Generation 1 toylines in Latin America
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While most territories throughout the span of the Generation 1 Transformers toyline primarily received the original toys manufactured by Hasbro and Takara (and the few national companies that did get licensing to manufacture their own copies, like Joustra in France and El Greco in Greece, having mostly just produced figures identical to their international counterparts save for a few minor variants), a remarkable set of oddities happened beyond the U.S. border, as Mexico and a handful of South American countries throughout the mid-80s would instead get to manufacture and market their own regional versions of the Generation 1 toyline with official licensing but an otherwise fairly limited oversight on part of Hasbro. The result was a wide variety of small self-contained toylines, frequently sporting exotic variants of existing figures and even sometimes featuring entirely new toys, almost all of which would remain exclusive to their respective countries.
A more elaborate description of each of these toylines and the circumstances behind their releases is present in their companies' respective articles, with the primary interest of this page being in providing a holistic overview of the Latin American Generation 1 scene and a handy comprehensive list of all toys released throughout it.
Overview
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While it's difficult to explain in broad strokes what led to this arrangement, common sense suggests that it was most likely the result of protectionism and tariffs making it difficult for Hasbro to export their products to a good portion of Latin America. The historical conditions that led to this being the case are complex — they're a mixture of post-colonial economics, recurring cycles of political instability, and a general distrust of reliance on the Global North all culminating in a rise of import substitution industrialization policies — but as the broad consensus on the economic history of the region goes:
{{#if:Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America’s historical economic decline <ref>Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America's historical economic decline, Journal of Policy Modeling, Volume 31, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 573-584 (ISSN 0161-8938)</ref>|| “ | According to data compiled by the Fraser Institute, in 1980 Latin American was one of the most protectionist regions in the world; import tariffs across all countries and sectors – including those export sectors with no import tariffs – were, on average, 42 percent. For comparison, at that time average import tariffs were only 15 percent in the so-called East Asian Tigers nations. | ” |
| {{#if:Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America’s historical economic decline <ref>Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America's historical economic decline, Journal of Policy Modeling, Volume 31, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 573-584 (ISSN 0161-8938)</ref>| —Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America’s historical economic decline <ref>Sebastian Edwards, Protectionism and Latin America's historical economic decline, Journal of Policy Modeling, Volume 31, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 573-584 (ISSN 0161-8938)</ref>{{#if:|, {{{3}}}}} }}}} | ||
As a result, the more profitable deal seems to have been handing the Transformers license and some molds over to individual companies within those countries and more or less giving them free reins in terms of manufacturing and selling their own nationally-made Transformers toylines, which Hasbro would then profit from through a royalties agreement. Such an arrangement was not previously unseen in the toy market — for instance; the Kenner Star Wars figures released a couple of years before were also manufactured across a few Latin American countries under a similar licensing deal — but Hasbro seems to have been far, far more liberal in regards to licensing out the Transformers across the region, handing out the brand to significantly more companies and apparently being a lot less strict in regards to how exactly those companies would have to produce and market their Transformers toys.
The result of such an anarchic and decentralized approach was a tapestry of different micro-toylines releasing across the region, with odd toy decos, unusual marketing decisions, and inconsistent quality control and distribution practices becoming defining characteristics of the Latin American leg of the franchise during the 1980s. Mini-Vehicles would get released in every color under the rainbow, characters would get arbitrarily renamed in the absence of any accompanying media, toys made in one country would get repackaged as generic non-Transformers robots in another, figures from other transforming robot toylines would get imported and rebranded as Transformers to fill in the gaps, and at one point, even a literal Transformers knockoff would be sold as a Transformers-branded toy: Truly, these were some wild times for the brand.
Despite - or, rather; because of - this, the Latin American Transformers releases have become some of the most coveted vintage Transformers toys on the secondary market, with the rarity of these figures and their frequently unusual color variants appealing to every kind of collector from casual fans interested in owning odd variants of their favorite characters to hardened completists who *need* to own all the odd variants so as to fulfill their primal toy-gathering urges... Which, inevitably, has also led to most of these toys now fetching ridiculously high prices.
Mexico
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- Main article: IGA
Transformers was released by IGA in Mexico in 1985. From all the Latin American toylines, this would arguably be the most normal one... And yet, it still has a lot of quirks.
