toys of yesteryears:episode 2

just finished washing clothes and waiting for breakfast to digest before my jog...feeling quite eng in the mean time so decided to do up episode2 for my toys of yesteryears series since i havent been doing any posts on toys also...

today i will touch on THE TRANSFORMERS...the #1 toy on my wishlist during my 1st childhood (it's sharing top spot with gundam for my 2nd childhood now)

a little brief history before i delve more into their toys
transformers(tf) started way back in 1984...it originated from a line of transforming robot toys by takara called DIACLONE from japan...then the angmors took the idea and made it into a cartoon series and hasbro also got the license from takara to produce the toys under the tf name...

basically for the cartoon, tfs are grouped into 2 factions-autobots & decepticons (in japan they are called cybertrons & destrons instead)...storyline revolves around the heroic autobots vs. the evil decepticons...

and now for the toys...
those 1st generation toys were called G1 toys and are considered vintage now...
-if any of you have any loose ones lying around-they are worth quite abit of money
-if yours still has its original box with the styrofoam inside-they are worth lotsa money
-if yours is still MINT in its original box (w/ styrofoam)-they are worth ALOT of money~especially those rarer characters

of course the value of your vintage G1s still depends on the toy/box condition(they have a grade scale which goes from C1-C10, C10 being the best), whether the toy is complete, how rare they are, have they been reissued in recent years...stuff like that...

now we move on to the G1 toy itself...they are also known as G1 BRICKS...huge chunks of plastics(and sometimes with diecast parts) with super-limited amount of poseability/joint articulation...most of them were not anime-correct(meaning they dont look like their characters in the cartoon)...some of their robot design/transformation were not very impressive at all

one commendable thing abt G1 toys is that their alternate modes looks really really good...i think the tf toy engineers back then designed the robot mode to suit the alternate mode...so i guess the robot mode suffered at the expense of the alternate modes~they were called "robots in disguise" so i guess they had to work along those lines too...

the next few pics are quite self explanatory regarding the brickness of G1 toys (just take note on the lack of proper neck, knee, arm, wrist, leg joints here and there) ~ and yes i am using my miniscule G1 collection as photo exhibits (techinically i only own 3 of them-2 of them belongs to edwin)

and just to point out the green robot (devastator) is a bootleg (meaning its a fake tf which looks almost like the real thing)...its supposed to cost real cheap and some of these china bootlegs that have surfaced are pretty well copied...

another thing about devastator is that its a gestalt(combiner robot)...these combiners can come in denominations of 3,4,5,6....so for devastator here its a 6-in-1 combiner as you can see there are 6 individual construction vehicles...

there are also other types of G1 toys-6 changers, headmasters, targetmasters...(all of which i dont own)...alot alot la...

maybe i will show some pics of tf toys past and present in the next episode to show how tf toy engineering has improved over the years be it design/transformation/poseability/joint articualtion...

basket...its pouring outside now...how to run...
going to grandma's place for dinner later too...FEAST!!!woohoooo!!!