Generation 1 (Japanese toyline)
 |
| |||||||||||||||
Takara took Hasbro's lead and brought the new universe of living robots to Japan in 1985, where it was a massive success. Despite many/most of the toys having been available just a year or two prior, the new story and cartoon propelled Transformers sales far beyond those of the lines that the toys originally came from. Diaclone and Micro Change were quickly discarded in favor of the new hotness as kids ate up this new take on the giant robot genre, one that was a fresh change from the sheer amount of "piloted mecha" robot toylines/cartoons out prior.
The line started very parallel with Hasbro's offerings, but over time the two companies pursued some pretty different visions for the brand... and then swung back closer together before finally ending in 1992. Transformers would not be back on Japanese toy shelves until 1995, when the short-lived G-2 toyline would hit.
Takara Super Robot Lifeform Transformers line
Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers (1985-1990)
- Main article: Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers (toyline)
Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers was the overarching branding for the Transformers line in Japan all the way up to 1992, and was in fact the only consistent branding for every year up until 1990, despite the corresponding cartoons using a variety of unique secondary titles, some of which were reflected on some (but not all) of those years' toys.
Takara launched the Transformers brand in 1985, a year later than Hasbro, and released most of the products from Hasbro's 1984 and 1985 offerings during its initial year. Some toys weren't sold due to being made by rival companies (particularly Bandai) or other licensing issues; a few were simply delayed until the following year, others were relegated to mail-aways, and a small number just never happened at all, for no discernible reasons. By and large, what was released was identical to the Hasbro releases, save for having fully-functional spring-loaded launchers (due to differing safety standards in Japan), and a few notable color variants, namely a "NASA"-themed Astrotrain and an unchromed, blue-accented, cannon-less Megatron.
By the second year, Takara had mostly caught up with Hasbro, releasing a few stragglers not included in the 1985 line-up as well as the vast majority of Hasbro's 1986 offerings. This year's product was almost completely identical to the Hasbro 1986 line, from releases to colors, mostly minus Sky Lynx due to mold licensing issues. A considerable number of toys featured an additional "Scramble City" branding on their packaging, marketing them as part of the eponymous play pattern that was advertized by an original video animation. Meanwhile, toys that are commonly associated with Transformers 2010, the Japanese dub of season 3 of the original cartoon, featured no additional branding at all.
1987 featured the toys accompanying the first Japanese-only follow-up anime, The Headmasters. It was during this year that Takara took its first steps in breaking away from Hasbro's line. While most of the line is pretty dang identical to the US line, Takara added a large number of extra toys to its line: the previously-unused Diaclone Trainbots, retooled and redecoed prior toys like Twincast, Soundblaster, Stepper and Artfire, and even the all-new-mold Autobot Master Warriors and W Cassettebots. Contrary to the anime itself, only the toys that were actually Headmasters featured an additional "The Headmasters" branding on their packaging, while Targetmaster figures featured an additional "Targetmaster" branding instead, and two combiner teams even featured the "Scramble City" branding again. Another big and odd addition is that the Beastformers, released by Hasbro as a standalone toy line (named "Battle Beasts") from the get-go, were initially released by Takara in Transformers-branded packaging before they became their own thing in Japan as well.
1988 was the year that Takara really took Transformers in its own direction, accompanied by the second Japanese-original anime series, Super-God Masterforce. While the toyline mostly featured the same sculpts as the Hasbro line, many were given new decos, and portrayed as completely different characters (namely, the Powermasters were dubbed the Godmasters, and like the new Headmasters were humans who piloted unliving robot Transtectors). The line also tossed in a few new items, most importantly the colossal Decepticon double-Godmaster Overlord. This series was also the first one to release a female character toy, the Headmaster Junior Minerva. She'd then be the only one for the better part of a decade. Similar to previous years' offerings, the "Super-God Masterforce" branding appeared nowhere on the toys' packaging, with the exception of two role-play items. Instead, various sub-brandings such as "Godmaster", "Pretenders", "Seacons" and the previous year's "The Headmasters" are used to identify specific toy gimmicks.
By 1989, Takara's direction of the Transformers brand had diverged so far from Hasbro's that the Japanese toy line was almost completely different from what Hasbro's markets received that year, accompanied by the third and final fully-fledged Japanese-original anime, Victory. The majority of the line-up was made up of all-new sculpts unique to Japan (although one of them also saw release in Italy, of all places), with the rest filled out by significant retoolings of Hasbro-released sculpts. Combiners were a major focus, with four combiner teams in the central cast, and the huge Autobot leader Star Saber combining with his own jet-base as well as another huge bot to become an absolutely massive warrior. Once again, the "Victory" branding appeared nowhere on the toys' packaging, which instead featured gimmick-specific sub-brandings such as "Brainmaster", "Multiforce", "Crossformers", "Dinoforce" and "Breastforce".
As the Hasbro US line was winding down in 1990, Takara kept going, but Transformers's star was fading in Japan as well. For the first time, the toy line-up was no longer backed by a TV-aired cartoon, instead relying on a single OVA and magazine layouts to advertise it. While the new sculpts continued with the three larger Powered Masters taking center stage, the rest of the line was Micro Transformers, and only some of them were redecoed from Hasbro's releases. The Destron presence was also severely cut back, on the theory that kids were way more interested in buying "good guy" toys. (Japanese toylines in general tend to be light on the villains.) Thus all but one of the Hasbro Decepticon Patrols were changed into Cybertrons for Japan, and the only large villain is Metrotitan, a redecoed Metroplex. Gimmick-specific sub-brandings for this year were "Micro Transformers" and "Micro Transformers Powered Masters" (plus a re-release of the 1987 Trainbots, now with their own "Trainbots" sub-branding), while the actual "Zone" branding only appears on a single product that includes the aforementioned OVA.
1991 featured the first actual fully-fledged subline that can be considered such, seeing as the title Return of Convoy not only appeared consistently on all of that year's toys' packaging, but was also presented on equal footing with the main Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers title. In keeping with tradition, though, the corresponding fiction (namely, magazine spreads and a one-shot comic) was not titled "Return of Convoy", but rather "The Battlestars", the name of the series' main hero team. Return of Convoy took a grab at nostalgia in an attempt to stave off cancellation. Optimus Prime was brought back as "Star Convoy", and even came with a Micromaster version of Hot Rod. They were backed up by a handful of new molds, including a six-Micromaster super robot combiner but most of the small line was recycled Micromasters and Micromaster Combiners in their Hasbro decos, all as Autobots.
Destrons were completely excised from the line this year. While a reborn "Super Megatron" was presented as the primary villain in-fiction, no toy was ever made.
Operation Combination (1992)
The final series of Japan's "Generation 1", Operation Combination played up combiners, which were popular toys in Takara's concurrently-running (and TV-cartoon-backed) non-Transformers "Brave" giant robot lines, effectively competing against themselves. The Destrons were back, but a bit outnumbered.
The two stars of the line are Guard City and Battle Gaia, redecos of Defensor and Bruticus respectively, and two of the most expensive-on-the-secondary-market items in the entire Japanese "G1" line due to their incredible scarcity. Four more Cybertron Micromaster six-teams and a set of four "Vs" sets, straight re-packs of the smaller European-line Turbomasters and Predators, filled out the Japanese Transformers franchise's swan-song.
