Pick-Up (Bat-Robô)

This article is about the Bat-Robô. For the Malignus, see Pick-Up (Malignus).

Pick-Up is possibly an Autobot from the Estrela portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

GOOOAAAL!

Pick-Up is a Bat-Robô. He goes vroom, crashes, and then becomes an invincible robot!

Toys

Transformers

File:Estrela-BatRobôPickUp.jpg

Comes in Flamengo and Palmeiras variants (Note: Stickers missing on green version).

• Pick-Up (Bat-Robô, 1986?)

Released only in Brazil by Estrela, Pick-Up transforms into a Datsun Truck , sharing his engineering and play pattern with his wavemate Turbo. The toy features a friction-driven motor, which, as part of its gimmick, is used to trigger its transformation. After pulling it back, the truck drives forward until it hits something with its front bumper, whereupon it springs up into robot mode and then will roll back the other way as a robot.

His transformation is straightforwardly basic, with his arms spreading out on impact and the truck's entire greenhouse being impulsed forward to reveal his legs. As it might almost seem self-evident from photos of this toy, he has virtually no articulation beyond being able to wiggle his arms up and down.

Pick-Up was released simultaneously in orange/black/dark grey and green/blue/light grey color schemes. It is unknown which, if either, is more difficult to come by.

Notes

Confused? So are we!

• The Turbo mold, much like his Bat-Robô brother Pick-Up, has a long and complicated history. More can be read here, but the gist of it is that these were originally made in Japan by the Asahi Corporation in 1984 but were actually first sold as the Pow-R-Trons by the Ertl Company in 1985, with Asahi only later launching their own toyline featuring these molds with Attack Change Machine Powertron.
  • Eventually, sometime during the mid 1980s, they would also make their way to fellow Brazilian toy manufacturer Glasslite, which would release Turbo as Turborg and Pick-Up as Blocker under the Crash Tron label as part of the Mutante toyline - which was, in itself, a localization of the GoBots (albeit it's still up in the air just how official this localization was), meaning that there's actually been a point in time in the history of Transformers where, within the same region, you could get the exact same mold out of both a Transformers and a GoBot-derived toyline!
• It is uncertain what company Estrela licensed the Bat-Robô molds from, as the only copyright stamps on them are for Estrela itself (which state the toys were physically made in Brazil). In any event, the color schemes Estrela used appear to be unique to South America.
• Due to the lack of faction symbols on the toy or packaging, it is not explicit what faction Pick-Up fights for. However, the toy does use Hasbro's Autobot style packaging, so we're going to default to Autobot.
• Thanks to Estrela's habit of re-using names and only giving bios to about half their products, it's unclear just who this Pick-Up is. We're treating him as his own character, but it's possible he's a new version of Gears, who was named "Pick-Up" in Brazil. It's similarly unclear what relation either of these Pick-Ups have with the evil Malignus Pick-Up. Fun!

External links

• Bat-Robôs at Super Toy Archive