The Random Transformers Image Thread
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That is the most depressed ice pop I've ever seen.
He is disappoint.
He's not angry, just disappointed.
My son was showing me how to check Amazon's profile on myself.
it checks out.
it checks out.
Right?! Like....I DO, but how does Amazon know that?
A long time ago, there was a time when the only Transformers I really had to my name were a Micromaster Transport Erector, which was a Christmas gift, and the Micromaster Construction Patrol, which may have also been a gift, not sure. (I can't recall if this was before or after that one time an aunt got me an Action Master Devastator).
But there was also another Patrol, obtained during that little window when my mom -- just trying to make some extra cash for the fam -- got into a little side business as a reseller of a number of things, including toys. My selfish idiot kid self heard "toys" and snooped around, and took a liking to the closest thing I saw to Transformers (a 4-pack that I later saw matched the description of the Micromaster Off Road Patrol). Mom soon probably just decided to pay for the thing and remove it from the inventory to get me to quit bugging the grown-ups. I was shameless.
I don't know why I don't recall wondering why they weren't branded "Transformers", or why the back of the card was unexpectedly just in black and white. I guess at that point I was just so cheesed at having anything Transformers-esque that I didn't stop an think about it too closely? The whole thing WAS in English, and had pretty good copies of the packaging style and the character artwork. And (looking back now) it even had the Patrol's tech spec bio AND each guy's quote, so I must've figured it was close enough.
The rest of that time being hazy (not least because I'd rather block out other cringe nonsense I did as a kid), all I really remembered of that encounter was the lone figure that survived (kids like me, my siblings, and my cousins are not the best for keeping toys in shape): a blue-and-orange monster truck that the packaging called "Mars".
Years later, I tried looking this up, and I was more than a little confused to find out that the truck "Mars" didn't really exist... but Mudslinger did. And years later, when the wiki came along, it listed a range of international names for him... that also didn't include "Mars". It was then that I got the somewhat sinking feeling that the pack I'd wrangled was a bootleg -- which, looking back, makes sense, because we definitely didn't have enough money set aside to get into reselling legitimate product (not that Hasbro or the local distributor would even HAVE such a thing going).
It wasn't until recently, offhandedly looking at the Knockoff page on the wiki (I was trying to find out how to differentiate between a legitimate Alternators Nemesis Prime and a bootleg, and wound up on the wiki having found nothing), that I saw an entry on ABC Timely Ent Inc./Wise Trading Company/Leajena Industrial Corp bootlegs of Micromaster Squads... with the accompanying picture (above) being of this exact patrol.
A quick image search then turned up an eBay auction that had a photo of the back of the card, where the names of this bootlegged bunch (still called the Off Road Patrol, apparently) became known: Neptune, Venus, Polaris, and... Mars!
The names for the other two Patrols' members are pretty nifty too. Not very (US) Transformers, but thematic nonetheless. Throttlebot Chase should meet Micromaster Wild-Goos. (I am also a little underwhelmed by the marketing angle they took here. What kid even knows what "Capture the intrigue" means?)
And apparently the legitimate cardbacks ALSO said the Micros were "Commissioned by the Powermaster"? (Later this would be corrected to "Powermasters", but that still invites an intriguing story notion where the Powermasters as a group were like "you know what would be cool to make?")
But there was also another Patrol, obtained during that little window when my mom -- just trying to make some extra cash for the fam -- got into a little side business as a reseller of a number of things, including toys. My selfish idiot kid self heard "toys" and snooped around, and took a liking to the closest thing I saw to Transformers (a 4-pack that I later saw matched the description of the Micromaster Off Road Patrol). Mom soon probably just decided to pay for the thing and remove it from the inventory to get me to quit bugging the grown-ups. I was shameless.
I don't know why I don't recall wondering why they weren't branded "Transformers", or why the back of the card was unexpectedly just in black and white. I guess at that point I was just so cheesed at having anything Transformers-esque that I didn't stop an think about it too closely? The whole thing WAS in English, and had pretty good copies of the packaging style and the character artwork. And (looking back now) it even had the Patrol's tech spec bio AND each guy's quote, so I must've figured it was close enough.
The rest of that time being hazy (not least because I'd rather block out other cringe nonsense I did as a kid), all I really remembered of that encounter was the lone figure that survived (kids like me, my siblings, and my cousins are not the best for keeping toys in shape): a blue-and-orange monster truck that the packaging called "Mars".
Years later, I tried looking this up, and I was more than a little confused to find out that the truck "Mars" didn't really exist... but Mudslinger did. And years later, when the wiki came along, it listed a range of international names for him... that also didn't include "Mars". It was then that I got the somewhat sinking feeling that the pack I'd wrangled was a bootleg -- which, looking back, makes sense, because we definitely didn't have enough money set aside to get into reselling legitimate product (not that Hasbro or the local distributor would even HAVE such a thing going).
It wasn't until recently, offhandedly looking at the Knockoff page on the wiki (I was trying to find out how to differentiate between a legitimate Alternators Nemesis Prime and a bootleg, and wound up on the wiki having found nothing), that I saw an entry on ABC Timely Ent Inc./Wise Trading Company/Leajena Industrial Corp bootlegs of Micromaster Squads... with the accompanying picture (above) being of this exact patrol.
A quick image search then turned up an eBay auction that had a photo of the back of the card, where the names of this bootlegged bunch (still called the Off Road Patrol, apparently) became known: Neptune, Venus, Polaris, and... Mars!
The names for the other two Patrols' members are pretty nifty too. Not very (US) Transformers, but thematic nonetheless. Throttlebot Chase should meet Micromaster Wild-Goos. (I am also a little underwhelmed by the marketing angle they took here. What kid even knows what "Capture the intrigue" means?)
And apparently the legitimate cardbacks ALSO said the Micros were "Commissioned by the Powermaster"? (Later this would be corrected to "Powermasters", but that still invites an intriguing story notion where the Powermasters as a group were like "you know what would be cool to make?")
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I know exactly what you mean. When I started getting back into Transforming Robots as a young adult, I remember finding that a lot of the photos I was seeing of various Transformers and Gobots didn't match exactly with what I remembered having. It was only then that I realized that a good chunk of my toys had been bootlegs. Just goes to show, I guess, that kids don't care about that sort of thing nearly as much as adults. My light grey Dive-Dive was just as much a "real" toy to me as an official one would have been.
I had a bunch of bootlegs as a kid. I just figured, well, they're civilians or background extras. My TF armies already included the SDF-1, the Red Dragon Thunderzord, and Drago from Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, so hey.
I've heard somewhere that at one point in development Micromasters were going to be Nebulans, not Cybertronians.
This seems like it could be a leftover from that.
I saw Micromasters in the store before they showed up in the comics, so the "commissioned by the Powermaster(s)" blurb was the basis for my headcanon at first. It made perfect sense that after biomechanical transformation tech had been developed for binary-bonding, it would be expanded beyond turning into accessories for robots. Given that everyone was turning into Earth vehicles, I figured it would be all or mostly humans in this case. (But why they were only mini versions of existing vehicles and not anything more inventive or size-specific, I never came up with an explanation for.)
I'm counting this. Went to see Weird Al last night in Peoria. Got to see Dare to be Stupid live!
