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Fracus once wrote me about Transformers in China. Here is what he had to say on the subject. |
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Lemme give you all a history lesson on chinese TFs. Back when TFs came out in America, they were imported into China (or just 'left there' since some later ones were made in China anyways...). These were EXACTLY the American toys. Through research from friends and relatives, things that were even made in Japan like the earlier cars and Jetfire were availible in China. When the American TFs were in China, there were dubbed cartoons, and they were pretty damn popular. These TFs had big fat Chinese stickers stuck all over their boxes to cover the English, and I believe they were fully endorsed by Hasbro. After TFs stopped in America, the fakes started pouring in. That was around 1990 or so. When G2 started, China got G2 toys also (most likely from the same factories that were making the toys for the US). To my knowledge, all of the G2 Devastators in China were orange. I'll tell you how I know in a sec. In 1994, I took a visit to China. Back in 94, I was ill educated in the art of Transformers, and what I saw on that trip, I took very much for granted. You see, back in 1994, for some extremely strange reason, China produced TFs again. I'm not talking about G2, I'm talking about TFs from as far back as 1984. Honestly, I dont know if these were old stock from factories or something, but these were showing up in normal department stores everywhere. Series 1 and Series 2 cars...jets...things such as these were cropping up everywhere. Here is a list of stuff that was sold (complete best to my knowledge):
*Note: Different TFs were released in different places. I never saw a Apeface or a Snapdragon in Canton (or Guangzhou). But I did get an Apeface in Hong Kong and I have seen a Chinese Snapdragon for sale. Now you ask, why do I think these were produced again, and not just found from a warehouse? Well, there is a good possibility that these were stored from before, still in their cases without big clumsy 80's Chinese TF stickers on them. Instead, each had a little clear sticker with their Chinese name on the corner of their flap or card. These toys were EXACTLY normal, with the EXCEPTION of the following. Grimlock, Sludge, Cyclonus, and Ramjet I have noticed, have inferior feeling boxes and the printed quality is less. The Headmasters suffer from the same problem, but of a lesser degree. The others seem pretty damn normal. Also, these boxes have Pawtucket RI all blacked out (this is usually located under the tech specs on the back of boxes). It seems that this was blacked out on the master copy with a marker and then produced with that blackout. On every single one of these guys (except the original cars), there was a small strip of sticker (or rectangular sticker in the cassettes case) that had some mumbo written in Chinese, and the date 1994. With the toys, Headmaster Brainstorm has his 2 guns just sitting around inside the bubble, not attached to him like the US version do (they rattle around). On the Twins, instead of having their special rubsign on the chests, they have either a Decepticon or Autobot insignia normal sticker. The Triggercons/bots all have rubsigns, which they should not have because they were released in 1988. Oh, and about these rubsigns on these Triggercons/bots, please don't go and give me that argument about how some Terrorcons had rubs and others didn't. I'll tell you why. The ones that had rubs were made in 1987, and the ones that have their rub space filled in were from 1988. That simple, no argument. On the toys themselves, they were good quality, perfectly exact to Transformers, with one difference. On their copyright, where 'China' or 'Japan' or 'Taiwan' would usually be stamped, that part was left blank. So basically, it would say Hasbro 1987 Takara 1987 (or whatever) and then a big blank space where the country of origin would have been.
 Also, in 1996 (the year I went back before the last time), these Victory toys you have been seeing lately were there. On the box, there is slapped a small sticker. I believe it said something to the effect of 'Hasbro International' or 'World Hasbro'. The Japanese Toys released in China have most of the box translated into Chinese. The template is the same as the Japanese boxes. In Japan, the logo 'Takara' would be in Japanese, but on these boxes, it says TAKARA in English like we're used to. These toys were identical to Japanese releases to my knowledge, though compared with the Japanese Road Caesar, the shade of blue seems to be a little lighter and a few other small shade differences (that's from memory...I no longer have a set of those). Following is the list of Japanese TFs that were released in China as I'm aware.
Back in 1996 before I even knew of Japanese TFs, I had bought a Jaguar. Very nice quality, and it had all its markings. I looked everywhere for a Leozack (since I reasoned to myself, if I could find a Leozack, I would get the set) but no luck. I saw lots of Killbisons and a few Jets here and there, but no Leozack.
 How might I know this? Well, I went back the summer before the last and bought a storeroom's TFs for about $600. I ditched all my cloths and everything else there and came back with the TFs in my hands. I had about $10,000 worth of Sealed American and Chinese TFs. I stopped by my grandparents city of Canton, and picked up all they had too, which were some crapped up Headmasters and Chinese TFs plus a few Triggercons/bots. This was all that was left of the great TF re-release in China. Every single one of my TFs had a little sticker stuck there by the distributor. After 2 whole days of traveling around the city of Guangzhou, I located the address of the distributor, but to my disappointment, the distributor had been turned into a Disney distributor. *Sigh*... That ends the story of my lifes best break. If only I had known more about TFs in 1994, I would have bought myself more than just a Fort Max. I would have put down so much money on these things that I would be a millionaire now...but I didnt. And to this day, I'm *still* looking for a nice set sf Sealed American TMs, which I saw way back when. Man...now you all got me remenissing (or however you spell that...). -Fracus>
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