News

Hasbro Announces New Transformers Jetfire Toy

The news was delivered on Saturday to attendees of Hasbro's Transformers Panel during Toy Fair 2014 in New York. This is of particular note due to Jetfire being based on a Veritech Fighter VF-1 from Macross.

For those that were not aware, last year Hasbro released a G.I. Joe Skystriker with paint decals to mimic Jetfire from The Transformers and Harmony Gold U.S.A sued Hasbro for damages over the toy stating copyright infringement over their license for Macross. The lawsuit was later dismissed as both parties (Hasbro and Harmony Gold U.S.A) decided to dismiss the case and the documents of dismissal state that Harmony Gold U.S.A cannot refile a lawsuit for the same claim against Hasbro.

And now Hasbro has decided to release a leader-class toy of Jetfire to celebrate the Transformer's 30th Anniversary. The toy will be the a new "GENERATIONS" scale (not as large as Generations Metroplex and come with vacuum-metallized parts, usually only seen on Takara-Tomy Transformers releases in Japan.

Jetfire (link to full announcement and pictures) is not the only 30th Anniversary toy, Hasbro are running a GENERATIONS line encompassing 30 different toys representing every possible incarnation of the brand over those past 30 years. The series also includes two figures based on Special Armored Battalion Dorvack who are Roadbuster (for announcement please click here, yes that is a Haiku spouting Japanese samurai cyber-shark on the same page) and Whirl who has already been released to some markets. The availability of the GENERATIONS line in Australia is known to be variable with Hasbro Australia not always bringing the line to stores locally.

Both Jetfire and Roadbuster are slated to be released later in 2014.

History of Transformers Hasbro and Japan

It is not commonly know that Transformers was created as an amalgam of several Japanese toy series. Transformers was created when Hasbro purchased the licenses to several other toy ranges including work from Takara, Takatoku Toys, Toy Box and ToyCo. Hasbro then employed the services of marketing agency Griffin Bacal who came up with the idea of merging the separate toy lines into a single series and created the idea of sentient mechanoids (they were originally piloted mecha) and came up with the concept of the two warring factions with the logos of the Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons being based on Prowl and Soundwave. Then Marvel Comics were brought into name and create a fiction for the characters including a comic series and cartoon which helped set the popularity that succeeds to this day.

Going back to the toys, Takara's Diaclone line brought most of the cars (Optimus Prime, Prowl, Ironhide and Skids), the Dinobots (Grimlock, Slag, Snarl), the Insecticons (Bombshell, Kickback and Shrapnel) and the Triple Changers (Blitzwing). Both Megatron, Soundwave and the cassette tapes (Frenzy, Rumble, Ravage, Laserbeak) came from the Micro Change sub-line of Takara's Microman line.

Of particular interest to ANN readers, Takatoku Toys who created the Macross 1/55 Super Valkyrie VF-1S toy which also now known as Jetfire. When Takatoku went bankrupt in 1984 their designs were purchased by Bandai who then licensed the molds to Hasbro as at the time, Bandai had minimal presence in North America and preferred to license the toys. This also included two toys from Special Armored Battalion Dorvack, "Mugen Calibur" was repainted to be Roadbuster and "Oberon Gazzette" was turned into Whirl.

This article is with thanks to the Transformers Wiki.