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[Fighbird]

[ASIDE: I know my writing frequency around here could be a lot higher, and trust me, I also wish it could be that way, but time is a rare commodity for me. I have loads and loads of subjects to bring up here, so please bear with me: I might not write regularly, but I'll try to always have something meaningful to share. ]

My good friend Thunderclash here on the NTFA boards recently uploaded a big bunch of catalogs pictures for us all to enjoy. Some very nice specimens were to be seen, some rare and some less so, but still: Catalogs are catalogs, and for an old G1 fan they are truly one of the things that made G1 really magic. Oh, the hours upon hours spent studying those tiny images for which toys might be the next one(s) to acquire...

Catalogs - as well as most other promotional material - have always been a great source for images of prototypes and mock-ups of toys that weren't quite finalized yet, but had to be photographed for the catalogs in time for release. The very first US 1984 catalog contains a lot of very interesting things and - to me - a lot of sign of things that might have been but never were...

A little background: It has been established that Hasbro decided to purchase the rights to Takara's Diaclone and Micro Change toys after the 1983 Toy Fair. Because Takara also had sold their properties to a few other subcontractors - like Ceji/Joustra in France and GiG in Italy - there was bound to be a "transitional period", where Takara's factories were going from producing Diaclone/Micro Change toys to Transformers toys while still supplying the smaller contractors untill Hasbro US was ready to launch Transformers in earnest.

This resulted in a few interesting "transitional" releases for the smaller subcontractors, and adding in Takara's own attempts at marketing i.e. Diaclone outside Japan - like Finland and the US - some of the early choices for the US TF line up could make a bit more sense. Now remember, this is pure speculation on my side, so feel free to counter that at any point.

"All the colors of the rainbow!"... well, almost...

* Bluestreak
Probably the most famous urban myth in all of Transformers history, really, is the saga of "Blue Bluestreak". Clearly a very very late design change, as both the catalog, the instruction sheet and the box art and photos were of the blue/silver toy, the reasons behind it are still unclear. One might argue that Bluestreak's dark blue was a tad too "evil" looking, seing as the general color scheme (to me) was brighter red/yellow/blue hues for the Autobots and darker purple/grey/dark blue for the Decepticons. Makes sense from a visual cue perspective to give the 2 factions their own "color style" of sorts.

* Brawn
It's not all that obvious, but Brawn in the 1984 catalog is actually a lighter brown-ish color. I wrote about that in more detail here, and I consider that one of the more "hidden unreleased G1 color schemes" that never came to be.

* Prowl and Prime
Yep, a two-fer here. As such, the general colors weren't changed on these two, but a lot of the detailing in the stickers - both factory applied and on the sticker sheet - were modified for TF release. Prowl lost most of his small "Diaclon" emblems (all were gone by 1985 as a running change) and Prime got a new Autobot-logo design down his trailer. Add to that the change on the sticker sheets where the Diaclone logos were exchanged for Transformers logos and the addition of Autobot symbols, and then it would seem like Hasbro indeed had more time to fine-tune the toy line even with their rushed release schedule.

* Sunstreaker
Now the yellow version of this toy was a Transformers-only design choice. The toy had been released in red and a white Police-like deco during Diaclone, but I would like to suggest that the yellow color was mandated by his Transformers release. But why yellow? Based on early descriptions of the two Lamborghini brothers, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, it has been suggested that the 2 toys had been mixed up in regards to their tech spec descriptions. Add to that that Bob Budiansky, who wrote the character descriptions and only had the Diaclone toys to refer to at that point, probably was looking at a red Sunstreaker and a yellow Sideswipe. Easy to get mixed up, and it would seem it happened.

