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.
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 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.
To make all of this more confusing, 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. [1] 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 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.
| Robocar | Salt-Man
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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!
Salt-Man
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References
- ↑ Carded Generation 2 Aerialbot Fireflight with Antex import sticker at Transformers At The Moon.
