Antex
Antex was the company that held the license to manufacture and market Transformers toys in Argentina.
Unusually, Antex acquired the Transformers license second-hand through the Brazilian licensee Estrela, instead of going directly to Hasbro. Whether or not Estrela 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 featured the same distinct logos 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. It's fairly common for stickers to also be used on multiple different toys.
In addition, Antex also distributed imported Hasbro toys in Hasbro packaging.[1]
For a short while in the early 2010s, carded Robocars 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 back up in the triple-digits.
Toys
Transformers
Antex's Transformers offerings are far fewer in number than Estrela's. The numbers were slightly inflated by giving each toy two different decos. 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.
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Transformers: Generation 2
Yes, after a long gap (during which they may have possibly simply distributed imported Hasbro toys), Antex released a handful of toys under the Generation 2 banner. 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!
Salt-Man
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References
- ↑ Carded Generation 2 Aerialbot Fireflight with Antex import sticker at Transformers At The Moon.
