The Energon Pub

I have recently decided to document my collections production dates and whether made by Hasbro or Takara. While doing so I noticed my G1 Shockwave has a weird production stamp. It has a "Toy C" with the "C" around Earth or a planet in it and has date of 1983. If anybody has any help with identifying this one, let me know.

That's the ToyCo logo, a Korean toy company that Hasbro and Takara licenced the mold from. Pretty sure both the Hasbro and Takara versions are identical. He was released in 1985 as a Transformer, 1983 is when ToyCo made the mold for their own uses.

Emerje

Not all Transformers were by Takara. Due to the popularity of the first year, Hasbro decided to license molds from other companies to bulk up the line. Shockwave is one of them, and is licensed from the Korean company ToyCo. Possibly because the company was based in Korea and not Japan, Takara was able to release him in Japan as a Transformer without much trouble, unlike the rest.

Other figures that weren't by Takara:

Takatoku Toys (now owned by Bandai)
Deluxe Insecticons: Barrage, Chop Shop, Ransack, Venom (from Armored Insect Battalion Beetras)
Deluxe Autobots: Roadbuster, Whirl (from Armored Trooper Dorvack)
Jetfire (from [i]Super-Dimensional Fortress Macross)

ToyBox (commissioned by Tomy, who now owns the copyright)
Sky Lynx
Omega Supreme

The Bandai ones can not be reissued, since it's a major player in the US unlike back in the day. Did you know the Gobots toys were originally by Bandai, licensed to Tonka, and that that's the source of a major copyright headache?

Thank you so much for the help. I wasn't sure if it was some kind of a knockoff or something. Thanks again for your help.

Thank you both for your input. I knew of like Bandai making a few. I'm an old guy now. Cant remember all that stuff like I used too.

You're very welcome Rest assured, the figures I listed are the only ones with a different copyright tag.

One caveat about copyright dates: Japanese law at the time required the year the original line debuted to be stamped on the toy, for instance in Microman's case it's 1974. That's not the year any given toy is produced.

Got you. That helps about the dates. I appreciate it.