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Today I'm bringing you photos of a special piece in It Is Him's private toy collection (doesn't it sound fancier when you say "private collection"?): Japanese G1 Motormaster.
For those of you who don't already know why Japanese G1 Motormaster is a special little guy, he's got a built-in feature that our castrated western versions don't, a spring-loaded launcher.
Right now you might be thinking to yourself, "How come my toy doesn't have a launcher?" and "Man, It Is Him, how did you get such a cool toy?"
Great questions! Unfortunately, your answers are lost to a sea of time, where memories fade and distort like white plastic under UV rays. One might guess Hasbro neutered Motormaster to comply with 1980s toy safety laws, but this collector sincerely doubts that.
As for me owning Motormaster, well, let's just say there are a number of things in my life that I regret (most of those things include shaving, growing a pompadour and never pursuing my dream of becoming an Olympic bobsledder), and striking up a conversation with my dad about Transformers is on that list. That is to say: I've had it a long time, and I never knew why it was so special until recently.
Having said all that: photos and videos! I wasn't so sure there were too many photos or videos of this variation, so I decided to take some tonight and share them with you all.
In all of it's glory, the Japanese Launcher.
Here's a close-up of the spring.
If we turn Motormaster around, you can see the tab that activates the launcher, which for some reason is still present on the Western release.
And for good measure, a photo of the Japanese version right next to the Western version
Finally, a video of the launcher in action. It's short and to the point, clocking in at about 20 seconds. And best of all, you don't have to listen to me speak (but for some reason, I'm breathing very loudly).
Ah, when I was young I always wondered what that extra button type trigger was for. I of course had no idea so many Hasbro TF's were purposely neutered as compared to their Japanese brethren. I also always thought I was unlucky with getting weak springs in the missile launchers...
Anybody know of a way to reverse Motormaster's spring launcher in a Hasbro TF?
I've always been under the impression that adding a spring made the Hasbro Scramble City leaders just as functional as their Takara counterparts. Is this not true? I have Menasor myself but I just got him a couple months ago and he's been standing on my desk since I got him. I never looked into the spring functionality myself. Also, very cool. Where would you have gotten a Japanese Motormaster in the 80s?
Flux Convoy wrote:I've always been under the impression that adding a spring made the Hasbro Scramble City leaders just as functional as their Takara counterparts. Is this not true? I have Menasor myself but I just got him a couple months ago and he's been standing on my desk since I got him. I never looked into the spring functionality myself. Also, very cool. Where would you have gotten a Japanese Motormaster in the 80s?
In the Japanese version, you can clearly see the spring through a little piece of black plastic on the floor of Motormaster's base mode. In the Hasbro version, there's a thin strip of black plastic that covers that spot. That launcher functionality could still be there, but I'm not jumping the gun to play exploratory surgery on my toys.
At the time these toys were coming out, we were living in New York City. We could have bought them anywhere: a toy fair, a street vendor, a Japanese book store. My brother might know, actually. I'll ask him when I see him next.
I've got a few other mystery transforming robots that aren't from Go-Bots or Diakron like Warudaros as far as I can tell, plus, I've got a bag of assorted accessories that clearly aren't from Transformers, and trying to identify them in a thread could be interesting.
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