Transformers Alternators

Review by Loc

When you’re a kid, toys are there to strike your imagination. You create storylines, you manufacture environments, and you immerse yourself into the play-world of your design. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking about little green army men, fashion plate Barbies, eye-and-mouth-sporting potatoes, the toys of yore contributed to socialization skills and brain-exercising imagination. Then we grow up and put those toys away. We move onto things like clothes, purses, cars, all the materialistic crap you can imagine. Sometimes, your nostalgia pangs kick in and you hit Ebay for all the toys you threw out. And if you’re like me, you just buy the new stuff from the companies that are cashing-in on your nostalgic weak knees.

One company that is just printing money with nostalgia lines: GI Joe, Transformers, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, is there any young-and-or-young-at-heart male license that they don’t own? For many of these lines, there’s a mixture of kid-focus and adult-collector sub-brands. And with the Transformers, there’s no doubt that kids are a big, big focus of their marketing dollars. The newest animated line is based off the Cartoon Network series and the movie line was a plethora of Michael Bay inspired insect looking bots.

However, the Alternators line was squarely aimed at the adult collector. These were highly articulated, highly detailed recreations of officially licensed cars. What? Huh? Officially licensed? That’s right, before we knew what the cars were supposed to be, but now, we get officially licensed Subaru Imprezzas, Chevrolet Corvettes, Ford Mustangs, and Jeep Wranglers. These “toys” are based on a 1:24 scale, which is what you find with so many high-end, die-cast car models you find on executive desks and glass display cases. And they’re awesome.

Starting with their vehicle modes, Alternators draws from a wide range of manufacturers. Aside from the aforementioned models, other licensed cars include the Toyota Scion b, the Dodge Viper, the Mazda RX-8, the Acura RSX, the Honda S2000, the Jaguar XK, the Honda Civic Si, and even the Dodge Ram SRT-10. Each of these cars is authentically replicated with accurate body types, logos and branding, and even detailed interiors. As model cars alone, these are great display pieces.

Then you get to the robot part, and these guys kick up the amp to 11. Transformations are complex but not overly difficult. The resulting robot is an amazing piece of engineering with copious amounts of articulation to allow dynamic and engaging poses. Moreover, the transformations utilized the existing car designs extremely well, integrating details like folding seats, pivoting tire axels, and opening trunks to offer further intricacies for the robot mode. Almost every robot utilized a transforming engine block to become a high-powered weapon. These are great robots in their own right as well.

As a kid, you tend to overlook things like details or poseability. Then as a grown-up, you realize the transforming car you had looked like a gigantic block of plastic when properly transformed. The collector community even coined the term “kibble” to describe the gross amounts of non-integrated vehicle details in a fully transformed robot. Oftentimes, a Transformer would look great as a robot from the front, but the back was full of kibble like hoods, doors, and tires that looked horrible. With Alternators, this practice is not only addressed, but all efforts are made to remove evidence of kibble. Again, the engineering on these toy designs are amazing.

Alas, the greatest disservice done to this line was its untimely cancellation. With the big-budget movie fast approaching, Hasbro halted development on these toys to focus squarely on the movie line. And while the movie toys proved to be a commercial success, collectors were left with little more than a bittersweet taste in their mouths. For a split second, they saw the potential realized in a Transformer line that serviced their appetites, only to have it taken away in favor of insectoid monstrosities from the movie. The final pieces produced were interesting additions based off the small cassette warriors Rumble and Ravage. The Jaguar XK transformed into a four-legged panther for Ravage, which didn’t look that great to be honest. The Civic Si became a double-pile-driving Rumble, a nod to his cartoon counterpart who had piledrivers for arms. One can only imagine how the Cadillac-based Megatron would have turned out, but we’ll never know.

In a traditional sense, Hasbro shared the development and marketing with the Japanese-based Takara company. In Japan, these were released as Binaltech and actually included a large degree of die-cast metal parts, again a nod to the original line of Transformers.

You can find these on Ebay, some pieces fetching a whole lot of money. The last two characters were tough to track down at retail and command a pretty penny. Other popular characters like Prowl or Meister, known as Jazz to American fans, fetch a large sum of money. Also, popular cars that didn’t last long on the shelves are tough to win, things like the Ford GT Mirage are very expensive. However, you can find some of the other pieces for little more than their $20 retail price. Japanese pieces will be more expensive, partly cause of their die-cast cost, partly because of the rarity in the US market. But if you want a sweet looking car to adorn your desk, or a cool-ass robot in your display case, or both, track a couple of these down and enjoy. You won’t be disappointed, except for the fact that you won’t be getting any new additions to the line any time soon.