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The 1984 Autobot Cars "12th member"
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Brian Nelson
Jan 29, 2023, 1:30:14 PM1/29/23
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Not really any new information here, just always wanted to put some thoughts down on paper. The original Autobot Cars assortment released in mid-1984 consisted of the 11 known released Autobots but was released in a case of 12. Mirage served as the Autobot who pulled double duty. This of course isn't inherently "wrong" per se, it just doesn't feel right. After all, there were plenty of other Diaclone molds readily available, so why not throw another one in there and make everything even. I guess I should note that packages don't have to be packed evenly, and in fact should be packed in such a way that the most product is available based on the needs of said product - but clearly in 1984 nobody thought Mirage would be so popular that he should be produced twice as much as any of the others.
The conspiracy theory that is fun to think of is that at some point there was a 12th Autobot but for some reason or another something happened along the way to slow him down. In the rush to get Transformers onto the market (remember, these things had to try and coincide with other marketing materials being produced) - things moved forward and the 2nd Mirage was a short-term placeholder fix.
But who could it have been? It's a fun thought to look at all of the available Diaclone toys at the time and try to discern any pattern which may have influenced which toys would have been selected. Because the Diaclones had many color variations of molds as well as slight re-tools, a good place to start would be to try to separate the similar molds as much as possible to get a good diversity on the shelves. Right away this theory looks good, Hoist, Smokescreen, and Red Alert are all retools of 1984 product. But then it starts to fall apart a bit. 1984 had Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, and Bluestreak all released together. And it's not like they had to double up yet, Skids and Tracks were both new molds that could have been picked. I've looked at other factors as well. No pattern I can find with color, Diaclone release order, Diaclone box art availability, "cool" factor, humanoid robot modes, "American" alt modes, build quality/American safety standars, competition with Diakron, nothing. I hate to say anything is random, but I can't find a definitive pattern with the toys themselves. So that leaves us with ancillary media which might give a few suspects. I'll ilst them in order of increasing possibility.
Red Alert - He shows up in the Japanese TV Magazine and also the UK comic among only 1984 cast. It's a bit odd and out of place, but since both of these were actually produced in 1985, I can't give them much credit for the assortment in summer of 1984.
Red Tracks - In an interview with Jeffrey Mangiat, he states, "for the single front panel robots, I was given an early production toy (often the parts were joined with some sort of putty) or a style sheet with colors and decals." If we assume it was a similar scenario when he painted the 1985 back of the box art, it would mean that sometime in 1984 (probably) he was sent a Red Tracks. What's a bit odd about this picture is that it features almost predominantly "late 1984" releases and/or specific teams. It's actually less striking to me that Tracks is red than it's *just* him and not any of the other 1985 cars or Decepticon jets. Almost like non of them were ready yet, but Hasbro still had a mock-up of a red Corvette that almost made it into 1984 but they decided to shelf until deciding to release it in 1985.
Blue Hoist - If the same courtesy was given to David Schleinkofer, then it looks like he was given a blue Hoist to work with. (at least I think it's blue, there's also a blue Skids or Ironhide behind red Ironhide but I give that less weight since it's more in the background) Now here's the interesting point here. In an earlier draft of the picture, the main seeker was painted in an olive-drab color. Yes, the same color that Skywarp had in early Sunbow material. So it lends a bit of credence to Schleinkofer having what Hasbro intended to use at the time he worked. For what it's worth, in the original script for More Than Meets They Eye part 1, Hauler is referred to as a tow truck.
Hauler - Speaking of. He flat out appears in the first episode of the entire cartoon! Then mysteriously disappears until "reemerging" in 1985. This has been discussed to death, but I'm working on a further theory about him. But here's an interesting tidbit. The other thing that appears in this scene for the once and only time is Ratchet's repair bay. There's some documentation that this design and color was finalized in May of 1984, just about the same time the cars were starting to hit stores.
Skids - I mean, his assortment number is literally 5762, one more than Trailbreaker at 5761. He was also released late in 1984, had a pre-rub version, and had 1984 back of the box art. This is the theory that since Hasbro considered him a 1984 toy, he wasn't promoted at all in 1985. In fact, the only thing really pushing him towards a 1985 release was his instruction book. I wonder if there was a 1984-era colored instruction book that featured Crosscut that someone at Hasbro caught - how they still got it wrong the next year and also managed to miss Bluestreak I couldn't explain. I'd also wonder why he wasn't on the 1984 catalogue. Even if he was delayed, you would think they would still want to advertise him all the same. Anyway, Skids probably fits the cleanest out of all the possibilities, but obviously not perfectly.
