Deluxe Vehicle

The Deluxe Vehicles are an Autobot subgroup from the toyline portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

My god. Think of the children!

The Deluxe Vehicles are a duo of Autobots individually known by the names Roadbuster and Whirl. They are members of the Wreckers.

Toys

Whirl's (actually fairly cool) toy.

The Transformers

• Deluxe Vehicles (1985)
  • Roadbuster
  • Whirl

The Deluxe Vehicles were originally designed by Takatoku Toys for the Special Armored Battalion Dorvack toyline, in turn based on the anime series of the same name from Ashi Productions. Roadbuster is a redeco of the "Mugen Calibur" (ムゲンキャリバー) toy and Whirl is one of the "Ovelon Gazzette" (オベロンガゼット) toy. They feature larger size and greater complexity than most of the Transformers toys of their time.

Notes

Not so much a "robot mode" as a "random pile of tank parts" mode.

• The original molds of both Deluxe Vehicles were created by Takatoku Toys, and were bought along with the rest of company after its bankruptcy in 1984 by Bandai. Bandai in turn licensed the molds to Hasbro for inclusion in their 1985 Generation 1 line-up. However, in the Japanese market, Bandai was the main competitor of Takara, which meant Takara would not include them in their version of the toyline. Since Hasbro and Takara shared the cartoon as promotional material for the toyline, the Deluxe Vehicles were not included in its cast. They also were omitted from the US Marvel comics but appeared in the UK Marvel comics, albeit with a low profile, despite their toys not actually being released in the UK.
• The Special Armored Battalion Dorvack line contains a third transforming robot that was not inserted to Generation 1, "Bonaparte Tulcas" (ボナパルトタルカス). Presumably, this absence was because the toy has a far less convincing robot mode than the other two. A third "tank" Deluxe Vehicle was mentioned in Hasbro documents about the 1985 characters that came to light in 2010, meaning Tulcas was considered for inclusion in the line at some stage. A character based on Bonaparte Tulcas eventually did appear as a cameo in the 2014 Fun Publications story "Hoist the Flag", dubbed by Ask Vector Prime as "Headcannon".
• For that matter, the less humanoid look of Whirl might have something to do with the fact that, until More than Meets the Eye, he was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less featured in stories than Roadbuster.
• To maximise both their own profits and their figures' place in the domestic marketplace, Takatoku Toys struck up a relationship with the less renowned manufacturer Mark, whereby the latter would produce cheap, knockoff-quality versions of these figures. Due to some sort of crazy loophole, the rights to these cheap versions remained with Mark after Takatoku folded, and simple versions of a number of the Takatoku figures were licensed to another American manufacturer, Select. They used them for the cash-in Convertors line, which was on sale at more or less the same time the real things were in the Transformers line. This is where all those little plastic Roadbusters and Whirls you see on eBay come from...