Estrela

Making children happy, and parents broke!

Estrela is a popular Brazilian toy manufacturer, being first founded in São Paulo in 1937 and remaining active until today.

They are best known internationally for holding the license to produce and market multiple Hasbro toylines during the 1980s like GI Joe (under the localized name of Comandos em Ação, i.e., "Commandos in Action") and, of course, The Transformers. Although much of the Transformers mainline was ignored by Estrela, their aforementioned freedom to manufacture their own toys during this time resulted in multiple variants of existing molds - and even some entirely unique ones! - that remained exclusive to the Brazilian market.

Estrela also distributed most Transformers toylines in the country up until Cybertron, being later replaced by Hasbro's own Brazilian subsidiary.

Overview

Estrela's approach to localizing The Transformers was somewhat unusual. The cartoon would only premiere on Brazilian airwaves in 1986, however; Estrela decided to preemptively release their Transformers line in 1985, a year before domestic audiences had been introduced to the characters. This line was mainly made up of a small handful of molds from the Hasbro line (primarily Mini Vehicles and Jumpstarters), supplemented with larger toys licensed from other companies, and it was further bulked up by giving most toys two different decos. Notably, this line made repeated use of the "Bumper" mold that was extremely rare in the US, and not released as a Transformer at all in Japan. The fact that there was no known fiction for these figures within the Brazilian market left Estrela to name them after their alternate molds instead - and thus, the Bumblebee mold become known known as Volks, the Cliffjumper mold as Carrera, and so on. The Topspin and Twin Twist molds were also renamed into, respectively; Salt-Man X and Z. The lack of a pre-established mythology also meant that this first batch of toys did not have faction insignia, instead featuring stickers identical to the original Microchange versions of their respective molds.

Estrela's second batch of Transformers toys, generally known as "Optimus vs. Malignus", are their most well-known outside of Brazil. The six "Robocar" molds were trotted out again, each one getting two new color schemes, but this time they were split into proper good-vs-evil factions. These releases are particularly rare, and even loose samples are expensive, especially the (generally more gorgeous) Malignus.

Other figures released under the Transformers brand by Estrela include the auto-transforming Bat-Robô figures with pullback motors (three years before the American line did the same!), the also auto-transforming Eletrix figures that doubled as rudimentary remote-controlled vehicles (thirty five years before Robosen kind of did the same with uh, just slightly higher quality), and... This was it, the entirety of Estrela's Transformers toyline. Noticeably absent from this list is nearly every single major Transformers character, therefore depriving the country of some of the most important figures like Optimus Prime, Megatron, the Seekers, the Dinobots, the Diaclone Car Robots-derived characters like Prowl, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker et al., and many, many, many more.

The fiction of the toyline is... fuzzy. The cardback bios for the Robocars are direct Portuguese translations of their base molds' Hasbro bios (with the obvious exception of Bumper-mold Sedan), thus this wiki places those toys as those already-established characters. However, the Salt-Men have unique bios, placing them as all-new characters. Every other toy lacks a bio. While this is not so big a deal when it comes to the Bat-Robo and Eletrix (who have no Transformers analogues whatsoever), things get hinky when it comes to the Optimus and Malignus, who use the same names as their Robocar forebears; for simplicity (or as close as this can generally get), this wiki treats all of the Optimus and Malignus as new characters. Odder still, none of the pre-Optimus/Malignus toys or packaging featured any faction symbols, so their allegiance is mostly conjecture, but between the re-use of "Autobot" character bios on "Autobot" molds and they all use the "Autobot" style packaging, plus the lack of any indication in what bios exist that any of the toys are villains, the general fandom assumption (and wiki default placement) is "Autobot".

Toys

Transformers

Robocars Camaro (Windcharger) Carrera (Cliffjumper) Jipe (Brawn) Pick-Up (Gears) Sedan Volks (Bumblebee)		Salt-Man Salt-Man X Salt-Man Z		Bat-Robô Pick-Up Turbo		Eletrix Esporte Jipe Porsche		Eletrix Esporte Malignus Camaro
Optimus Carrera Sedan Volks		Malignus Camaro Jipe Pick-Up

Notes

Robots in disguise in disguise.

• Estrela's Sedan, Camaro, and Pick-Up were also sold in Argentina in 1985 under unusual circumstances. The toys and their bubbles were manually cut off the Transformers branded cards and then attached to new cards featuring the logo "Invasion Galactica" and art of a flying saucer. The original design of the Transformers cards was still plainly visible beneath the bubble, with the distinct red background elements now depicted as part of a newly-drawn fireball. Collectors from South America have long maintained that these packaging swaps were done by legitimate retailers and toy stores in Argentina, who were attempting to find a way to move their Transformers merchandise during a time when protectionist laws forbade selling products that had been manufactured in foreign countries.
• In other odd news, reportedly toy company Antex got the license to release Transformers in Argentina from Estrela, not from Hasbro directly. Whether or not Estrela actually had the legal right to do so is... questionable. But regardless, they didn't seem to suffer for it.

See also

• Antex
• Multibrink
• Category:South American-original characters

External links

• Estrela (official site)
• Brazilian Transformers at the Super Toy Archive