For the most part, most 1985 toys are similar to their Hasbro counterparts, though with plenty of minor coloring and molding differences: for instance; Prowl would feature "Policia" decals and a handful of black bits not seen in the Hasbro version, Hoist would feature Trailbreaker's head, and a number of figures like Red Alert and Ratchet would lack paint in a few small spots. The only seriously major variants would come from the Minicars, as Bumblebee and Cliffjumper would get three entirely new extra decos each in blue, white, and silver. As the amount of cost-cutting measures suggest, these figures often had noticeably worse quality control compared to their Hasbro counterparts.
Apparently the line did not do well, and 1986's releases were little more than Metroplex and, perhaps most weirdly, a handful of first-year Mini-Vehicles recolored roughly like their third-year retools — so; Pipes would be a redecoed Huffer, Swerve would be a redecoed Gears, and so on! The line was fully canceled shortly after. A number of these toys somehow ended up in some European markets as parallel imports years after the line was over (most famously, they were imported to Yugoslavia thanks to national toy company Marcanka <ref>New Arrivals - Early July 2014 (Part 4) on htfsquareone.blogspot.com</ref>)... Which is when it was discovered that multiple toys featured lead paint in their deco applications. Oops.
- 1985/1986
Mini-Vehicles
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Autobot Cars
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(with red feet or corrected orange feet) (Trailbreaker head) (reversed arms, then corrected) (no red paint on doors) (regular and re-colored unmodified Bluestreak mold) |
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Jumpstarters
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Dinobots | Autobot Commander
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Autobot City |
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Constructicons
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(giftset, with & without red eyes on Devastator head) |
Triple Changers
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Decepticon Jets
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Decepticon Communicator
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Decepticon Leader
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Brazil
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- Main article: Estrela
Easily the most well-known of the Southern-Hemisphere Transformers releases, Estrela's batch of six Mini-Vehicles — now renamed into "Robocars" — were the bulk of the toys released by the company in 1985. They were put out across Brazilian stores in two colors each, one based on its Hasbro original and one new — save for the mysterious "Bumper" mold, who was part of this assortment (now under the name Sedan) and, due to his lack of a proper The Transformers release, had one of his decos taken from Micro Change instead. The line was filled out with redecoed Jumpstarters called "Salt-Man" ("salto" meaning "jump" in Spanish and Portuguese) and some brand-new transforming robot molds being introduced to Transformers for the first time with the Eletrix and Bat-Robôs, respectively originating from toylines made by Yonezawa Toys and the Asahi Corporation. Unlike most other Latin American licensees, Estrela figures had reasonably passable quality control... Save for their decals, which were often printed on paper and pasted with a very low-quality glue that's plagued with a nasty tendency to liquefy over the years, diluting the stickers in the process. The line also received a vast assortment of merchandise, including its own board game, and was even decorated with a unique regional logo as seen above.
Most coveted among the Estrela toys is a second round of Robocars redecos, the "Optimus vs Malignus" series, which split the toys into brand-new good & evil (respectively) factions. While a lot of Estrela toys like the Salt-Men, the Eletrix, and the Bat-Robôs aren't particularly uncommon, these twelve toys —particularly the more exotically-colored Malignus— have become extraordinarily expensive on the secondary market, easily earning triple-digit sums for even loose samples. Still-carded toys are exceptionally rare.
Estrela would continue working with Hasbro throughout the following years, with the company shifting their focus from distributing rather than manufacturing Transformers toys across Brazil. They would end this relationship in 2007 as Hasbro shifted towards their own South American distribution chains, and a messy decade-long lawsuit would follow regarding royalties over some of the (non-Transformers) Hasbro-derived toylines that Estrela still manufactured.
- 1985
| Robocars | Salt-Man
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Eletrix |
- 1986
| Optimus | Malignus | Bat-Robô <ref>There's some ambiguity as to when exactly the Bat-Robôs were released: On one hand, they feature similar packaging to Estrela's first batch of Transformers figures rather than the later Optimus x Malignus rebranding, but on the other hand, they do not show up on Estrela's 1985 catalog and were only advertised in Brazil's localization of the Transformers comics in issue 11 alongside the Optimus x Malignus toys. As a result, 1986 is generally considered the more tentative date.</ref> |  |
Argentina
[edit]Argentina might have received the greatest variety of Transformers toys in Latin American retail during the Generation 1 toyline, with the original Hasbro-made figures releasing across several Argentinian stores but a pair of national companies also taking on the mantle of manufacturing and distributing their own figures. Even the Brazilian-made Robocars would also enter Argentina... In an unusual way.
