I almost didn't recognize that knock off Deathsaurus... until I saw that beast mode, that's what gave it away.

I am curious about the car mode though because the original figure appears to have different legs and only changes from robot to beast. Where the hell did that car mode come from?

 

This is a thread with gold nuggets everywhere.

I used to own a full set of those insect robots but they must've been KO's. Much different colors, chrome heads for the robots (instead of human skin) and I distinctly remember mine came carded.

*Edit* I typed before I looked. These were a page back (4) Thanks for the memories!

And that Batman robotbat. As a kid I had that mold sans the batman. It was just a black bat/ robot. I got it at a giftshop in a tourist place so pretty sure this must've been a KO too. Very cool to see all these again.

iDD

 

I would like to know as well! the armored car seems oddly familiar, but im not sure to what... for a time i thought Doubledealer, but is not the same front

 

To me it looks like one of the Autobot headmasters... I believe Hardhead though I'm terrible at remember their names so I'm going to double check really quick...

And yes... except the cab section sits on his chest in one solid piece, it doesn't split in two onto his legs. But the cab section does have the same basic octagon shape to it.

 

I found some covered in dust in the back of a store last year. They were snapped up fast  

 

Ahh ok. I'm sure you have a ton of people to keep track of, but if you ever come across any of the Taiwan/Korean KO's of Liokaiser please get in contact with me, I will most surely buy them up fast. Thanks again for getting back to me.

 

Here's an oversized Hardhead figure with its original version. The bad part was that the original chestplate broke while transforming him.  Took me about a year and a half finding a replacement.

 

Not Hardhead, vehicle front is all different. The style is reminiscent of Stalker, or just one of the legs. I doubt the KO Factory copied any existing figure though

I would love to make a custom missile or something, that could unfold as a shield like the original figure  

Wow! didnt know that existed! nice find!

 

I wasn't talking about the vehicle front. Just the section where the pilot would be sitting. From certain angles it looks very similar though as I already pointed out it's very much not the same parts since the engineering is completely different... also taking a second look of the side by side... it seems more elongated...

On a side note... wasn't Deathsaurus original toy mold also taken from another toy line... like most G1 Figures... Maybe the pre-transformers toy line he original came from had an alternate version of the mold with that additional vehicle mode?

If I'm not mistaken I believe Sky Gary and Grandus were taken from the same toy line, they even have their own cartoon shows, though the robots in that universe are piloted mechas that seemingly fight alien monsters... or some times other piloted mechas...

I'm blanking on the name at the moment...

(Ten minutes later)

So he's from the Brave series... not sure how I forgot the word "Brave" but that tells you how shit my memory is... He's specifically from the series "The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn" and he was called Red Geist... There's two versions of him in Brave which have totally different animation models but according to the wiki the actual figure was never remolded, just a straight up repaint. And neither of the animation models have legs like that. They're just differently stylized versions of the same toy. So I can't find any evidence of Deathsaurus ever having that vehicle mode.

 

Actually, it was the other way around. All these figures were designed for Transformers first, later recycled for the Brave Series, years later

The animation studios (Sunrise), just stylized the designs for the anime, but the figures were practically the same (although some had minor alterations, like Galaxy Shuttle, had a different chest... and head i think. Red Geist, is a straight up repaint, just missing the chest eagle

On the same note, on that anime, the Chest Lion transformed into a Jet (wich was just the gun mode mistransformed), but like you said, never a armored car transformation... that was the KO Factory

 

I kind of want to watch the Brave anime... except there are several of them... not all of them are dubbed... and I kinda just want to skip to the ones with the Transformers in them but I'm not sure if I can follow the story if I skip those earlier anime series...

I've kinda been looking into Brave every so often to fill the void whenever there isn't any official Transformers cartoons to watch.  

 

None of the Brave series are connected, so you can watch in any order. Ideally, watch them in release order, they improved every year

Any of the series with Transformers designs in them, have nothing to do with the original depiction, since pretty much all the repaints were done for villains (and thus, Takara didnt had to invest designing bad guys). At the time, it villains didnt sell as well as the heros in Japan, so earlier Brave had 1 or 2 villains at most int heir toylines. GaoGaiGar doesnt have any bad guys at all!

The best of all the series, no doubt, is GaoGaiGar (and the last released), they perfected their writing formula and was a great hit

 

Do Decepticons not sell well in Japan either? Or is it because a lot of the villains in Brave were organic looking monsters and fans were only interested in the giant mecha toys.

I mean I think the same thing happens with power rangers where the monsters don't have a lot of toys and don't sell really well compared to the Zords. Beetle Borgs I don't think even had any monster toys until Metalics.

I think the reasoning behind that is the "Monster of the Week" format. Like the only Power Rangers monsters that did have toys were the series regulars not the one offs... so maybe the trick to getting the villains to sell more is not doing a monster of the week format. Have recurring bad guys that appear in multiple episodes and the toys sell better.

 

If you think about it, Transformers is one of the few toylines in Japan, with a good chunk of bad guys. Its simply a cultural thing, but like you said, the "monster of the week" must be one of the reasons

In the case of late era Transformers, Victory didnt sold that well, pretty much all the figure ended selling in discount and it was the last series with regular sized Decepticons (Zone only had Micromasters, Battlestars didnt had any at all! and Operation: Combination, just repaints o Euro repacks). I bet they just saw the sales numbers and villains didnt sell well at the time

 

That's not exactly true. While not technically "Decepticons" Beast Wars II, Neo, and Transformers Go all have Predacons in their toy lines as well... and all the Transformers series we have in the U.S. still have Decepticon, Predacon, and Vehicon figures in Japan too... Prime even had a couple Decepticon molds that never got a release in the U.S. though it seems like we're now getting those figures for the ten year anniversary.

 

Random stuff I found in the back of shops.. and then refound while cleaning warehouse.

 

Nice Haul!!!

 

Here´s a new oddity

Yugoslavian Pretender Bootleg

 

I absolutely need that os vortex mosc!

 

More Pretenders from Yugoslavia!