I hate to end on a low note, but given all the evidence, if I absolutely had to say who was the 12th Autobot, I would say nobody. Just because we would *like* it to be somebody to fit our theories, it doesn't mean that's what was actually going on at the time. All of the above evidence is circumstantial at best and some can be explained away rather simply. I would say that none of it constitutes anything close to verifiable proof. In fact, just the opposite, the earliest agreement between Hasbro and Takara only specifies the 11 cars we came to get. The 1984 Toyfair catalogue states that the comic will be coming "this spring" (so it must have been early 1984) only has 11. Bob Budiansky way back in Nov 1983 only got 11.
Why didn't someone have the foresight to select 12? Could be just a mistake, could be they knew nothing about how they would be packaged. Could be that Takara only agreed to 24 molds total so they had to pick and choose. Could be someone said something like "ok we got 6 from the Microman line and 12 from the Diaclone line" which is technically correct and sounds perfect for casing. While it's fun to think that Hauler somehow sneaked his way from being a dropped release all the way on to the show, or that Skids was cancelled at the last minute because he wasn't a recognizable American car, it's more likely a case of an insanely rushed production to market - much the same as all the other oddities we come across.
BJN
The conspiracy theory that is fun to think of is that at some point there was a 12th Autobot but for some reason or another something happened along the way to slow him down. In the rush to get Transformers onto the market (remember, these things had to try and coincide with other marketing materials being produced) - things moved forward and the 2nd Mirage was a short-term placeholder fix.
But who could it have been? It's a fun thought to look at all of the available Diaclone toys at the time and try to discern any pattern which may have influenced which toys would have been selected. Because the Diaclones had many color variations of molds as well as slight re-tools, a good place to start would be to try to separate the similar molds as much as possible to get a good diversity on the shelves. Right away this theory looks good, Hoist, Smokescreen, and Red Alert are all retools of 1984 product. But then it starts to fall apart a bit. 1984 had Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, and Bluestreak all released together. And it's not like they had to double up yet, Skids and Tracks were both new molds that could have been picked. I've looked at other factors as well. No pattern I can find with color, Diaclone release order, Diaclone box art availability, "cool" factor, humanoid robot modes, "American" alt modes, build quality/American safety standars, competition with Diakron, nothing. I hate to say anything is random, but I can't find a definitive pattern with the toys themselves. So that leaves us with ancillary media which might give a few suspects. I'll ilst them in order of increasing possibility.
Red Alert - He shows up in the Japanese TV Magazine and also the UK comic among only 1984 cast. It's a bit odd and out of place, but since both of these were actually produced in 1985, I can't give them much credit for the assortment in summer of 1984.
Red Tracks - In an interview with Jeffrey Mangiat, he states, "for the single front panel robots, I was given an early production toy (often the parts were joined with some sort of putty) or a style sheet with colors and decals." If we assume it was a similar scenario when he painted the 1985 back of the box art, it would mean that sometime in 1984 (probably) he was sent a Red Tracks. What's a bit odd about this picture is that it features almost predominantly "late 1984" releases and/or specific teams. It's actually less striking to me that Tracks is red than it's *just* him and not any of the other 1985 cars or Decepticon jets. Almost like non of them were ready yet, but Hasbro still had a mock-up of a red Corvette that almost made it into 1984 but they decided to shelf until deciding to release it in 1985.
Blue Hoist - If the same courtesy was given to David Schleinkofer, then it looks like he was given a blue Hoist to work with. (at least I think it's blue, there's also a blue Skids or Ironhide behind red Ironhide but I give that less weight since it's more in the background) Now here's the interesting point here. In an earlier draft of the picture, the main seeker was painted in an olive-drab color. Yes, the same color that Skywarp had in early Sunbow material. So it lends a bit of credence to Schleinkofer having what Hasbro intended to use at the time he worked. For what it's worth, in the original script for More Than Meets They Eye part 1, Hauler is referred to as a tow truck.
