Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Dwayne's Wednesday Robot Romper Room

Gobots (aka garbage, trash, are-you-kidding-me, Transformers-mentally-challenged-cousins): The Gobots were a byproduct of corporate competition. In 1983, Tonka rushed to put its version of vehicle changing robots on the market when it heard that Hasbro was releasing its Transformer line which came out a year later. Although Tonka was first in the market place the robots lacked any background and some "transformed" merely by standing up. There was not much more thought put into the cartoon tie-in as the toys. As a result we had such characters with great names like Scooter for a scooter, Tank for yep, a tank, and even though Cy-Kill was a cool name for a motorcycle the only thing he killed was the idea that robots are cool in the minds of many preschoolers.

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia - Snark 100% Dwayne)

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