ToonTown

Too cool to be fake.

ToonTown is a South Korean company that apparently licensed out the Transformers brand to multiple manufacturers across South Korea and Taiwan during the second half of the 1990s. Working in concert with another company, 3D Licensing International, ToonTown's sub-licensees would eventually go on to produce their own Transformers-branded toys and merchandise, releasing them under the Generation 2 banner.

We say apparently because the story of ToonTown is shrouded in mystery and very little firm info is known about them. They're so obscure that we don't even have a logo that we can stamp on this opening paragraph! In the early days of the online fandom, people who lived or traveled in east Asia would exchange reports on mailing lists or Usenet groups of having seen these official-looking, Hasbro-branded toys in strange colors or sizes, and the community would then scrutinize the evidence for these being legitimate Transformers products or high quality, very bold knockoffs. Decades later, no decisive answers have surfaced.

Toys and merchandise released under license from ToonTown / 3D Licensing International

Items released by LALA

A good portion of ToonTown-branded releases were manufactured by a company called LALA Industry Co., Ltd. ((주)라라산업), which seems to, in fact, be a legally registered entity in South Korea . These include a large oversized version of the 1992 Generation 2 Optimus Prime, decoed in white and black with red accents (looking strikingly similar to a later Optimus Prime redeco), and a handful of merchandise like pencil cases, erasers, and a watch — all of them fully-transforming! The boxes for the bigger toys prominently display "Hasbro International", "Permission of 3D Licensing International", and the official logo styles and faction insignia routinely seen on legitimate Transformers product (and routinely not seen on knockoffs, especially not in the 1990s). Smaller toys would sometimes omit these, with the licensing label being shortened to "3-D Licensed by ToonTown".

LALA apparently even had enough budget to air their own animated commercials, as seen here. All of these releases feature a note on the packaging saying something akin to "Scheduled to broadcast on TV", which might suggest that these were meant to be tie-in products to a local airing of the Generation 2 cartoon... Or, maybe, they could just be referencing the aforementioned commercials, like the traditional "Seen on TV" in American goods. Interestingly, beyond Transformers merchandise, the only other products that we can find as having been made by LALA are generic robot toys that transform into pencil cases : apparently they had one very specific niche!

Toys Optimus Prime

Erasers Optimus Prime Sideswipe Megatron Ramjet

Watches Optimus Prime

Pencil Cases Optimus Prime

Too cute to be fake.

Items released by Midam Industry

In contrast with LALA having little market presence beyond their Transformers tie-ins, Midam Industry (미담산업) seems to have actually been a fairly accredited South Korean toy manufacturer, with their catalogue consisting of mostly child-oriented (but, compared to the likes of Kabaya, otherwise relatively complex) model kits. Their only ToonTown-branded release seems to be a replica of the original Generation 1 Optimus Prime toy. Three color combos have been discovered for that specific kit: his original red arms and torso with blue head and legs, an inverted version with a red head and legs and a blue torso and arms, and one all-blue — thus; it seems that the colors of the two batch of parts might be randomized between blue and red, suggesting that an all-red version might also possibly exist.

Prime's box features packaging art of Generation 2 Megatron, Sideswipe, and Ramjet on its sides, giving the suggestion that they too had received Midam model kits - however; given that only copies of Optimus Prime have been found on the secondary market and that the aforementioned pictures aren't accompanied by any "Also available" / "Collect them all" / etc. type of marketing call-to-actions, it seems more likely that these were only added for illustrative purposes (art of these four characters was also a recurring sight across other ToonTown products).

Model kits Optimus Prime (released in several color variants)

Too interesting to be fake.

Releases without a known manufacturer

A handful of extra ToonTown-licensed, Hasbro-labeled toys seemingly do not have any physical manufacturing company labeled on their packaging. These include a handful of reissues of Kabaya Transformers Gum kits and — oddly — a rebranding of an old Diaclone Optimus Prime knockoff with a number of extensive molding modifications (which, surprisingly, would not make this the first time that an official Hasbro licensee would release a bootleg as a Transformers-branded toy). The kits are marked as being made in Taiwan, and the Optimus Prime toy shares its overall packaging design with a handful of other Taiwanese-made bootlegs of its time. It seems that ToonTown used LALA and Midam Industry as the flagships of their South Korean branch and passed on the license to a handful of other unnamed non-Korean companies in Taiwan — which, in turn, might have simply reused whatever existing molds or batch of toys they had access to — to supplement their line-up.

"Truck Becomes Robot" "Battle Supplier" (Optimus Prime)

"Easy-to-Assemble Plastic Model" Optimus Prime Sideswipe Starscream Soundwave

Too... Wait, no, this one is actually fake. But at the same time, also maybe real. Help, he's having an identity crisis.

Notes

• There's also another set of famous Korean might-or-might-not-be Transformers bootlegs with a similar story: a gifset of high-quality and massively oversized Combaticons, released in both the original and Generation 2 color schemes, proudly boasting the official Transformers name and logo on the box. It's long-debated that these might also be legitimate licensed products — with a common rumor being that Takara themselves sold their mold to the manufacturer of these figures — however, given the lack of any Hasbro or Takara (or even ToonTown!) labeling on their packaging, the broader consensus seems to be that these are, most likely, bootlegs.