But why the change of color, and not a change of characters? My guess is based on that a year ealier, in 1983, Takara had tried to launch their Diaclone toys in North America under the Diakron banner, using the red version of Sunstreaker. Perhaps to avoid confusion, as the Diakron toys probably lingered on toy shelves still by 1984, Hasbro may have thought that changing the base color on the toy would differentiate it enough to make the kids buy the "correct one" instead of the "competition" (yes, they were stamped Takara, but they were distributed by the then-failing toy company Mego, who held the Microman rights for the US). One thing they forgot during the color change was to update his sticker sheet, so that the shoulder pieces were yellow instead of the released reds.

* Sideswipe
As a result, Sideswipe - who apparently was orignally conceived to be the yellow car, if we go by the above postulate - became red. No biggie, as he originally was released in red by Takara, so no major change here.

* Ironhide
Pretty much the same story as Sunstreaker, where a black version was readily available in the Diakron line, and a red one would make the Transformers version stand out from that. Never released in red by Takara in Japan before, the red was probably also mandated by Hasbro - and again in a nice bright "good guy" color.

* Trailbreaker
What? Trailbreaker? But he was already black during Diaclone, so what might be special about him? Well, the striping down his side in vehicle mode is white on a black background. On the black Diaclone version, these stickers have a yellow background, while the black background striping was found on the other 2 color versions of the mold, the yellow and the blue versions. Now, the blue version was released in Diakron as well, so that one was out of the question (if we abide by the above "rules" for 'Streaker and Ironhide). With Hasbro not always being too adamant about updating all stickers for Transformers release (think Prowl and Sunstreaker), it could seem that the original color for Trailbreaker could have been yellow - the stripes would have matched that. Why the change - and if the change indeed was the stickers or the toy color - we will never know; there might not even be any more to it than pure chance. But I find it interesting nonetheless, especially since his boxart retained the yellow stripe, and that the black color is very "dark" in regards to the general color design for the Autobots. I think I'll leave it at this and move on, though...

A few of the "Diaclone" colored cars saw release through Takara's various Special Edition releases; here's just a sampling of a few G1 cars in general.

* Transition toys
The transtion for Takara in supplying Hasbro with their color revised toys resulted in a lot of the earlier subcontractors, who still had transforming toys to release, got stock of whatever was in production at the time - regardless of whether they were Diaclone/Micro Change colored or TF colored.

Great examples include the red Ironhides found in Finnish and Italian Diaclone packaging, and the Joustra Diaclone minibots with Autobot symbols and all. Eventually, the subcontractors would either cease production (Takara's own Diaclone releases in Finland and the US), be bought out by Hasbro (Ceji/Joustra/MB) and/or conform to the new Transformers styling (GiG), and by 1986 G1 color variations were only limited to Takara's domestic releases.

I, for one, love the alternate colors available for the Sunstreaker and Sideswipe molds, but these guys have to be yellow and red respectively - that's just the way we know and love 'ema nd anything else would just be wrong. But it's always nice to have a look at what might have been...

UPDATE: Check out the follow-up addendum of this article!

[Groundsplitter]

* Sunstreaker
Now the yellow version of this toy was a Transformers-only design choice. The toy had been released in red and a white Police-like deco during Diaclone, but I would like to suggest that the yellow color was mandated by his Transformers release. But why yellow? Based on early descriptions of the two Lamborghini brothers, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, it has been suggested that the 2 toys had been mixed up in regards to their tech spec descriptions. Add to that that Bob Budiansky, who wrote the character descriptions and only had the Diaclone toys to refer to at that point, probably was looking at a red Sunstreaker and a yellow Sideswipe. Easy to get mixed up, and it would seem it happened.

Very interesting theory! I was aware that the original Diaclone editions had reversed colours, and I am most certainly aware that Budiansky seems to have gotten Sideswipe and Sunstreaker mixed up (just look at the toys - in robot mode Sunstreaker has the piledriver arms and the rocket backpack attributed to Sideswipe, and in car mode he has the rear-mounted engine that he claims spoils Sideswipe's design), but I had never thought of connecting the two reversals. But it seems perfectly logical, so I'm adopting it as the truth henceforth.

[Fighbird]

ADDENDUM!

