Estrela
Estrela is a company that held the license to manufacture and market Generation 1 toys in Brazil in the 1980s.
Estrela's 1985 Transformers line is 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. The line 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. None of the toys or packaging featured any faction symbols, so the toys' allegiance is mostly conjecture, but they are mostly "Autobot" molds and they all use the "Autobot" style packaging, so this wiki defaults to "Autobot".
But what most know Estrela for is their second batch of Transformers toys, generally known as "Optimus vs. Malignus." 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.
Who-is-who can be fuzzy at best, thanks to Estrela's habit of name re-use. The cardback bios for the "Robocars" are direct Portuguese translations of their base molds (with the obvious exception of Bumper-mold Sedan), placing them firmly as those established characters, but the lack of bios on the same-name larger toys and Optimus/Malignus leaves things ambiguous. (The Salt-Men are certainly their own characters with unique bios.)
Toys
Transformers
| Robocars | Salt-Man | Bat-Robô | Eletrix |  | ||||
| Optimus | Malignus |
Notes
- 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 taped onto new cards featuring the logo "Invasion Galactica" and art of a flying saucer. Fragments of the original Transformers packaging art would still be visible beneath the cut edges of the bubbles. As of 2021 it is still unknown who carried out these card substitutions or if any legitimate license-holder was involved.
See also
External links
- Brazilian Transformers at the Super Toy Archive