Antex
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- Main article: Antex
A bit of an odd case, it appears that Argentine company Antex got its Transformers license from Estrela, rather than Hasbro, which is kind of dubious on the "did Estrela actually have the authority to do that" mark. Antex would then release its own batch of Robocars and Salt-Men, with the packaging being direct translations of their Estrela counterparts, even featuring the same unique Transformers logo. And, of course, most of these would feature entirely new decos, generating yet another assortment of uniquely colored Mini-Vehicles. Antex's quality control was also decent, yet again; save for the decals: while Estrela suffered from poor-quality glue that diluted the stickers, Antex's toys instead suffer from having almost no glue at all, making it very common for these toys to already be missing a couple of stickers even inside the sealed cardbacks.
Similar to their Brazilian counterpart, Antex would go on to officially distribute Transformers toys in the country throughout the 90s, with many imported Generation 2 figures arriving to Argentina with Antex branding on the packaging. Antex would also re-release their Salt-Men during this time as Robot-Man X and Robot-Man Z under Generation 2 packaging, with the toys being unchanged from their original run. A large number of on-card/boxed Antex toys would be found and sold en masse on Ebay and the likes during the early 2010s, making copies of these figures a bit more affordable than most of the South American originals featured here.
- 1985
| Robocars | Salt-Man
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Invasion Galactica
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- Main article: Invasion Galactica
An especially oddball set of releases (which is already saying a lot considering everything else on this page), a handful of the original Estrela-made Robocars would also be roughly repackaged and sold across a few Argentinan stores under new single-side blister cards featuring the name "Invasion Galactica" and generic art of a UFO blasting the characters in their very crudely cut-out Estrela bubbles. These releases might be one of the longest-running mysteries in the entire Transformers franchise: no manufacturing and/or distributor information exists on the packaging and virtually no information about who exactly was responsible for them has ever been discovered, with the most common running theory being that they were the product of national retailers repackaging foreign products to avoid taxation from protectionist laws.
- 1985
| Robocars |  |
Comando Toys
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- Main article: Comando Toys
Another Argentinian toy company, Comando Toys, would also later earn the rights to manufacture and distribute their own Transformers products across the country... And their only fully-fledged transforming toy would consist of a robot that transforms into a working AM radio, originally made by Taiwanese company Best Join as an odd bootleg mish-mashing various disparate elements of Transformers molds. Yes, now repackaged and sold as an official Transformers toy.
On the more merchandise side of things (thus not necessarily a "toy" by this wiki's classification but still worthy of a mention), Comando Toys also released a non-transforming Godmars-based walkie talkie, once again bearing Transformers branding. Weird stuff.
- 1987
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Venezuela
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- Main article: Rubiplas
In contrast with the wide spectrum of colorful Mini-Vehicle releases from all across Latin American, the tiny Venezuelan Rubiplas line is a lot less esoteric, with most figures having the same color schemes as their original Hasbro releases and therefore looking mostly identical save for a frequent lack of extra paint applications and some different shades of plastic (Rubiplas's Bumblebee, for instances, looks very, very bright and saturated as a result). The only real stand-out is their weirdly-colored Huffer, now deco'd in red and yellow.
- 1985
Mini Vehicles
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Peru and Chile
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- Main article: Lynsa
Peruvian company Lynsa made their own cheaper-to-produce versions of the original Mini-Vehicle range, often with less-to-no paint applications, decals or chrome, as well as multiple different color variants for each mold, which they would then both sell domestically and also export to Chile. Another pair of companies - Abramowicz in Chile and BASA / HUDE in Peru - also released Transformers toys in their respective countries, but these were simply imported rather than manufactured by those companies. The Lynsa figures were, thus; a cheaper alternative to these pricier figures.
There are supposedly upwards of three dozen different mold/color combinations altogether, many of them unique to the Peruvian line, but the ravages of time have made samples stunningly rare and reliable information scarce. It does not help that the quality control for these figures was extraordinarily shoddy: thus, if finding Lynsa figures is hard, then finding Lynsa figures that aren't missing a limb or two is even harder.
