Me too, a lot of other toys came and went, but by the time of the gold 'classics' 90s releases I was still trying to get all of the dinobots. I got 3 of them eventually, I used to go and see Snarl in his cardboard prison in Woolworths whenever I had the chance! At the end of the '86 Winter catalogue there is a Jazz pedal car, there is a curved bit under the autobots logo which strangely foreshadows the Alternator version. (If you've put Reprolabels on him.)
Winter 1985 has a pre Omega Supreme on page 142. He's called Omegatron and was part of a line called a Convertor. Don't remember these!
Palitoy licensed GI Joe from Hasbro (just like they did with Care Bares and Star Wars) and rebranded it Action Man. This followed on to the 3 3/4 Action Force line with Joe vehicles being licensed and incorporated into the Action Force lore. Cobra Commander was repainted red and released as Red Lazer for example. Initially most of the Joe figures were used as vehicle drivers due to their greater articulation. In 87 Tonka bought out Palitoy as part of Kenna Parker freeing Hasbro to release Action Force in the UK as 'International Heroes' with similar packaging to North America. We also got the Marvel comic instead of the IPC published Battle Action Force. There was an episode of the Full Force podcast that covered this in far much more detail than I can remember.
Wow, I didn't know any of that. Those old catalogs, wow. Memory lane. Don't remember the last 2... well at all, I assume because I may have been growing out of toys at the time, but the '86, '87 and '88 are fantastic. It's great seeing the rise and fall of toylines based upon their Argos Catalog coverage. In the future they'll look back at todays Argos catalog and marvel at the amount of space Lego gets.
This is an awesome thread, so much win here! Thanks to Chiller for posting the links. That is a great spot, I don't remember Omegatron but I have vague recollections of seeing the blue jet next to him. This explains why my brother and I had certain TFs, because my parents bought them from Argos! Between us we had Grimlock & Snarl, the Stunticon & Aerialbot giftsets, and Sandstorm & Octane (but no other Dinobots, combiners or triple changers), plus Smokescreen, Inferno, Optimus Prime and Jetfire (all likely to have been bought from Argos). Back in '85 someone bought me G1 Snarl for £9.95 and almost 20 years later I've dropped £120-odd on Fans Toys Sever - that's the power of nostalgia!
Wow, had never heard of Grandstand Convertors before. A quick googling tells me they did a whole set of Diaclone releases - including Deltatron which "can transform into a F-15 Eagle Fighter Jet and back by remote control" !! and Sigmatron a 12 inch robot to jeep that I could imagine in another universe being partnered with Jetfire. Now, back in the day, I remember being on holiday in the Lake District. I saw Omega Supreme in a shop, but my mum convinced not to spend all my holiday money on it. Omega Supreme was never released in the UK (I guess probably because of the Grandstand version). I'm now wondering if it was the Grandstand version I saw.
I actually have an Omegatron in my collection which I bought in Argos. It's a strange beast but kinda charming.
Oh man, these pages bring back memories. It's a shame the '87 pages are missing, as I could've sworn Sixshot was available, but that might've been my imagination.
This is brilliant, thanks for posting the link tot this nostalgic break down We didn't have Argos in Holland, but we had a toy store here that would release a yearly folder filled with toys. As a little kid I remember drooling over those pages! Lego, Knightrider, A-team, He-man, Transformers and after that I didn't collect any toy lines anymore... Couldn't be bothered with GI-joe (my older brother loved it though), went straight to commodore 64 and gaming!
I too remember seeing the Omegatron toy in a shop whilst on holiday with my folks (I want to say Barry Island but my recollection could be hazy) and I too was all over it; I tried desperately to get my Mum and Dad to pick it up for me but to no avail. At least, I have an Omega Supreme now, albeit the encore version. Only had to wait the best part of 30 years!
Some of the other catalogues have Transformers too. Check out 1994. It has a G2 Megatron! 1999 has images of Beast Wars Transmetals!
Oh man. What a trip back to my childhood. My favorite US catalogs were Sears and JCPenney's Christmas catalogs during my childhood. Those and flipping through my brother's pile of comics for the ones that displayed the MASK toys. Oh, and how did I not ever know about "Vroom"? That is one I've never even come across, let alone remember reading about. Also! Holy remembrance, Batman! Convertors? I've been wondering what those were again. I looked them up and I found out I used to have the cash drawer "Cash" one. Oh, how I loved that simple, simple toy. And then there's Chopper?! This would make a sick Whirl.
Oh wow. Found my self looking through the prices too - Megatron and Prime for £15 each. Blitzwing for £8! Ah, those were the days...
STA: Convertors: Spies Aha! I had more or less forgotten about this. I had Bandit and Tilt. Both of them were playable bandits and pinball machines too. They were in the same shop where I saw Omega Supreme on holiday. After my mum convinced me not to spent all my money on Omega, I bought them as a sort of consolation price
Very cool, and as others have mentioned, there are a lot of other neat things with other toylines documented here as well
