Turbo (G1)

This article is about . For other uses of "Turbo", see Turbo (disambiguation)|The name or term "Turbo" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Turbo (disambiguation).}}
Turbo is (possibly) an Autobot from the Estrela portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Ay, I’m flyin’ here!

Turbo is a Bat-Robô. He goes vroom, crashes, and then becomes an invincible robot!

Sometimes he sounds like he's from Brooklyn.

Fiction

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Obscurest street fight in history.

TransTech

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In Axiom Nexus, the offworlder zone for extra-dimensional travellers on TransTech Cybertron, Turbo was a member of the Malignus Revolutionary Army. The Malignus were a band of street toughs and minor criminals, but ultimately amounted to little more than a nuisance to the Security Administration and Freelance Police Legion.

On one occasion, Turbo was playing scraps with Jipe and the boys when two punks came in looking for a bot named Bug Bite. Turbo told them to slag off until the kid named Bad Boy tried to get rough with him. The scrappy little punk blindsided him with a right cross! The two rough-housed for awhile until Turbo was impressed with the kid's chops, and gave the GoBots the info they was looking for. Withered Hope

Toys

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Transformers

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File:Estrela-BatRobôTurbo.jpg
UUHHH, FLEX YOUR MUSCLES! FLEX YOUR MUSCLES! BE HARD! BE STRONG! (Note the wet-looking stickers in the blue version's vehicle mode)
  • Turbo (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>)
Released only in Brazil by Estrela, Turbo transforms into a Nissan Fairlady 300ZX <ref>https://ameblo.jp/56780-05/entry-12553017556.html</ref>, sharing his engineering and play pattern with his wavemate Pick-Up. The toy features a friction-driven pull-back motor, which, as part of its gimmick, is used to trigger its transformation. After pulling it back, the car drives forward until it hits something with its front bumper, whereupon it springs up into robot mode and then will roll back the other way as a robot.
His transformation is straightforwardly basic, with his arms spreading out on impact and the car's entire greenhouse being impulsed forward to reveal his legs. As it might almost seem self-evident from photos of this toy, he has virtually no articulation beyond being able to wiggle his arms up and down.
Unfortunately, as with Pick-Up (and, albeit to a less noticeable extent, the Eletrix), the adhesive in his stickers has a rather poor quality, and as a result, most copies of these toys will have usually already lost them a long while back. To make things worse, this glue also tends to liquefy with time, which results in most stickers that have somehow managed to hold onto their original figures being stained by a "wet" look that dissipates the original colors of the graphic details. <ref>A post on the decay of the Bat-Robô stickers, as well as a restoration attempt with repro stickers, from user David Nery in the Transformers Nova Cybertron Facebook group.</ref> While neither Turbo nor Pick-Up are particularly rare or expensive toys within the Brazilian secondary market, the sticker decay means that it is very, very difficult to find either of them in pristine condition.
Turbo was released simultaneously in red/light grey and blue/dark grey color schemes. It is unknown which, if either, is more difficult to come by.


Notes

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Congratulations, you've navigated through enough obscure pages on TFWiki that you've discovered a rare overlooked toy that was simultaneously both a Transformer and a GoBot.
  • The Turbo mold, much like his Bat-Robô brother Pick-Up, has a long and complicated history. More can be read here, but the gist of it is that these were originally made in Japan by the Asahi Corporation in 1984 but were actually first sold as the Pow-R-Trons by the Ertl Company in 1985, with Asahi only later launching their own toyline featuring these molds with Attack Change Machine Powertron.
    • Eventually, sometime in 1993, they would also make their way to fellow Brazilian toy manufacturer Glasslite, which would release Turbo as Turborg and Pick-Up as Blocker under the Crash Tron label as part of the Mutante toyline - which was, in itself, a localization of the GoBots (albeit it's still up in the air just how official this localization was), meaning that the Brazlian market actually saw the same toy being released as both a Transformer and a GoBot!
      • In the 2000s, Glasslite would even re-release these same molds now under the "Crashmon" name as part of their localized Digimon toyline. What do robots that transform into cars have to do with Digimon? Absolutely nothing, but really, who's gonna stop Glasslite from making the weirdest and most nonsensical choices in terms of toy repurposing... Besides themselves, as they sadly went bankrupt in 2005, right before giving us Gundam kits repurposed as Disney princesses or something of that sort.
  • 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 (as is the "BAT ROBÔ" sticker, obviously).
  • Due to the lack of faction symbols on the toy or packaging, it is not explicit what faction Turbo fights for. However, the toy does use Hasbro's Autobot style packaging, so we're going to default to Autobot (at least, outside of Axiom Nexus; the Bat-Robôs were not sold under the Optimus / Malignus series).
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References

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