by Bumblevivisector » Mon Feb 27, 2012 4:50 pm
I've been brushing up on miscellaneous transforming robots over the past year, so I'll take a crack at this:
#1: Slag- Looks like Diaclone, and a little too old to be from KOTOYS, but I'm not sure I'd rule out his being an old Four Star KO, though not the green, nutty remold.
#2: Feathers- Yep that's the real deal. If it was the recent Quick Change KO, the stickers would be different, and the tail would be all white plastic with no trace of chrome. Half the time these are missing their tails altogether, so it's not in terrible shape, since loose ones usually lack their swords anyway.
And this is from the American Select Convertors line, which were mostly around this size, and included tiny versions of Whirl, Roadbuster, some deluxe Insecticons, and a shocking amount of heroic Macross mecha as the main bad guys. Grandstand Convertors was a European line with a lot of Diaclone and Microman toys repackaged without drivers, plus a couple big vehicles and Omegator, the dark grey and red Omega Supreme which may have been both TF Omega's namesake and the reason he didn't get released in the UK. It's confusing that both lines of Convertors were in stores on different sides of the Atlantic around the same time, but technically had nothing to do with each other. Still, I like to imagine Feathers and his fellow Avarians pursuing their archenemies the Insectors to Cardiff or Amsterdam, only to find that they've enlisted the aid of Siclonoid, the GSC Warudoros.
#3: Darkwing- This is the same color scheme as the Darkwing I got in an Easter basket at Meijer 4 years ago, the last big TF KO I've seen packaged thus. That was roughly the same mold as the all white Darkwing and Dreadwind that haunted a lot of Big Lots prior.
#4: The Dinosaur- Stegatron, from the Buddy L Dinotron line, making him close kin of the Bug Bots, which had the same pullback motors as the tiny cars and trains in the main Robotron line. There were likely just 3 dinos, in 2 color schemes each. While their transformations were similar enough to Grimlock, Sludge, and Snarl, to be considered "rip-offs", they were technically original sculpts. The only true KO from Buddy L was one of the Gobot Royal-T.
#5: Grey/Blue Truck- Easily the most obscure of your lot, but you don't transform him as much as reassemble him, right? That makes him a Road Bot, from Marchon Inc. I had the yellow cement truck version in '85, which was cool because his head was shaped so much like Ironhide's cartoon model head. Can't remember if it had a pullback or friction motor though.
#6: Yep, Leader One.