Hauler - Speaking of. He flat out appears in the first episode of the entire cartoon! Then mysteriously disappears until "reemerging" in 1985. This has been discussed to death, but I'm working on a further theory about him. But here's an interesting tidbit. The other thing that appears in this scene for the once and only time is Ratchet's repair bay. There's some documentation that this design and color was finalized in May of 1984, just about the same time the cars were starting to hit stores.
Skids - I mean, his assortment number is literally 5762, one more than Trailbreaker at 5761. He was also released late in 1984, had a pre-rub version, and had 1984 back of the box art. This is the theory that since Hasbro considered him a 1984 toy, he wasn't promoted at all in 1985. In fact, the only thing really pushing him towards a 1985 release was his instruction book. I wonder if there was a 1984-era colored instruction book that featured Crosscut that someone at Hasbro caught - how they still got it wrong the next year and also managed to miss Bluestreak I couldn't explain. I'd also wonder why he wasn't on the 1984 catalogue. Even if he was delayed, you would think they would still want to advertise him all the same. Anyway, Skids probably fits the cleanest out of all the possibilities, but obviously not perfectly.
I hate to end on a low note, but given all the evidence, if I absolutely had to say who was the 12th Autobot, I would say nobody. Just because we would *like* it to be somebody to fit our theories, it doesn't mean that's what was actually going on at the time. All of the above evidence is circumstantial at best and some can be explained away rather simply. I would say that none of it constitutes anything close to verifiable proof. In fact, just the opposite, the earliest agreement between Hasbro and Takara only specifies the 11 cars we came to get. The 1984 Toyfair catalogue states that the comic will be coming "this spring" (so it must have been early 1984) only has 11. Bob Budiansky way back in Nov 1983 only got 11.
Why didn't someone have the foresight to select 12? Could be just a mistake, could be they knew nothing about how they would be packaged. Could be that Takara only agreed to 24 molds total so they had to pick and choose. Could be someone said something like "ok we got 6 from the Microman line and 12 from the Diaclone line" which is technically correct and sounds perfect for casing. While it's fun to think that Hauler somehow sneaked his way from being a dropped release all the way on to the show, or that Skids was cancelled at the last minute because he wasn't a recognizable American car, it's more likely a case of an insanely rushed production to market - much the same as all the other oddities we come across.
BJN
Zobovor
Jan 29, 2023, 3:47:46 PM1/29/23
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On Sunday, January 29, 2023 at 11:30:14 AM UTC-7, brianj...@gmail.com wrote:
> Not really any new information here, just always wanted to put some thoughts down on paper. The original Autobot Cars assortment released in mid-1984 consisted of the 11 known released Autobots but was released in a case of 12. Mirage served as the Autobot who pulled double duty. This of course isn't inherently "wrong" per se, it just doesn't feel right. After all, there were plenty of other Diaclone molds readily available, so why not throw another one in there and make everything even.
Interesting discussion! Yeah, there's nothing inherent about Mirage that makes him any more desirable than, say, Sunstreaker or Sideswipe. Race cars are cool, sure, but so are sports cars. And, obviously Hasbro didn't know when they were deciding the case assortments which characters would end up being the most popular. (I'm sure if it was character-based, and they had the power of foresight, they would have gone with Jazz being two per case.)
> Not really any new information here, just always wanted to put some thoughts down on paper. The original Autobot Cars assortment released in mid-1984 consisted of the 11 known released Autobots but was released in a case of 12. Mirage served as the Autobot who pulled double duty. This of course isn't inherently "wrong" per se, it just doesn't feel right. After all, there were plenty of other Diaclone molds readily available, so why not throw another one in there and make everything even.
> But who could it have been? It's a fun thought to look at all of the available Diaclone toys at the time and try to discern any pattern which may have influenced which toys would have been selected. Because the Diaclones had many color variations of molds as well as slight re-tools, a good place to start would be to try to separate the similar molds as much as possible to get a good diversity on the shelves. Right away this theory looks good, Hoist, Smokescreen, and Red Alert are all retools of 1984 product. But then it starts to fall apart a bit. 1984 had Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, and Bluestreak all released together. And it's not like they had to double up yet, Skids and Tracks were both new molds that could have been picked.
Since there were so many Diaclone redeco toys, it certainly seems logical that they would sell one style in 1984 and then hold back a redeco style until the following year. They did it with Trailbreaker/Hoist and Sideswipe/Red Alert, but as you say, they didn't do this with Ironhide/Ratchet or Prowl/Bluestreak. But, obviously selling identical redeco toys during the same year wasn't off the table completely, since we got Starscream/Thundercracker/Skywarp all in the same year as well as Buzzsaw/Laserbeak and Rumble/Frenzy.
