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

Donocropolis

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Well, after keeping an eye on ebay for reasonably priced Robolinks sets, I bought an almost complete Force 30 that came with a smattering of other bots/accessories. While very fun to mess with on their own, I also love that the various Modulator style bots can mix with them as well.

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Donocropolis

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Just some more playing with megaCog. Added some more dakka and a Boba-Fett jetpack/rocket launcher. And a pet.

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Haywire

Collecter of Gobots and Godzilla
Citizen
Those are great combos! Is that Captain Volca's Dino head? If so, those Wildoking figures are smaller than I realized!
 

Donocropolis

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Came across a few good finds today for $5 each (not the Ironhide /Prowl)

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Pictured left to right are:

Converters Bandit, which I already had a copy of, but this one has stiffer leg joints allowing him to actually stand up, plus he was $5, so who am I to say "no?"

Remco Zybots, the recolor of Mach-1. Can't find much information on this one, as the recolor was apparently extremely rare. The only info I could find online was here at The Liberator. Got some more photos at the bottom of the post.

And a Kinsman Andro-Tank, which is my first Kinsman toy. His motor works great, so he's a lot of fun to send wheeling across the floor with his guns blasting.

Anyway, some additional pictures of the rare(?) Zybot:
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Donocropolis

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Even that thing bothers to hide the limbs in jet mode.

Okay they're not great limbs. But the layout has potential.

Yeah, I have several Zybots, and this one really goes above and beyond for that line. it definitely still "feels" cheap, but there are a lot of moving parts to rearrange everything between the two modes, 3 retractable landing gear, and a really clean jet mode.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
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I'm sure a lot of the designers of these things fantasized about getting to work for Bandai or Takara, and sincerely tried to do the best possible job their company was willing to pay for. Which wasn't much, but they were sure gonna get it.
 

Haywire

Collecter of Gobots and Godzilla
Citizen
Converters Bandit, which I already had a copy of, but this one has stiffer leg joints allowing him to actually stand up, plus he was $5, so who am I to say "no?"

Back before I got married, I briefly toyed with the idea of buying as many Bandits as I could find on ebay and making a Transformers Casino diorama. Even now, its one of those figures I would buy any time I found it for a reasonable price.

All of those are nice finds! Congrats!
 

Donocropolis

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Back before I got married, I briefly toyed with the idea of buying as many Bandits as I could find on ebay and making a Transformers Casino diorama. Even now, its one of those figures I would buy any time I found it for a reasonable price.

All of those are nice finds! Congrats!

I've been thinking of a couple of pictures I could take with 2 slot machines and a few other assorted bots.
 

Donocropolis

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Yesterday was my wife's birthday, so I took the day off work. We started out the day running over to an estate sale that we had both been interesting in. The owners of the house had clearly raised children in the 80's as there were quite a few old toys around. Managed to find these:

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That's a G1 Grotesque (missing his wings, but with a spark-shooter that still kind of works!), a Tomy Rascal Robot, and the full line of LH Toys World Invading Insects (best source of info on these guys is on Robo-Synergy)

These were released either singly or in 4-packs. The packs divided the figures into two groups, the Winged Insects and the Fighting Insects. This post will cover the Winged Insects.

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First up, it's Moth. There doesn't seem to be any robot-ish names for any of these, just a description of the type of bug that they turn into.
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Very sturdy in both modes. Robot articulation is just shoulders and knees, not unusual for the time. Robot mode is clearly female, which is a bit more rare for the time period, so that's nice. Overall very nice looking toy in both modes.

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Mosquito

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This one seems to be an original (based on the intact LH Toys brand molded in), but all of these bugs were KO'd a lot throughout the years. Big Lots carried them for a while back 15-20 years ago. Back then, I bought one of the mosquitos (wish I had bought more of those KO's back in the day, but I was fairly recently back into collecting and was being a bit of G1 snob) and painted it up in G1 Insecticon colors. Gave her a new head (stolen from a Big Lots KO Lasercycle) and made up the name Siphon for her.

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On thing that I always like about this mold was the way that she was armed to the teeth. One set of bug legs I would use as robot arms, with the other two folding around as a set of over-the-shoulder missile launchers and back mounted laser cannons. Robot mode arms are a bit awkward, but otherwise a fun mold, beautiful in insect mode.

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Again, original Mosquito and Siphon comparison.

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Fly

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Insect mode has great leg articulation. Robot mode is a bit lacking. His arms are short, but have nice jointing at the shoulders and elbows, unfortunately, the wings and the arms both need to be in the same space at the same time, which limits what you can actually DO with the arms.

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Hornet. Doesn't look like any kind of hornet I've ever seen. Clearly more of a beetle, but I didn't name them.
(EDIT: I googled "beetle with fuzzy antenna" to try to find out what kind of bug this was actually supposed to be, and there WAS a type of bug that looks a lot like this. Their called "cockchafers." I see why they went with "Hornet.")

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Great looking robot mode. Shoulders are locked in position, but the elbows function.

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Overall, a great looking set of bug-o-bots.

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Part II, the Fighting Insects, coming soon to a forum near you!
 

Donocropolis

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As foretold in prophecy! Part II: Fighting Insects

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Mantis

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This one is my favorite of the Fighting Insects for sure, maybe of the whole batch. Love the arm articulation of the Mantis mode, and robot mode has shoulder pivots as well as some "in and out" due to the transformation. Nice and stable in both modes, all around fun to play with.

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Butterfly

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Insect mode is a bit limited with the wings only able to be in "pre-flap" position instead of being able to spread out horizontally, but the robot mode has the great samurai skirt thing going on for it, which is nice. Robot arm movement is best out of any of these, I think.

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Queen Bee

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Now THIS one should have been called Hornet, as that's clearly what this bug mode is. This one reverses the usual transformation for the line with the insect head becoming the feet and the abdomen becoming the top of the robot. Another well articulated robot mode.

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Dragonfly

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This is the only one that I got that was missing parts. He's supposed to have a long, articulated dragonfly tail, but mine is sadly broken off. No moving shoulders, but good elbow movement. Nice bit of asymmetrical sculpting on the hips, which add some visual interest to the robot mode.

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Fighting Insects group shot. Dammit, Butterfly! You blinked!

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Graduating class of 2025

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Donocropolis

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Heh, similar thought here, although I added some n's to imply she had an Insecticon-like speech tic.

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---Dave, should probably rescan that thirty year old piece at some point....

Love it! Very nice drawing, love the blast effects on the laser legs. I also love that you got the axe in there. I wish these had still had their weapons, but that would have been asking a lot.

I had considered some alternate spellings as well, either Cyphon (robot-ish) or Psiphon/Psyphon (I had imagined her as an artificial Transformer built by Bombshell, forced to suck the spark energy out of her victims to maintain her own life since she had no lasercore/spark of her own, so the Psi/Psy prefix seemed to kind of imply sucking mental energy?)
 


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