Meiji

{{#ifeq: ||}}{{#ifeq: |File|}}

Meiji is a Japanese candy and snack company, probably best known to Westerners as the makers of "Hello Panda" and "Chocorooms" snacks.

In 1988 they teamed up with Takara to produce a pair of candy toy lines based on the Transformers spin-off series Beastformers.

Merchandise

Meiji Chocoball Beastformers

A series of super-deformed mini-toys, two per box, packed in with chocolate-covered malt balls. Each character could be found in red, blue or green plastic, representing the Fire, Water and Wood elements (even though they still had a rubsign). All of the Meiji Beastformers come with a different Beastformer's weapon attached to their shoulder by a snippable sprue. The box interior was printed with rules for playing various games with the toys, plus some short character bios for the toys that came in each box.

These figures were also sold directly by Takara in their own candy-toy line, and in gachapon machines.

1 - White Leo 2 - Flykick 3 - Hedgehog 4 - Badshark 5 - Bowdog

6 - Rabbit Kid 7 - Bluehorse 8 - Giader 9 - Violethorn 10 - Bombsheep

11 - Deaspider 12 - Crabhit 13 - Killer Fish 14 - Devilbat 15 - Alligatron

16 - Beafox 17 - Flying Attacker 18 - Platinum Tiger 19 - Koala Gray 20 - Zebra Ball

Beastformers Ramune Battle Card

A set of randomly-packed gold-foil "Battle Cards" packed with ramune-flavored candy tablets. These cards feature the painted character art from each character's original bio card on the front, with severely truncated character bios and rules/ data for the game from the Meiji chocoball SD figures' packaging.

While the cardbacks from cards #21-40 show line-art of SD-styled Beastformers toys for the characters on the front, no such toys were actually produced.

1 - White Leo 2 - Flykick 3 - Hedgehog 4 - Badshark 5 - Bowdog 6 - Rabbit Kid 7 - Bluehorse 8 - Giader 9 - Violethorn 10 - Bombsheep

11 - Deaspider 12 - Crabhit 13 - Killer Fish 14 - Devilbat 15 - Alligatron 16 - Beafox 17 - Flying Attacker 18 - Platinum Tiger 19 - Koala Gray 20 - Zebra Ball

21 - Big Serow 22 - Golder 23 - Snakebomb 24 - Drillfrog 25 - Elephan 26 - Graysharp 27 - Grayox 28 - Rabbit Kid 29 - Power Jaguar 30 - Bonga

31 - Wildthunder 32 - Yellow Giraffe 33 - Iguanamonss 34 - Brown Gyro 35 - Wavemoose 36 - Green Chameles 37 - Jungaroo 38 - Power Nozzle 39 - Beavop 40 - Cobrander

Notes

• The strange old man from the Famicom Transformers: Mystery of Convoy video game bears an uncanny resemblance to Karl Ojisan (カールおじさん, "Uncle Karl"), the mascot for Meiji's "Karl" snacks; notably, the music that plays in his room is very similar to "Iimondanafurusatoha" (いいもんだな故郷は, "It's Nice to be Home"), the song played in commercials featuring the character. That said, if it is meant to be Uncle Karl, it's not clear why he's here, as we don't know of any such cross-promotions attached to this game. Maybe someone on the dev team was feeling silly.

External links

• Meiji Beastformers TV commercial on YouTube