upon reflection, I doubt that argument convinced her, but I did come home with him anyway. I still have it to this day.) or get from your aunt on your birthday. They mingled with and went on adventures with our Optimus Primes and Cy-Kills. They may not have been quite the quality level of the "real" things, but they were fun in their own ways.

To start things off, here's something I found this weekend at a small local toy/comic show:



The mold is the chameleon From the Leader Shine "Invading Reptile" series (bootlegged and reproduced by any number of other brands over the years). I've wanted to start picking up some bots from this line for a while, so I was very excited to find this one in a bin of random transformers, especially complete with his guns. A lot of good information on this line here at Robo-Synergy.

I had "Gilla Monster". It didn't survive long enough to leave strong memories, but the stickers are unforgettable. I know that was the one.

These things really are fragile. Be careful.

CoffeeHorse said:

I had "Gilla Monster". It didn't survive long enough to leave strong memories, but the stickers are unforgettable. I know that was the one.

These things really are fragile. Be careful.

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Yeah, his transformation involves tucking the tail up under the back "shell," which wasn't designed to hinge up high enough to get the tail to swing past the legs without an incredibly uncomfortable amount of flexing. I don't plan on doing much swapping him between modes.

I don't know how mine broke. My mother threw it out and told me it was broken. But having felt the plastic, I believe her.

It's a shame these things are so flimsy because they are charming as heck. I don't know if it comes across in pictures. There is a clueless enthusiasm to the designs that kid me loved.

CoffeeHorse said:

I don't know how mine broke. My mother threw it out and told me it was broken. But having felt the plastic, I believe her.

It's a shame these things are so flimsy because they are charming as heck. I don't know if it comes across in pictures. There is a clueless enthusiasm to the designs that kid me loved.

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Oh, agreed. I'm glad I found the chameleon, because he's definitely the best of the 4 Reptiles.

On the subject of the Buddy-L Dinotrons, I'm amazed at how well Toxitron Grimlock goes with them. The purple hips that are revealed in robot mode really seal the deal.

Ooh, this is gonna be fun!
First, some random packaging samples:

I'm not usually a MISP collector, so I was kinda surprised at how many of these I had. Note the Blockhead KO actually says Dist by K-Mart!

Now, how about some Convertors:


Focus and the SDF-1 (and a missing Avarian Hoot probably hanging out with Earthspark Nightshade, and Tanker) were some of my first not-Gobot transforming toys. Focus probably stood in for Reflector most of the time, and the SDF was pretty incomplete in even my earliest memories, but I have fond memories of all of them, and it wasn't long after I started collecting as an adult that I started working on re-acquiring these guys. The rest of the Spies were figures I collected afterwards. The thing that really stands out to me is that each one has a 'working' feature: Focus has a periscope-like design so you can look through the viewfinder and see vague shapes and colors, Bandit's reel really spins when you pull his special arm, Cash has a little drawer that opens, Tilt is a simple working pinball game, and Vegas' roulette wheel really spins and has a little ball that can land in different spots.

Yeah, they are slightly more fragile and a little less elegant than their Gobot and Transformer cousins, but these are still some pretty cool transforming toys!

More Convertors:

This sticker detail is totally hidden when Buffalo is fully transformed!

The thing that amuses me most about Buffalo is that I had an orange Tonka bulldozer that i made a stand-in Transformer by standing it on end almost just like this!

Before Agent Knight, besides the Pow-R-Tron, this is the other option for a Knight Rider transformer!


I don't know for sure, but I would guess that all the small Convertors vehicles came in four flavors, these are the two examples of all four that I have. No idea if this was a running change or if these came out at different times...

My Dino-Trons, sadly incomplete...


Okay, so these guys came out some time after G2. I distinctly remember getting the 2 Humvees (Klik and Klak in my headcanon) at a Burlington Coat Factory in Omaha some time in the 90s (and I think I still have the card they came on somewhere..) the other 2 were later acquisitions, and may be a later run, they don't feel quite as well-made as the Humvees. Obviously, they are the same engineering as G2 Go-Bots, and they all sport Bumblebee's toy head. The custom paint on Klik and Klak was added some time during or after RiD01 (my original Spychanger Ironhide got a red "Geewun" paint job at the same time, not my proudest moment), they are otherwise pretty plain.

