Bat-Robô

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Nanananananana.
The Bat-Robôs are (possibly) an Autobot subgroup from the Estrela portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

The mysterious Bat-Robôs have the capability to hit walls and become invincible robots. In that order.

The Bat-Robôs include:

Toys

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Transformers

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BIFF! BANG! POW! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!
  • Pick-Up (Bat-Robô, 1986)<ref>The Bat-Robô were not in Estrela's 1985 catalog, and were only advertised in Brazil's homegrown Transformers comics in issue 11 alongside the Optimus x Malignus toys, suggesting they were a later release.</ref>
  • Turbo (Bat-Robô, 1986)
The Bat-Robô are a pair of molds originally made in Japan with some very complicated origins. Eventually, by 1985, Estrela licensed the toys to sell in Brazil, and included them as part of their unique Transformers range to fill out the ranks some more. Due to the lack of faction symbols on the toy or packaging, it is not explicit what faction the Bat-Robô fight for. However, the toys do use Hasbro's Autobot style packaging, so we're going to default to Autobot. (The red Turbo Bat-Robô was used as a Malignus in the Transformers Collectors' Club "Withered Hope" text story, but that was 20 years after the original release...)
The two toys feature a friction-driven motor, which, as part of their gimmick, is used to trigger their transformation. After pulling them back, they drive forward until they hit something with their front bumper, whereupon they spring up into robot mode and then will roll back the other way as a robot.
Each mold was available in two different color schemes. It is unclear which, if any, coloration is harder to come across than the other. Infamously, the decals of both figures also have an unfortunate tendency to liquefy with time, owing to being printed on poor-quality paper and pasted onto the figures with a glue that tends to aggressively lose consistency over time.


Notes

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"I'm Bat-Robô."
  • The name "Bat-Robô" is based on Portuguese for "beating", (bater being the verb and batida being the noun), which is also synonymous with "crashing" and often used to describe minor car collisions (for instance; someone might describe a dent in their car as a "batida"). So no, it has nothing to do with Batman.
  • The Bat-Robô molds have a surprisingly complicated history, having been re-released countless times across numerous toylines all across the world (most of which is covered here), but in short; it seems that they were originally manufactured by Asahi Corporation but first released in the U.S. by toy company Ertl Company as the Pow-R-Trons and only later in Japan by their original manufacturers as Attack Change Machine Powertron. They were also released internationally in a number of other weird circumstances, most shockingly in 1993 by Brazilian toy manufacturer Glasslite - one of Estrela's main competitors at the time - as the Crash Tron Blocker and Turborg under the Mutante toyline, one of the country's localization for the GoBots! It is still debated whether or not the Mutante toyline was licensed by Tonka or Bandai, but in the event that it was, the fact that these were not just sold alongside their Estrela Transformers counterparts in Brazil but were also part of a GoBots / Machine Robo derived line is pretty baffling. And to make things all the more confusing, Glasslite would even later re-release these same molds as Digimon toys in the 2000s!
  • The Estrela Bat-Robôs would also be bootlegged and sold in Argentina under the "Robot-Car" name, featuring mostly plain black packaging with additional portions photocopied from the Estrela originals. These versions do not feature any manufacturing information besides an "Industria Argentina" (e.g., the national equivalent of a "Made in [Country]") tag, making them seem, at a glance; similar to the odd Invasion Galactica Argentinian releases of Estrela Mini-Vehicle: but alas, whereas those are packaging swaps of authentic toys, these aren't.
  • It is uncertain what company Estrela licensed the Bat-Robô molds from, as the only copyright stamps on them are for Estrela itself (which state the toys were physically made in Brazil). In any event, the color schemes Estrela used appear to be unique to South America.
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References

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