There's been a lot of buzz on my article here (sadly most of that outside the NTFA board... Boo! Hiss! ), but enough to warrant me to add more information to it.

Particularly the whole debacle on the colors selected for the pair of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe has been of much debate. Looking at some of the late-Diaclone transition toys we have found that specific molds were released as such:

* Irondhide (aka Diaclone Onebox Cherry Vanette No.2)
Originally released in Japan in black, most of the non-Japanese Diaclone releases from the rest of the world - excluding the US Diakron version - were red. GiG in Italy made a red Vanette and Takara Finland had a red Vanette.

* Ultra Magnus (aka Diaclone Powered Convoy)
Yeah, a strange character to be talking about when we are only focusing on the first wave of 1984 Transformers, but bear with me: The cab on Powered Convoy - the cab that is the same mold as Optimus Prime/Diaclone Battle Convoy - was blue in his initial pre-Ultra Magnus release. However, both a GiG and a Takara Japan(!) toy has surfaced with a red Optimus-style cab instead of a blue one. Since Powered Convoy was a late 1984 release in Japan, it would make sense to me that by early 1985 the production lines were mostly churning out that popular Optimus-character and hence Takara, still wanting to release some Diaclone product before they would start up their own TF series, used the red cabs as those were the ones in production.

* Sunstreaker (aka Diaclone Countach LP500S Super Tuning no. 1)
What I neglected to mention in the first part of this article is that we have a confirmed release of Sunstreaker in yellow for the Joustra Diaclone line. AFAIR, GiG in Italy also had a yellow Diaclone release of him, and I seem to have heard whispers of a yellow finnish Diaclone as well.

* Trailbreaker (aka Diaclone Hilux 4WD no. 5)
Yes, more Trailbreaker. I feel he is unduly overlooked. Looking at the recently discovered Joustra Diaclone release of said mold, we find the black TF striping.

One theory about the change of colors on these toys in general is that that was a decision that Takara made regardless of the upcoming Transformers production, which is why we have transitional releases with TF-colored toys in various Diaclone packaging. This would explain the otherwise inexplicable black release of the Tracks mold in Finland, but we have yet to see a black toy surface in any other kind of packaging than finnish.

However, I am more inclined to think that it was a matter of production logistics. Hasbro wanted to go all-in with their new Transformers property, and probably ordered hundreds of thousands of unit to be produced up to the planned release in early 1984, so perhaps to meet that demand from Hasbro, Takara simply had all their production facilities make the new color toys. Hence, all minor subcontractors to Takara, like Ceji/Joustra and GiG and perhaps even themselves, were "forced" to use the current stock as all production was mainly geared towards major buyer Hasbro.

Where black Tracks fits in to all of this, I cannot say, though.

First a myth, then a legend - and now an enigma. Now THAT's an impressive resumé!

Just to round off the whole Sunstreaker/Sideswipe debacle: I was reminded of a document that Mijo mentioned in one of his excellent blog articles: A set of internal documents between Hasbro and Takara from around the time the TF toyline was released.

It's a bit hard to highlight things in it, but look at page 91: The toys used from the Diaclone Car Robot Series at the top of that page seems to indicate that the colors were finalized (to some extend): The HiLux (Trailbreaker) had been determined to be black specifically, the Cherry Vanette (Ironhide) had been selected as red, no color specification for the Fair Lady Z (Bluestreak, which is all kinds of interesting IMO), and - most importantly - the No. 1 Countach (Sunstreaker) has no color choice, which I will interpret as an indication of the mold's default color of red, while finally, the New Countach (Sideswipe) mold is specifically listed as yellow.

Add to that the switched abilities descriptions of their character profiles (as seen here and here), it should be obvious that the initial plan was that the brothers should have been inverted.

Big thanks to the contributions of Maz, Argus, Mijo and Groundsplitter - as well as Thunderclash in part 1 above.

UPDATE: A little look at what might've been (curtosy of a piece I wrote here):

Diakron Sunstreaker and reissue Tigertrack.