Generation 1 toylines in Latin America
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While most territories throughout the span of the Generation 1 Transformers toyline primarily received the original figures manufactured by Hasbro and Takara (and the few that did get national companies to manufacture their own toys, like Joustra in France and El Greco in Greece, mostly just getting identical copies save for minor variations in plastic colors), a remarkable set of oddities happened past the U.S. border, as Mexico and a good portion of South America throughout the mid-80s would instead get to manufacture and market their own licensed regional versions of the Transformers toyline.
While it's difficult to explain in broad strokes what led to this strange split, the most likely reason might have been the result of protectionism and tariffs making it difficult for Hasbro to export their products to a good portion of Latin America. As a result, these countries would instead get smaller homemade toylines with all sorts of odd colors, unusual marketing decisions, and occasionally inconsistent quality becoming defining characteristics of the Latin American Transformers scene.
A more elaborate description of these toylines and the circumstances behind their release is present in these companies' respective articles, with the primary interest of this page being in providing a complete summary of all toys released within them instead.
Mexico
- Main article: IGA
Transformers was released by IGA in Mexico in 1985. For the most part, the toys are similar to their Hasbro counterparts, though with plenty of minor coloring and materials differences... which apparently includes lead paint. Oops. The line did not do well, and 1986's releases were little more than Metroplex and a handful of first-year Mini-Vehicles recolored roughly like their third-year retools. The line was fully canceled shortly after.
A number of these toys somehow ended up in European markets years after the line was over, which is when that whole "lead paint" thing was discovered. Oops.
- 1985/1986
Mini Vehicles
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Autobot Cars
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(with red feet or corrected orange feet) (Trailbreaker head) (reversed arms, then corrected) (no red paint on doors) (regular and re-colored unmodified Bluestreak mold) |
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Jumpstarters
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Dinobots | Autobot Commander
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Autobot City | |||||
Constructicons
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(giftset, w/ red eyes and w/o on Devastator head) |
Triple Changers
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Decepticon Jets
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Decepticon Communicator
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Decepticon Leader
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Brazil
- Main article: Estrela
Easily the most well-known of the Southern-Hemisphere Transformers releases, Estrela's batch of six Mini-Vehicle molds - now renamed into "Robocars" - were the bulk of the toys released by the company, put out in a variety of colors. The mysterious "Bumper" mold was part of this assortment, under the name "Sedan", complete with packaging art and a bio, leading fans to wonder if this bio came from scrapped plans for the toy in the original Hasbro line. The line was filled out with redecoed Jumpstarters called "Salt-Man" ("salto" meaning "jump" in Spanish and Portuguese), and non-Takara molds like the Eletrix and Bat-Robô. The line also received a number of merchandise, including a board game, and even its own unique logo as seen above.
Most coveted among the Estrela toys is a second round of Robocars redecos, the "Optimus vs Malignus" series, which split the toys into brand-new good & evil (respectively) factions. These twelve toys —particularly the more radically-changed Malignus— are very expensive on the secondary market, easily earning triple-digit sums for even loose samples. Still-carded toys are exceptionally rare.
Estrela would continue working with Hasbro throughout the following years, with the company shifting their focus from distributing rather than manufacturing Transformers toys across Brazil. They would end this relationship in 2007 as Hasbro shifted towards their own South American distribution chains, and a messy decade-long lawsuit would follow regarding royalties over some of the (non-Transformers) Hasbro-derived toylines that Estrela still manufactured.
- 1985
| Robocars | Salt-Man
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Bat-Robô | Eletrix |
- 1986
| Optimus | Malignus |  |
Argentina
Argentina might have received the greatest variety of Transformers toys in national stores during the Generation 1 toyline, with the original Hasbro-made figures releasing across several Argentinian stores but a pair of national companies also taking on the mantle of manufacturing and distributing their own figures. A handful of Estrela Robocars would also be roughly repackaged and sold across a few Argentinan stores under new blister cards featuring the name "Invasion Galactica", with the most common running theory being that these were the product of national retailers repackaging foreign products to avoid taxation from protectionist laws.
Antex
- Main article: Antex
A bit of an odd case, it appears that Argentine company Antex got its Transformers license from Estrela, rather than Hasbro, which is kind of dubious on the "did Estrela actually have the authority to do that" mark. Antex would then release its own batch of Mini Vehicle and Salt-Men, with the packaging being direct translations of their Estrela counterparts, featuring the same logo. Most of these would feature entirely new decos... Despite the fact that the Estrela-derived art and pictures on the packaging featured them in the original, mostly unavailable color schemes.
Similar to Estrela, Antex would go on to officially distribute Transformers toys in the country throughout the 90s, with many imported Generation 2 figures arriving to Argentina with Antex branding on the packaging. Antex would also re-release their Salt-Men during this time as Robot-Man X and Robot-Man Z under Generation 2 packaging, with the toys being unchanged from their original run.
In the early 2010s, a large number of on-card/boxed Antex toys hit the secondary market, apparently due to an old warehouse find. Many of these items are still sold cheaper than domestic packaged original toys in the US, but still undoubtedly make a neat curiosity for collectors.
- 1985
| Robocar | Salt-Man
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- 1994
Robot-Man
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Comando Toys
- Main article: Comando Toys
Another Argentinian toy company, Comando Toys, would also later earn the rights to manufacture and distribute their own Transformers toys across the country... And their toyline would consist of a transforming radio that was originally sold as a mish-mash bootleg of official The Transformers toys and a Godmars-based walkie talkie. Weird stuff.
- 1987
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Peru and Chile
- Main article: Lynsa
There is a bit of confusion as to the short-lived Peruvian and Chilean Transformers line as it appears that two different companies obtained the license and took two different approaches to it, though both mainly stuck to -once again- the Mini Vehicle range. Argentinian company Lynsa, however, made their own cheaper-to-produce versions of the original Mini-Vehicle range, often with less-to-no paint applications, decals or chrome, as well as multiple different color variants for each mold. There are supposedly upwards of three dozen different mold/color combinations altogether, many of them unique to the Peruvian line, but the ravages of time have made samples stunningly rare and reliable information scarce.
The other company, BASA (which would later change its name to HUDE, not helping in the confusion department), also released Transformers toys in Peru, but these were simply imported rather than manufactured by BASA themselves.
Venezuela
- Main article: Rubiplas
The tiny Rubiplas line is very similar to the Peruvian Lynsa line in construction, being low-cost, minimal-deco versions of the incomplete Mini Vehicles range. Most are similar in color to their Hasbro releases, save their very weirdly-colored Huffer.
- 1985
| Mini Vehicles |  |
