Toy Ads That Time Forgot: The Trans-Bots
First of all, I must apologize to all you toy ad fans as the G.I. Joe article I wrote took the place of last week’s installment of Toy Ads That Time Forgot. A million pardons, I beg of you. This week I decided to go back to the comic book well to make up for it and find an ad for something mega-crappy, and I did!
You might be familiar with the Transformers or their shoddy imitator the Go-Bots, but I’m sure you’ve never heard of the mighty Trans-bots before this ad:
What we have here is a half page ad for some bootleg Transformers. I apologize for the quality of the thing as the ink hasn’t been kind enough to keep it nice and clear. I’ll do my best to translate this mess, however. Please note the picture of Starscream at left, Megatron at bottom, and a pile of various parts flying in space on the right.
The real beauty of this ad is the horribly mistranslated text and renamed robots. You can get all your favorite transforming heroes like Thunderstar (Starscream), Transfoe (Cosmos), and Locarob (Astrotrain). Some I have no idea who they are like The Leader (Possibly Optimus Prime?) who is described as, “The largest of the robots he heads up your force and then before attack you can convert him to 3 robots.” The Leader sounds pretty bad ass. I wouldn’t want to mess with him, because he might really F your day up.
There’s some real head scratching descriptions of some of these toys as well. From the horribly named Transforming Communicator (obviously Soundwave):
Disguised as a cassette recorder it transforms into either a Jaguar or plane - each 4.99
I think this is talking about Soundwave’s cassettes, but who knows with the crazy bootleg world of the Trans-Bots. Considering Soundwave turns into a robot while the cassettes turn vaguely into the forms described, then yes this could be Soundwave.
This really begs the question of what these things looked like when you finally received them in the mail. Did they even look like real Transformers or whether the Trans-Bots just hunks of various metal pieces collected from Chinese landfills? My bet is on discarded junk robo-parts at the best, used syringes at worst.
toy, toy collecting, Transfomers, Trans-Bots, knock off, advertisement, ad, comic book
March 27th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Transformers rule! These things meanwhile look like they blow :S I don’t even think they reached the pleasant rilling shores of the UK.
March 27th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Maybe the Leader was supposed to be Leader 1 of the Go-bots? A Go-bots rip-off, now that’s sad.
March 27th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
DaveP, your people were spared of the horrors.
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Keith, I’m not sure but its possible. The only thing is Leader One turned into an F-15, not three robots. Who knows? I can only pray that this blog will be found someone who ordered one of these things. Let my google rankings rise and we shall find our answer someday.
March 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am
I sure as hell didn’t order one of these knockoffs, but thanks as always for these vintage ad posts. i did however, just pick up the latest version of megatron here, and you might wanna check it out.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Oh that’s the masterpiece one. Yeah, he’s an import only. I don’t have the cash for that puppy. Nice pics!
January 29th, 2010 at 4:21 am
I’ve been searching for this precise info on this topic for a long time.