Skids seems like the strongest contender—it would have made sense to sell Skids in 1984 and then done a Crosscut-style redeco or a Reboost-style redeco in 1985. It's odd that some of the existing Diaclone color schemes never got utilized by Hasbro at all. But, as you say, one could also make a strong argument for Grapple, given the appearance of the proto-Grapple in the cartoon pilot. Again, it would have been sensible to sell Grapple in 1984 and then switch to Inferno in 1985 as a sort of product refresh. The red version of Tracks also seems like a possibility.
But, it could have been something we've never heard about or haven't even considered. Like, maybe the Marlboro-themed Wheeljack redeco was gearing up for production only for the Hasbro lawyers to put the kibosh on it at the eleventh hour. Maybe they discovered that the trade dress was too close to the Marlboro packaging, and that swapping the logo to "Marlboor" simply wasn't sufficient. Perhaps changing Mirage's racing logo to Citanes instead of the cigarette brand Gitanes was a different story because the French company didn't have a presence in the USA, unlike the Marlboro brand.
Or, another possibility is that they miscalculated how many products were actually going to be available. We know there was some confusion with Bluestreak, with three separate Diaclone products seemingly being conflated into a single character (Hasbro's toy version of Bluestreak was all-silver, but the box and instructions showed the blue Fairlady Robo, while the cartoon Bluestreak was based on the toy with a black roof and hood). It also seems like there was some confusion with the red Bumblebee and yellow Cliffjumper, who ended up not getting their own names. Maybe they were under the impression they were going to sell Sideswipe and Spin-Out and Sunstreaker all at the same time, unaware that yellow Sunstreaker had effectively supplanted the red Spin-Out. So, I think it's possible they thought there were going to be twelve Autobot Cars when there were only actually eleven, forcing them to double up on Mirage when it came time to stuff them into shipping cases.
Or... maybe we were going to get both red Mirage and blue Mirage in 1984, and the alternate early Mirage character design was meant for one of them while the standard Mirage cartoon design we all know and love was meant for the other. And then somebody realized they had goofed, and red Mirage wasn't ready to go (maybe because nobody had told Budiansky, so there was no name or character profile for red Mirage available to print on the package) so they did two blue Mirages instead as a quick fix.
We know the early days of the Transformers brand was total chaos, with so many mistakes being made (the Rumble/Frenzy mix-up, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's profiles getting switched, the existence of Bumper, cartoon Swoop being colored like his Diaclone toy, etc.) so honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the shipping case assortment was just another big goof. But, the more I think about it, the more I think Skids slipping through the cracks has something to do with it. He should have been promoted in season one with the rest of the 1984 toys, but in media he was lumped together with the rest of the 1985 cars and the cartoon basically forgot he existed. From a marketing perspective, forgetting that Skids existed is a far bigger gaffe than mixing up Rumble and Frenzy's names and colors, or forgetting which Lamborghini Countach had the rocket backpack and which one had the pile driver arms. Because forgetting Skids meant a measurable loss in revenue, due to the toy's existence not being promoted.
Oddly, Skids wasn't even sold by himself in Japan at all. The only such time they got him at retail was in the weird three-pack with Sunstreaker and Buzzsaw, and was the only way to get any of these characters in Japan. It's bizarre which characters they dropped, since they didn't get Gears, either, or Ironhide. Ratchet and Dirge were only available through mail-order.
On a related note, I wonder why some of the Car Robo toys like Jazz and Hound never got a redeco version during Diaclone?
Zob (seriously wonders where the hell my Diaclone drivers went to)
Irrellius Spamticon
Jan 31, 2023, 10:04:16 AM1/31/23
to
Or did the double pack destroy the molds so fast that it deprived us from official reissue making Mirage accidentally the most sought after Autobot car for collectors??
Seriously, if 3rd parties can reverse engineer toys, I don't see how it'd be a cost prohibitive for Takara. I don't believe for a second that 0 mold work had to be done for the 2003-2004 commemorative series. Hell, they can even just copy Zhong Jin toys, it's not like Zhong Jin would sue Takara for reclaiming their own IP.
Though it mostly seems like Skids wasn't ready on time, since he was slipped into the case assortment halfway through the first series.
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