Beet-Vadam is often said to be a never released figure from the pre-g1 Deluxe Insecticons Beetras. Well here is a picture of him selling on ebay. ( yes it is me ) I just wanted to know any theories as to how I have it? Transformers G1 Beet Vadam Deluxe Insecticons Beetras Powerdasher Drill Dasher | eBay I got it from Japan as a kid but I was too young to know much about it. Have there been any other instances of this popping up? An image search has pretty much nothing.
a Beetras-colored Ransack did show up in mainland Europe's 1985 pack-in catalog From tfwiki, I will do some digging and let you know if I turn up anything interesting
Thanks. One more bit of info was that each of them came with a beetras catalog sheet. It was all in Japanese and showed the humans ( very voltron like characters ) and the robots. Some of the robots had variants. I wish I kept it.
No problem, love your reviews BTW! So after an exhaustive search, I've turned up more questions than answers, lol First the color palette on all the promo shots for the beetras version of ransack/vadam, the toy is differently colored than yours Second the animation colors are closer to yours, this kind color variation isn't unprecedented, but its still a bit odd So then there are many many articles stating beet vardam supposedly was never released, however, the fact that its moulds were already finished, and that there were physical copies used in the photography of the transformers catalogue I pictured above, make me wonder if there weren't some small scale speculative market releases, or something along the lines of an incredibly limited release before takatoku went belly up, and was acquired by bandai, who subsequently allowed Hasbro to license the beetras moulds More interesting is that several other companies released figures based on the beetras designs, not using the same moulds mind you, just using the same property, I couldn't find much on those however other than the select convertor version of the simplified version of vadam that the company "Mark" originally released, but it has enough differences to be certain that yours isn't that one If there are production stamps on the fugue they could shed some light on to its origin at the very least, but without the box and paperwork, I can't with any certainty say its origin, and can only speculate that it could be a very limited release, or even a test shot, but I really can't be totally certain, if we could get Maz in on this, he might be able to get to the bottom of it, or at least know who could Sorry I couldn't be of more help
That is definitely a takatoku stamp, so my best guess as to how you got it is that it may be a production sample sent to some store for display purposes, that they sold off for whatever reason, something of a shot in the dark I know, but it looks to be official, this again purely speculation on my part, you might want to pm board member Maz, he's kind of the go to guy for pre-transformers toys, and wrote an article on the subject of the non Takara moulds used in early transformers, including of course the beetras line, though in his piece he to stated vadam to be unreleased, but he could certainly speak with more authority than I on the matter at hand Hope I've helped at least a little lol
I have seen 2 or 3 of these before ( 1 boxed one in Japan). I think they were released in a small batch and the tail end of the line.
Another thought is maybe they were actually released in Japan, if you're in Australia its much more likely a few boxes made it over to a bargain store as overstock, or something.
Very nice! It had always been said to me that Beet Vadam was unreleased. This area of pre-TFs was a real blind spot for me until I wrote the article last year on it, but even then I relied on a lot of people educating me before I wrote it. Nobody had ever seen a Beet Vadam to my knowledge, but what DoubleClouder is saying about seeing a packaged one means it either saw extremely limited release in quantity, distribution or shelf time. I'd love some pictures of it to feature in a future article if you're game? All the best Maz
Yeah unfortunately I don't collect that line, even at a Pre-TF level. The one I saw for sale was in Kaikodo back in 2002 (or 3, can't remember). They had the whole set of four. Truthfully I never knew it was rare and was more focused on some of the Japanese G1 Tfs. The other ones I saw were on Yahoo Japan auctions. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of them.
I couldn't find any pictures, or even mentions of boxed examples, however the greatest resources for info regarding this toyline are beyond my reach, as I can't read Japanese, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone who can read Japanese was able to find more substantial information, and I'm not to fond of resorting to translation programs for such obscure info without multiple sources to corroborate it
I took some better pictures. Forgive the low quality, my ex-wife took the camera when she ran off. I used my note3. auction here auction here
Here is the Japanese page I turned up this afternoon, the author made a custom out of a ransack, there are pics of the models box, and a puzzle I think, but no packaging for vadam as they hadn't seen it either, but again I don't like using translation software, cause its really hard for me to cross-reference material, and find multiple accounts Diaclone.net Thanks for posting more pics Odeean, I really enjoy it when new pre-transformers releases are discovered
