The name or term "Robots in Disguise" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Robots in Disguise (disambiguation).
The TakaraCar Robots toyline, brought to the West as Robots in Disguise, marked a turning point for the Transformers franchise in both markets, both as the end of the "Beast Era" and the return of more "traditional" franchise elements... though the two companies differed in just how many elements they brought back.
Both lines are predominantly filled with robots that transform into realistic (or close enough) modern-day Earth vehicles, though a significant number of villains become robotic beasts. The classic Autobot symbol made its return, but the Decepticons would only appear in the Hasbro version of the line.
Though the toyline struggled in Japan (leading to another year-long gap in Transformers product there), it was a rousing success in Hasbro's markets, continuing well past its normal retail life through a number of store exclusives.
At the end of the 1990s, Transformers was floundering in Japan. Though the original Beast Wars toyline had reinvigorated the franchise there just as it had in the US, Takara's follow-ups/fillers Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo failed to retain its kid audience, to the point where the Beast Wars Metals series, aka "the Transmetal toys and the last two seasons of the Mainframecartoon" couldn't gain purchase. While Hasbro would continue the Beast theme with Beast Machines, Takara decided to change direction.
A new toyline for the new millennium, 2000's Car Robots focused on modern-day Earth vehicles. The "headliners" of the line are all new-mold toys, with some redecorated toys from previous lines (most of which had not been released in Japan previously). The line is marked by an extremely wide variation in quality, complexity, realism, and posability. At one end of the spectrum were fairly simple designs from previous lines, such as the Commandos and Spy Changers. On the flip side, most of Takara's original mold designs were extremely complex, with the three Autobot Brothers carrying on the clearest lineage from Neo in their rather fiddly shellformer designs, and the larger toys utilizing a variety of oddball combination methods.
When the Transtech toyline concept was dropped, Hasbro needed additional time to develop a new franchise to follow the Beast Era. To prevent there being a gap in Transformers product on store shelves for the better part of a year, Hasbro ported over the ready-to-go Car Robots line, rebranding it as Transformers: Robots in Disguise. The line was filled out with other readily-available molds as new characters. Hasbro also made the classic Transformers branding more overt, applying faction symbols to the characters' vehicle modes (Car Robots kept the symbols to robot mode), and rebranded the Combatron sub-faction as Decepticons.
As sales rose and more toys were needed, Hasbro added in still more redecorated toys to pad the line out toward its end. By the time all was said and done, Robots in Disguise included molds from Generation 1, Generation 2, Beast Wars, Machine Wars, and Beast Machines—in other words, every American toyline that had been produced to that point. Several cancelled/delayed/unproduced molds from previous lines were brought out as well, such as Air Attack Optimus Primal. This led to a big surge in store exclusive releases in a shift from the preceding "Beast Era" lines.
Robots in Disguise was the first (and thus far, only) time an existing Japanese line was brought over wholesale to the U.S. The line was met with a generally positive reception by fans (particularly those who'd found the Car Robots import prices to be more than they were willing to dish out), and more importantly the line sold well to kids, setting up the upcoming Armada line with a nice receptive audience.
Following the end of the Robots in Disguise line's general retail assortments and the launch of its successor, Transformers: Armada, Hasbro continued using the Robots in Disguise branding for store exclusives. While those had only been isolated occurrences under previous lines (the original Generation 1 line had the Kmart exclusive "Legends" versions of Bumblebee, Jazz, Grimlock and Starscream in 1989; the entirety of the short-lived 1997 Machine Wars line was exclusive to KB Toys; Beast Wars had a Walmart exclusive blue redeco of TransmetalRattrap in 1999, and Tripredacus Agent in 2001; and Beast Machines had the Target exclusive Magmatroncombiner in 2000), Robots in Disguise made store exclusives a much more common phenomenon, with some of them even being available in markets outside the United States. While all the 2002 exclusives still featured the original Robots in Disguise packaging design, the 2003 releases instead adopted the overall template also used for Armada packaging (but still retained the Robots in Disguise branding), with the last batch of KB Toys exclusives even using the colors from the packaging of the Armada line's subline imprintThe Unicron Battles.
The Dreadwing/Smokejumper two-pack and the Destructicons Bludgeon and Scourge were also available in the United Kingdom, complete with European packagaging, instead exclusive to Toys"R"US stores.
Sonokong Car Bot toyline
In 2003, Takara-licensor Sonokong imported the Car Robots line into the Korean market as Jeonguiui Yongsa: Car Bot (정의의 용사 카봇, "Brave Heroes of Justice: Car-Bots"). For the most part, these imports followed the Japanese toy line, with only cosmetic changes on the boxes. At the tail end of the line, however, Sonokong repackaged several Destrons from the older Korean Beast-War line in Car Bot boxes; the toys themselves were unchanged, which meant that the figures who were sold as heroic Cybertrons still had the Predacon insignia on them. While most of these re-releases had new names, the Sonokong line also re-released Beast-WarGalvatron as the Destronger "Gigatron Z", seemingly an additional version of Car Robots Gigatron/Robots in Disguise Megatron.
Following the end of the Robots in Disguise line, key characters have popped up in subsequent series. Admittedly, a large percentage of these releases come from a series immediately following Robots in Disguise, when the line was still fresh in people's minds (and the molds used to make the characters in the first place were readily available).
This item is currently scheduled for release, but is not yet available at mass retail.
Legacy Scourge
Innovations and lasting effects
Like Beast Wars before it, Robots in Disguise also integrated the robots' weapons and accessories into their alternate modes, now applying the concept to Transformers who transform into vehicles as well.
Robots in Disguise firmly established redecos of previously released toys from the same line marketed as the same characters as the older toys (as compared to different characters), with the accompanying fiction often identifying the new decos as the result of a "power-up".
Robots in Disguise also introduced trilingual packaging to the United States market, which would last four years.
While store exclusives had existed since almost the beginning of the brand, the expanded Robots in Disguise line was when the concept really took off beyond "three or four exclusives for an entire line".
Notes
In the United States, the Robots in Disguise line market the introduction of trilingual packaging, with most figures featuring texts in English, French and Spanish for the United States, Canada and Latin America. The only exception were the KB Toys exclusive redecos of the Spy Changers and the Tiny Tins re-releases of their original decos, which were all available in English-only packaging. Meanwhile, in Europe, the line marked the end of multiple different packaging versions concurrently available in different markets, instead introducing a single multilingual European packaging version featuring texts in English, French, Dutch and German. The only exceptions were the Destructicons and, once again, the Tiny Tins re-releases of the Spy Changers, which were released after the successor line, Armada, had made six languages the new European standard, now also featuring texts in Spanish and Italian.
Although not branded as Car Robots product, The Transformers: Super Spy Changer Lottery figure assortment sold by Takara in 2003 features the Car Robots Spy Changer characters, and its pack-in catalog makes reference to the end of the Car Robots TV show.
