The Energon Pub

Toy catalogues are wonderful things, we’ve even looked at them before on Source Blog. In addition to the waves of nostalgia washing over us every time we look at a vintage Hasbro Transformers catalogue included with the toys, there are loads of hidden gems, prototypes and hilarious errors within. We’re going to have a look at some UK and US Transformers catalogues from 1985, 1986 and 1987.

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All the best
Maz

The Toy Fair 1986 catalog was the first time I ever "looked closely" at toy catalogs. Tailgate, Hubcap, Outback, and others had some fail color schemes.

Heh "Fail" colour schemes that were snapped up by Iga in Mexico...





All the best
Maz

Maz wrote:Heh "Fail" colour schemes that were snapped up by Iga in Mexico...


All the best
Maz

Seems only Hubcap was snapped up accordingly. In the catalog, Tailgate has a red head/face and camo green with yellow rather than all navy blue with yellow.

The colour scheme for Tailgate was snapped up, he was released iN Windcharger mould because IGA were cost-saving and never re-tooled the moulds. Iga Pipes for example is just a blue/white Huffer. Ras owns that ToyFair yellow Tailgate proto/mock-up, and he says the torso is teal, but I think 100% it's the inspiration for that choice of repaint for Mexico.

All the best
Maz

I like that you provided pics of the prototypes. That's pretty cool. Are those yours, by any chance?

It Is Him wrote:I like that you provided pics of the prototypes. That's pretty cool. Are those yours, by any chance?

No, they're from the collections of Ras and Paul Hitchens (TheSpacebridge). UK collectors.

All the best
Maz

Always interesting to see prototype vs. final toy, especially in Broadside's case. One would think that Broadside was actually redesigned from the ground up, the only things that remained relatively the same are the weapons!

Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes Maz and another great article.