Bat-Robô
From MediaWiki
- The Bat-Robôs are (possibly) an Autobot subgroup from the Estrela portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
The mysterious Bat-Robôs have the capability to hit walls and become invincible robots. In that order.
The Bat-Robôs include:
Toys
Transformers
- Pick-Up (Bat-Robô, 1986)[1]
- Turbo (Bat-Robô, 1986)
- The Bat-Robô are a pair of molds originally made in Japan with some very complicated origins (see Notes). Estrela licensed the toys to sell in Brazil, and included them as part of their unique Transformers range to fill out the ranks some more. Due to the lack of faction symbols on the toy or packaging, it is not explicit what faction the Bat-Robô fight for. However, the toys do use Hasbro's Autobot style packaging, so we're going to default to Autobot. (The red Turbo Bat-Robô was used as a Malignus in the Transformers Collectors' Club "Withered Hope" text story, but that was 20 years after the original release...)
- The two toys feature a friction-driven motor, which, as part of their gimmick, is used to trigger their transformation. After pulling them back, they drive forward until they hit something with their front bumper, whereupon they spring up into robot mode and then will roll back the other way as a robot.
- Each mold was available in two different color schemes. It is unclear which, if any, coloration is harder to come across than the other..
Notes
- The name "Bat-Robô" is based on Portuguese for "beating", (bater being the verb and batida being the noun), which is also synonymous with "crashing" and often used to describe minor car collisions (for instance; someone might describe a dent in their car as a "batida"). So no, it has nothing to do with Batman.
- The Bat-Robô molds have a surprisingly complicated history, having been re-released countless times across numerous toylines all across the world (most of which is covered here), but in short; it seems that they were originally manufactured by Asahi Corporation but first released in the U.S. by toy company Ertl Company as the Pow-R-Trons and only later in Japan by their original manufacturers as Attack Change Machine Powertron. They were also released internationally in a number of other weird circumstances, most shockingly by Glasslite in Brazil sometime during the 1980s as the Crash Tron Blocker and Turborg under the Mutante toyline, one of the country's localization for the GoBots! It is still up in the air whether or not the Mutante toys were officially licensed by Bandai (more can be read about this conundrum on the GoBots wiki), but the fact that these were not just sold alongside their Estrela Transformers counterparts in the Brazilian market but were also part of a GoBots / Machine Robo derived line - easily the greatest Transformers competitor at the time - is pretty damn crazy.
- The Estrela Bat-Robôs would also be bootlegged and sold in Argentina under the "Robot-Car" name, featuring mostly plain black packaging with additional portions photocopied from the Estrela originals. These versions do not feature any manufacturing information besides an "Industria Argentina" (e.g., the national equivalent of a "Made in [Country]") tag, making them seem, at a glance; similar to the odd Invasion Galactica Argentinian releases of Estrela Mini-Vehicles - but alas, whereas those are packaging swaps of authentic toys, these aren't.
- 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.
External links
References
- ↑ The Bat-Robô were not in Estrela's 1985 catalog, and were only advertised in Brazil's homegrown Transformers comics in issue 11 alongside the Optimus x Malignus toys, suggesting they were a later release.