Last post for tonight. Zybots!

This truck dude stole his face from Machine Robo Highway Robo!

My sample of the fire truck doesn't have the stickers, but the one we had as kids did, and we always read the detail on the back of the head as an 'evil' face. I don't remember if we played it like Punch/Counterpunch or more Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, but this toy got a lot of play back in the day!

A Village Toys Convert-a-Bot. This one's head looks suspiciously like Gobots Scooter and Man-O-War. I think this was also the line with the 2-headed car robot, and I'm sure I have an incomplete one, but couldn't find it...

I don't recall if this was sold as a Convertor or something else, but he's kind of cool, with decent arm movement. The front on my sample comes off, not sure how a person would pull the head out otherwise, because it sits pretty flush.

Somehow this stuff makes me more nostalgic than the actually good toys from my childhood.

Maybe it's because this stuff was more mysterious and hard to track down, so I'm not desensitized to it.

"Good Force" and "Evil Force," it's like they didn't want to own trademarks.

I still have a bunch of those knockoffy not-quite-Spychangers in my kitbash drawer, I made several of them into other characters.

---Dave

Haywire said:

Ooh, this is gonna be fun!
First, some random packaging samples:
View attachment 27520
Now, how about some Convertors:

View attachment 27526

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I don't have a Converters Voyager, but if I did, I'd be sorely tempted to try to put those woodgrain panels on the sides. As one of 4 kids growing up in the 80's/90's, my family was in the exact center of the market demographic for Plymouth Voyager minivans, and we went through several. I spent a lot of time in them, so having a transforming version would have absolutely rocked my world as a kid.

On the same shopping trip where I got the Cash Register robot, one of my sisters got that pinball machine. It wasn't long before it made it into my collection, and I absolutely loved it. Don't have my (sister's) original anymore, but I have managed to find a replacement. He's still damn fun.

Haywire said:

More Convertors:

Before Agent Knight, besides the Pow-R-Tron, this is the other option for a Knight Rider transformer!
View attachment 27531View attachment 27532
View attachment 27533
I don't know for sure, but I would guess that all the small Convertors vehicles came in four flavors, these are the two examples of all four that I have. No idea if this was a running change or if these came out at different times...

Click to expand...

According to The Liberator, which is a fantastic resource for a ton of these old lines, they all just always came in a variety of colors, so not really a running change, just luck-of-the-draw as to what colors you would find on the shelf.

CoffeeHorse said:

Somehow this stuff makes me more nostalgic than the actually good toys from my childhood.

Maybe it's because this stuff was more mysterious and hard to track down, so I'm not desensitized to it.

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That is one of the things that I'm loving as I fall deeper into this rabbit hole. There's almost no end to the amount of companies that were making transforming robot toys. Just when I think I have a pretty good handle on the "major" brands, I run into a line I had never heard of or seen before.

Dvandom said:

"Good Force" and "Evil Force," it's like they didn't want to own trademarks.

---Dave

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Some of these lines made an attempt at creating some form of rough outline of a story, and some just put in the least amount of effort possible. My favorite is probably the Buddy-L Chargertrons, a line with exactly 2 figures in it, one named Protagatron and one named Antagotron. That is just absolutely the pinacle of low-effort naming/worldbuilding and I love it so much.

A couple random military bots:


The jeep looks like a Dashbot, but I think it's a KO because the markings are wrong.

I think this guy is a distant relation of Mixmaster:


And some misc. Maisto transformers that are somewhat more modern:


The Robo Rods were sold at Walmart around the same time as Armada/Energon; I regret never getting some of the later waves. The motorcycle bots were picked up at my first visit to an Ollie's (in Virginia). Never saw them in stores, so I don't know when or where they originally sold. Obviously, these are much more modern figures, but I love how they kind of channel the same vibe as the first waves of Super Gobots with heads that are just parts of the car/cycle...

Haywire said:

A couple random military bots:View attachment 27545
View attachment 27544

The jeep looks like a Dashbot, but I think it's a KO because the markings are wrong.

