Deluxe Vehicle
From MediaWiki
- The Deluxe Vehicles are a subgroup of Autobot toys from the Generation 1 continuity family.
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The term Deluxe Vehicles refers to a duo of Autobot toys released in 1985: Roadbuster and Whirl. It seems to be a marketing only term, used for the toys but never to describe the characters (who are usually members of the Wreckers) "in-fiction."
Toys
Generation 1
- Deluxe Vehicles (1985)
- The Deluxe Vehicles were originally designed by Takatoku Toys for the Special Armored Batallion Dorvack (特装機兵ドルバック) toyline. Roadbuster is a repaint of the "Mugen Calibur" toy and Whirl is one of the "Oberon Gazzette" toy. They feature larger size and greater complexity than most of the Transformers toys of their time.
Merchandise
3D Battle-Card Game
- Whirl (2007)
Notes
- The original molds of both Deluxe Vehicles were created by Takatoku Toys, and were bought along with the rest of company after its banruptcy in 1984 by Bandai. Bandai in turn licensed the molds to Hasbro for inclusion in their 1985 Generation 1 line-up. However, in the Japanese market, Bandai was the main competitor of Takara, which meant Takara would not include them in their version of the toyline. Since Hasbro and Takara shared the cartoon as promotional material for the toyline, the Deluxe Vehicles were not included in its cast. They also were omitted from the US Marvel comics and kept a low profile in the UK Marvel comics.
- The Special Armored Batallion Dorvack line contains a third transforming robot that was not inserted to Generation 1, "Bonaparte Tulcas". Presumably, this absence was because the toy has a far less convincing robot mode than the other two. Interestingly a third "tank" Deluxe Autobot was mentioned in early Hasbro documents about the 1985 characters that came to light in 2010, meaning Tulcas was likely considered for inclusion in the line at some stage, and only later droped.
- For that matter, the lesser humanoid look of Whirl might have something to do with the fact that he is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less featured in stories than Roadbuster.
- To maximise both their own profits and their figures' place in the domestic marketplace, Takatoku Toys struck up a relationship with the less renowned manufacturer Mark, whereby the latter would produce cheap, knockoff-quality versions of these figures. Due to some sort of crazy loophole the rights to these cheap versions remained with Mark after Takatoku folded, and simple versions of a number of the Takatoku figures were licensed to another American manufacturer, Select. They used them for the cash-in Convertors line, which was on sale at more or less the same time the real things were in the Transformers line. This is where all those little plastic Roadbusters and Whirls you see on eBay come from...
