19853rd Place: Devastator: 12 PointsGreen and purple? It'll never catch on. Despite his articulation-destroying miniskirt he's still an incredibly popular figure to this day. Anyone who can have drills for hands is okay in my book (
Picking Your Nose In Style by Diem, available at all imaginary book stores).
2nd Place: Jetfire: 16 pointsAs you probably already know the Jetfire mold was not a Hasbro original but unlike most of the other early toys it was taken not from an obscure toyline but from popular up-and-coming anime
Super Rainbow Adventure Macross. To put it in context, it would be as if the next FOC combiner were a repaint of the Megazord. As a result of HasTak's casual and hilarious theft the figure was one of the larger and more sophisticated early toys.
1st Place: Grimlock: 30 pointsIt's no surprise Grimmy is a popular guy. After all he is a T-rex, and those are so popular that our ancestors had to invent dragons just because they hadn't discovered them yet. In the cartoon he and his fellow Dinobots were basically sulky teenagers who hid in their room and only came out to help with much cajoling. After the movie Grimlock slowly developed into a stupid comedy character instead (right around the time Wheeljack died he started getting stupider? Hmmmmmmm). In the Furman-penned comics Grimlock was a super-strong, super-smart, super-skilled, super-important, super-always right character.
D...Drift?
Grimlock and his prehistoric playpals originated in the Diaclone Dino Robot line and they fit into the pre-existing cast of cars and planes like a monkey in an expensive-antiques-balanced-on-top-of-unpeeled-bananas exhibit. That said, the quartet had a good consistant colour scheme, decent enough articulation and (apart from Slag) smooth transformations. Grimlock in particular came out well despite his general dino-body-build resembling less an actual T-rex and more a flamingo. He had lots of moving bits, including a big snappy jaw perfect for inflicting modest torture on a younger sibling and he also had a cool sword and gun. And then one day you discovered his little flip-out chair and everything you previously knew was wrong.
That moment...that moment when you realised dinosaurs evolved from motorbikes.
In short he's a great toy despite his failings as a character and he got a well-deserved Masterpiece figure which was a perfect scale replica of a robot dinosaur from the eighties.
1986 1986 was an exciting time for Transformers. The cartoon was airing on more channels than actually existed and the comic won a Pulitzer prize for Best Made Up Winner Of A Pulitzer, Plus A Pulitzer Is Probably For Journalism Not Fiction Anyway. For the first time toys were being made for the line rather than being appropriated from other lines. Amongst other figures the year 1986 introduced the mighty Metroplex and the Typical Trypticon. A number of combiners appeared making Devastator look like old news. Movie stars started to appear and even a Sharkticon showed up.
So 1986, let's see it happen!