Yonezawa Toys
Yonezawa Toys (米澤玩具) was formerly one of the largest toy companies in Japan, before being purchased by Sega in 1991 to merge into Sega-Yonezawa and finally rebranding into the still-active Sega Fave Corporation.
Their interaction with the Transformers franchise is relatively brief, producing three pre-Transformers toys that were only released once under the Transformers brand in Brazil - however; when it comes to the broader history of transforming robots as a toy genre, there's more to them than meets the eye.
Overview
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Yonezawa was founded in the 1950s, arising out of the ashes of a Japanese economy devastated by the Second World War. They quickly established themselves with a major presence in the then-emerging Japanese toy market, being one of the first manufacturers to pioneer electronic and radio-controlled toys. Eventually, a lot of their products would get exported globally, both through other distributors and their own international Yonezawa Corporation brand.
Yonezawa was especially famous for their battery-operated tin robots, featuring gimmicks like walking, flashing lights, or smoking. Among these robots was "Space Explorer", released in red and black decos, which started as a box roughly approximating the appearance of a TV set, then automatically unfolded and stood up to reveal a robot. Released in 1968, seven years before [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Brave Raideen|{{#if:||Brave Raideen}}]], this would make it quite possibly the earliest “transforming” robot toy.
Sometime during the early 80s, parallel to the then-emerging Japanese trend of robots that transform into realistic vehicles with Takatoku's Macross and Takara's Diaclone Car Robot and Micro Change toys, Yonezawa released their remote-controlled, battery-operated series of transforming toy cars with the Remote Change Robo Series (リモートチェンジ ロボシリーズ). These featured super-deformed versions of a Nissan Fairlady Z, Toyota Land Cruiser, and Porsche 911 - respectively named into "Fairlady & Robo", "Lancru & Robo", and "Porsche & Robo" - that'd transform from their alternate modes and back with the push of two buttons on a small controller that was attached to the toys with a cord. They were re-released in multiple countries across the world, including in the U.S. by Village Toys as the Convert-A-Bots "Pow-R-Bots" (a toyline that, interestingly, would also feature a licensed pre-Transformers version of Shockwave), and eventually; arrived to Brazil through Estrela as the 1985 Eletrix figures in their regional version of The Transformers.
Yonezawa moulds released as Transformers
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Remote Change Robo Series
[edit]- Esporte - "Fairlady & Robo", identical besides minor sticker changes
- Jipe - "Lancru & Robo", identical besides minor sticker changes
- Porsche - "Porsche & Robo", identical besides minor sticker changes
Notes
[edit]- Beyond the Remote Change Robo Series, Yonezawa manufactured a handful of other transforming 'bots during this time which have a slight bit of interaction with other pre-Transformers toys. These included "Jet & Robo", a battery-operated robot that auto-transforms into a jet (which has a pretty similar head to Omega Supreme, leading to the yet unsolved question of who exactly plagiarized who!); "Daijim", a manually-transforming toy with a walking motion that converts into an offroad truck, and "Safari Robo", a manually-transforming toy that surprisingly lacks any battery-operated functions and also transforms into an offroad truck. All of these would be featured in the British pre-Transformers Grandstand Convertors toyline - releasing alongside an early Omega Supreme and multiple Diaclone figures - with Jet & Robo earning the name of "Deltatron" and, keeping in line with the Greek alphabet motif, Daijim and Safari Robo earning the names of... "Betatron" and "Sigmatron". No, this is not a joke <ref>Grandstand Convertors catalogue at Retromash.com</ref>, and no, no one will find it funny in any era past mid-2020s internet brainrot humor, so cherish this moment.
See also
[edit]- Asahi Corporation, another Japanese company whose toys were adopted by Estrela as part of the Brazilian Transformers toyline