Antex

Antex is an Argentinian toy manufacturer, first established in 1975 and still in operation until today.

Presumably, they were the company that held the license to manufacture and market Transformers toys in Argentina, bearing a similar line-up to that of the Brazilian licensee Estrela... Even though the extent to which they always legally had that license is debatable. Like Estrela, they also later became a Hasbro distributor in the Argentinian market.

Overview

Reportedly, Antex acquired the Transformers license second-hand through Estrela instead of going directly to Hasbro. Whether or not Estrela actually had the legal right to do this is questionable, which kind of casts Antex's offerings in a weird light, but there you go. As a result, Antex's Transformers released in the same year (1985) and featured the same distinct logo and character identities as the Estrela version. These toys have different colors from their Estrela cousins... and considerably less quality control, with paint changing colors and poorly-printed, poorly-sticking stickers, which were fairly common to also be used on multiple different toys. The blister cards themselves are also just translated copies of the Estrela cards, featuring even the original art and photographs of the Brazilian versions - despite the fact that these had colors that weren't actually provided by Antex.

Regardless of the legality of Estrela selling the Transformers license to Antex, this ultimately did not seem to affect the latter's capacity to deal directly with Hasbro, as Antex also later distributed imported official Generation 2 toys in the mid-90s, all in their original Hasbro packaging with the addition of Antex stickers. <ref name="fireflight">Carded Generation 2 Aerialbot Fireflight with Antex import sticker at Transformers At The Moon.</ref> They also re-released the Salt-Men in 1994, bearing Generation 2 packaging - although, interestingly, these do not feature the Hasbro logo anywhere on the blister card (unlike the aforementioned imported figures), which again raises questions about just how much autonomy Antex had to perform these releases under the Transformers brand.

For a short while in the early 2010s, carded Antex figures were fairly common on the secondary market and could be bought pretty inexpensively (apparently someone found a lot of unsold ones from a warehouse). This is not really the case anymore, with carded samples now often fetching prices in the triple digits.

Toys

Transformers

Antex's Transformers offerings are significantly fewer in number than Estrela's, with half the Robocars being omitted and the Bat-Robô and Eletrix being nowhere in sight. As with their Brazilian equivalents, each toy comes in two different decos, and on top of that, there are also sticker variations, leading to a fair few combinations if you're really into getting every version of a toy. Interestingly, whereas one of the two decos for each Estrela Robocar was identical to its original Takara / Hasbro versions, the Antex Robocars all feature entirely unique colors - even though, as mentioned, the blister cards feature the same art and photographs as the Estrela versions.

Robocar Camaro (Windcharger) (blue/black or yellow/black) Carrera (Cliffjumper) (white or green) Volks (Bumblebee) (red or orange)

Salt-Man Salt-Man X (red/white or green/white) Salt-Man Z (blue/yellow or black/white)

Robocar Carerra

The Robocars are considered to be the same characters as the Hasbro/Takara versions, as the cardback bios translate to basically the same as the Hasbro bios. The two Salt-Mans (Salt-Men?), however, have unique bios, and are thus considered new characters.

Transformers: Generation 2

As mentioned, after a long gap (during which they simply distributed imported Hasbro toys), Antex released a handful of toys under the Generation 2 banner in 1994. We're as surprised as you are. What isn't surprising is that their unique offerings are from the same batch of molds as their originals!

Robot-Man Robot-Man X (red/yellow or green/white) Robot-Man Z (blue/yellow or black/white)

Robot-Man X

Notes

• Weirdly, Generation 1 Transformers toys were also released in Argentina under two unusual occasions that, as far as we know, have no relation to Antex:
  • Sometime in 1985, a batch of Estrela Minicars started cropping up in some regions with their blister cards crudely cropped off and plastered into new ones, now bearing the logo Invasion Galactica and art of an UFO. More can be read about these releases on their dedicated section in the Estrela page, but in short; it is commonly presumed that this was the result of distributors and retailers repackaging their imported toys to look like domestically-made products in an attempt to evade protectionist laws. <ref>https://www.toyarchive.com/Transformers/Brazilian/Invasion.html</ref>
  • Later in 1987, fellow Argentinan company Comando Toys would also release a pair of official Transformers-branded toys in the country with Radio AM Robot and Walkie Talkie Robot.

References

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External links

• Brazil, Argentina, and Peru Transformers!
• Antex web site