- 1987
Mini-Vehicles
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Legacy of Latin American toylines
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Odd and inconsistent as they might be, the Latin American Generation 1 toylines were inextricable components of the success of the Transformers brand in their respective countries and are often remembered warmly by fans in these regions: the fact that many of these smaller toylines existed in place of their larger and more substantive international equivalents ultimately didn't stop them from becoming a beloved portion of many childhoods, and likewise, the odd variants and marketing decisions also gave a regional identity of sorts to the brand within those countries. Unfortunately, though, these toylines and their legacy have since been mostly overlooked by modern official Transformers fiction and pretty much all but ignored by Hasbro and Takara when it comes to the modern Transformers toy market.
References to Latin American-original characters in media are not completely unseen, but rarely have they received more development besides small cameos. Estrela's Malignus faction would show up as a revolutionary mob in a few 2008 TransTech text stories, and later, the Beast Wars: Uprising text stories released from 2014 to 2016 would feature both the Optimus and Malignus as more prominent factions in a handful of chapters. Comando Toys' Radio AM Robot would also be briefly namedropped as an in-universe musician in the 2010 "A Team Effort" Wings Universe story. All of these were part of the very niche and fan-oriented works published by Fun Publications (usually under the Transformers Timelines banner) and were usually only either posted online or, sometimes, in the subscription-based Transformers Collectors' Club magazine. Estrela's Pick-Up and Camaro would inspire the color schemes of Shattered Glass Swerve and Tailgate, two characters that would, again; only get minor appearances mostly in the form of Fun Publications' text stories. On the side of media that received more "mainstream" releases, a number of cameos from Transformers Animated are also based on the Latin American portion of the franchise - Sedan, Volks, and Carrera all got brief "blink-it-and-you'll-miss-it" appearances as background characters - and later, Sedan would also get a mini-cameo in Kreon form in the Transformers Legends Special Chapter, the Bat-Robô version of Pick-Up would briefly show up in A Cliffjumper(s) Tale and... This is basically about it.
Modern toys
[edit]Despite the fact that there have been numerous Transformers toylines (and, in a sense, a nearly two-decades-long meta-toyline!) specifically oriented around producing modern versions of older Transformers, with all of the original characters that received Latin American toy variants getting multiple new figures, and numerous obscure and forgotten characters frequently popping up across these newer toylines — often in the form of redecos and retools — it might come off as a surprise that virtually none of the Latin American Transformers have been directly represented in this form. There are two modern toys which can kinda be repurposed as Latin American homages, though the extent to which this is even intentional is debatable to begin with: "Puffer", a nickname given to both the Mexican IGA and earlier French Joustra versions of Pipes which use the Huffer mold as a basis, was later canonized as an official character and released as part of the Kingdom toyline in 2021... Even though the version he's primarily based on is his lighter blue European counterpart rather than his darker Mexican equivalent. And Titans Return Twin Twist would get re-released in the 2022 Transformers: Legacy Wreck N' Rule Collection in his red and blue Diaclone color scheme, which also happens to be the one instance of a Diaclone Jumpstarter color scheme that Estrela reused for Salt-Man Z in Brazil, so... There's that as a small, potentially even unintentional double-homage for all the Estrela fans out there. To make this sting even more, there have been numerous modern figures based on other regional permutations of Generation 1, so the Latin American branch feels particularly neglected by Hasbro.
Unfortunately, it seems that we're still a long way from seeing a complete CHUG Optimus and Malignus team or a Masterpiece Radio AM Robot. But until then, we can at least take comfort in the fact that, as far as the first half of the 2020s is concerned, there have been 200% more characters that can double as homages to their South American counterparts compared to previous years, so who knows what the future might hold!
See also
[edit]- Category:South American-original characters
- Grendene, a Brazilian shoe brand responsible for the Grendene Transformers watch (and also the sole post-Lynsa instance of a regular transforming Transformers toy being exclusive to Latin America)
- Beyond standard toys, multiple Latin American companies would also produce Transformers merchandise:
- Karsten, a Brazilian textiles company that made home decor sets for Estrela's Transformers toyline.
- Multibrink, another Brazilian company that made assorted merchandise for the 2015 Robots in Disguise franchise.
- Garoto, a Brazilian chocolatier that made merchandise for Dark of the Moon.
- D'elicce, another Brazilian chocolatier that made evergreen-style Transformers merchandise