I think this guy is a distant relation of Mixmaster:
View attachment 27546View attachment 27547

And some misc. Maisto transformers that are somewhat more modern:
View attachment 27548View attachment 27549

The Robo Rods were sold at Walmart around the same time as Armada/Energon; I regret never getting some of the later waves. The motorcycle bots were picked up at my first visit to an Ollie's (in Virginia). Never saw them in stores, so I don't know when or where they originally sold. Obviously, these are much more modern figures, but I love how they kind of channel the same vibe as the first waves of Super Gobots with heads that are just parts of the car/cycle...

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Love those Robo Rods! Those are a new one on me. Are they 1:64 scale (Hot Wheels/Matchbox size?)

And that one bot is clearly the forbidden love child of Mixmaster and Bulkhead.

Donocropolis said:

Love those Robo Rods! Those are a new one on me. Are they 1:64 scale (Hot Wheels/Matchbox size?)

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They are vaguely 1:64, though they run a little bigger than a Matchbox or Hot Wheels, kinda like Pixar Cars character cars. If I recall correctly, they were stocked in the toy cars aisle and not the action figure aisle when they were sold. Each one came with an accessory, like gold chains, boom boxes, or a fancy cane. They were pretty fun to collect for a minute, but the transformation never varied from what you see. I only wish I'd gotten later waves because the cars they used were more interesting.

Convertors cards:



Trans-Action:


So this belongs to the Spychanger-style Humvees, and the copyright says 2002, which means I didn't get them in the late 90s, but in the early 2000s when I was in college (and getting back into collecting Transformers), making them contemporary to RiD01, I guess?

And now, the piece de resistance (French for "Robots that 'transform' by disassembling and reassembling the pieces"), Marchon's Road Bots!

Not to be confused with the later RoadBots from Happywell, Marchon Road Bots are from 1984 and came in 3 flavors: Cementorr the Cement Truck, Loadorr the Dump Truck, and a Crane Robot that I never managed to get but I assume would be called Liftorr, or maybe Bob or Dick?
Anywho, these guys seem to have had at least 2 color schemes each, but due to the nature of their construction and a general lack of MiSP examples out there, I'm not sure how much variation there was between which color parts came with the silver or yellow bodies. The wheel assemblies are friction motors, so in either mode, you can rev them forward a couple times and they will continue to roll for a while. They do disassemble completely for transformation, but all the parts have a job to do in both modes, and honestly, the partsforming ship has sailed even in Transformers, so I think these still count.

I had the yellow and black Loadorr when I was a kid, and of all the robot toys I had as a kid, this was the hardest one to identify by memory and re-acquire.

Haywire said:

Last post for tonight. Zybots!
View attachment 27539

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I had the blue sports car Zybot. It didn't survive an attempt at using it with a Hot Wheels track, though.

Haywire said:

And now, the piece de resistance (French for "Robots that 'transform' by disassembling and reassembling the pieces"), Marchon's Road Bots!
View attachment 27610View attachment 27611View attachment 27612View attachment 27613View attachment 27614View attachment 27615View attachment 27616View attachment 27617
Not to be confused with the later RoadBots from Happywell, Marchon Road Bots are from 1984 and came in 3 flavors: Cementorr the Cement Truck, Loadorr the Dump Truck, and a Crane Robot that I never managed to get but I assume would be called Liftorr, or maybe Bob or Dick?
Anywho, these guys seem to have had at least 2 color schemes each, but due to the nature of their construction and a general lack of MiSP examples out there, I'm not sure how much variation there was between which color parts came with the silver or yellow bodies. The wheel assemblies are friction motors, so in either mode, you can rev them forward a couple times and they will continue to roll for a while. They do disassemble completely for transformation, but all the parts have a job to do in both modes, and honestly, the partsforming ship has sailed even in Transformers, so I think these still count.

I had the yellow and black Loadorr when I was a kid, and of all the robot toys I had as a kid, this was the hardest one to identify by memory and re-acquire.

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That is a fantastic collection of Road Bots! Those have a great style to them. Almost remind me of older 60's toy robots like Zeroids in their general body plans.