The robot figures transformed into a mixture of generic and specific contemporary machines, plus a handful of Second World War fighter aircraft, and a number of futuristic designs. The bulk of the Gobot line was taken from the Machine Robo ‘600 Series’ line of figures, which were around 5–8 cm / 2-3 inches high on average. Tonka released the first batch of figures to stores in 1983, one year prior to the Transformers. In 1991, Hasbro acquired the GoBots range from Tonka Inc.
1987 was the final year in which new Gobots were released. The line sold well initially, but was overtaken by Transformers. Introduced in 1983 by Tonka Inc., the GoBots toys were part of the robot "sensation" that swept the nation for a short time. The figures were all given individual names, in contrast to the simple designations they received in Japan. In another similarity to Transformers, Tonka decided to make the figures sentient robots, rather than human-piloted mecha as they had been in Japan, and divided them into two factions – the good Guardians and evil Renegades (although early figures were simply described as ‘Friendly’ or ‘Enemy’ on the packaging). The GoBot toyline was based on figures produced by Popy of Japan (the now-defunct character division of Bandai), named Machine Robo. While Hasbro now owns the fictional side of the property (character names, bios, storyline), the actual toys and their likenesses were only licensed from Bandai in the 1980s, were not covered by the Tonka acquisition, and are not available for Hasbro use.
#POPPY Z METAL GOBOT SERIES#
Subsequently, the universe depicted in the animated series Challenge of the GoBots and follow-up film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords was established as an alternate universe within the Transformers multiverse. Although initially a separate and competing line of toys, Tonka's Gobots became the intellectual property of Hasbro after their buyout of Tonka in 1991. GoBots is a line of transforming robot toys produced by Tonka from 1983 to 1987, similar to Hasbro's Transformers. ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) ( July 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. This article possibly contains original research.
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