I, GoBot

 

 

The GoBots -- or Machine Robo, as they were called in Japan -- are a bona-fide piece of otaku history. They debuted in Japan in 1982, a full two years before the Transformers would make their splash abroad, and came with, what seems in retrospect, an incredible pedigree. They were created by the legendary toymaker Popy. They were designed by Katsushi Murakami, the guy who oversaw the Chogokin series. Actually, they're kind of historic.

And kind of forgotten, even by a robo-nerd like me. Until one night, a few years back, when Patrick and I were having drinks with a couple of Bandai execs. Out of the blue, one of them blurted: "what the hell ever happened with the Machine Robo toys in the US? They were HUGE here! But in America..."

Man, where to start? Back when I was a kid, showing off your GoBots was a quick way to get your ass laughed off the schoolyard. Not because you were a nerd. We were eleven. All of us were nerds. But because everyone knew the Transformers were cooler. The GoBots were smaller. They were simpler. They were cheaper. It didn't help that Tonka, the company that imported them from Japan, gave them names that sounded half-assed even to fourth graders: "Fitor." "Cy-Kill." "Cop-tur."  Or that the animated series they sponsored looked like something we'd made in art class ourselves. Sure, there were a few oddballs who admitted to liking them, like that kid down the street who bragged about having every single one. But behind their backs, we'd wonder about how their parents had gone so, so wrong in the toy aisle. ("Maybe they're having some issues at home," we'd theorize. "Or perhaps they're Amish or something.")

It didn't matter that the GoBots had an incredible pedigree -- this was way before "Made in Japan" became a badge of honor. It didn't matter that some of the best minds in the Japanese toy biz created them, that they featured some pretty amazing gimmicks for their price and size. If Tonka had spun them the way they'd been spun to great success in Japan -- as high-precision playthings, the robot equivalent of Swiss watches, cutting-edge technology miniaturized to the size of a Hot Wheels car -- they might have stood a chance. But instead, kids inevitably compared them to a series that did a far better job of giving storylines and personalities to a bunch of plastic toys. When the fate of the universe is at stake, who ya gonna call? "Optimus Prime," or some guy named "Fitor?"

"Naruhodo," said the exec. "I see." And while the conversation moved on to other topics, a weird fascination with "the little robots that couldn't" remained. A few weeks back, I broke down and acquired the first ten or so Machine Robo toys. I keep telling myself it's because they're a window into Japanese toy-history. But deep down inside, I think we all know the truth. Now I can finally tell that kid who used to live down the street from me that my GoBots collection is better than his. 

Comments

[sixmats]

I enjoyed the show (I enjoyed most cartoons back then) but the toys sucked. Did the arms even bend at the elbow?

[Apreche]

What about the Gobots Rock Lords spin off? I only had one, but I liked them a lot. The TV show was lame, but the toys were great.

[MattAlt]

>>Did the arms even bend at the elbow?

Well, given the technology at the time and the size of the products, there was only so much you could squeeze in. Murakami was big into automotive design and I suspect the vehicle modes came first and foremost. There's a sort of origami to their designs. If the Transformer toys are epic sagas, the Machine Robo are like little haiku.

[Vintango]

This is so true! I was that kid bringing my Go-Bots to school and showing them off. However, I remember there were at least a few other kids that collected them, so I wasn't completely alone...

I moved to Transformers pretty quickly for all the reasons mentioned here, but my Go-Bot collection was easily three times bigger.

I've still got some of my favorites on the shelf along with my other toys. They just have a classic design that I'll always love.

[100percentfarts]

Just the other day I found a photo of me sitting atop a fallen tree sporting a Gobots shirt that clung impossibly tight.

[hillsy]

Great picture.

[Mark]

I see the two I had (still have, somewhere) as a kid in the picture. Ah, the memories. :)

[ArthurFrDent]

Could be worse... I am a few years too old to even get in on go-bots... living in northern New Mexico at the time didn't help... by the time I started liking any of this stuff real cars were more important than any toy. Amusingly enough though, I can watch #1son who is now 16 be a Transformers snob, and talk about design and all the rest. Heh, you should see what he picks up at garage sales. I'll tell him to keep an eye out for go-bots, even though he'll think they are lame.

[Materialist Zen]

Hell yeah! It only took thirty+ years to realize this myself. It's definitely Tonka's fault, but I'm not complaining whenever I snag one for $1 at the local flea.

[MattAlt]

If you dig Gobots/Machine Robo, I heartily recommend "Machine Robo Wedge," a large-format coffee table color guidebook that came out a few years back. Unfortunately, it's out of stock, but here's a taste:

http://www.hlj.com/product/TYT02022

[Sprocket]

I can say without hesitation that I was OBSESSED with Go-Bots as a child. I don't know how, but I never saw the Transformers cartoon, so I ignored the toys. It didn't help that my attention was devoted to so many other '80's toylines, and I could watch Go-Bots on cable. The second time I lost my Turbo, my mom went to Mexico to get one: Now THAT'S devotion.

Mind, my situation was unique: the only person judging whether Go-Bots were 'cool enough' was me. By the time I was old enough to be talking about stuff like this on the playground (1987), Go-Bots were gone, Nintendo came out and we were all about the Mario and Zelda. And Beast Wars has made me a TF fan ever since.

While I'm more a fiction first, toys later kind of guy, I'd have to say Machine Robo toys were far more fun than Transformers: simple, elegant, sturdy, and no extra parts. It's a real shame they didn't take off here.

[ChrisM]

didja tell the execs about the freakishly overpriced Gobot lot at Morphys??

[MattAlt]

That conversation happened years before the Morphy's auction. I wonder if the rumors of Hollywood royalty bidding up that lot of Gobots were true? We never did find out who won.

(For those that weren't there, "Morphy's" refers to the auction house in Pennsylvania that sold off a massive collection of vintage Japanese toys several years back.)

http://toyboxdx.com/brog/?p=5730

[thomas]

>> Did the arms even bend at the elbow?

On a lot of the Super Gobots they did. Most Gobots are actually better articulated than Transformers from the same period. Gobots pioneered ball-joints in transforming toys long before Generation 2 and Beast Wars did so for Transformers.

Gobots did a lot better in Europe, probably because it got a treatment closer to Machine Robo at first (rather obvious since it was at first called "Robo Machine" around here, only gaining the Gobots monicker later on).

[Antony Mazzotta]

My first transforming toy must have been in 83 or early 84. It was the Gobot toy "Jeeper Creeper". I thought it was a really nice toy and had lots of fun with it. It even had a gun, which was unusual for Machine Robo toys. A couple of weeks later, one of my mom's friend brought her older son by the house. He had a shiny red metallic truck, that could transform into a large robot. The trucks trailer turned into a base, and inside were several little magnetic men that controlled both the base and the robot.
This was all before Transformers and Gobots were on TV, and I was young. I appreciate MR toys, but Diaclone toys were just more interesting.

[MattAlt]

Much as I love the things, it's true a lot of the Gobots paled in comparison to their Transformer counterparts. This photo pretty much sums up the disconnect for me. Gobot on left. Transformer on right.

http://toyboxdx.com/phorum/file.php?4,file=8950

[JayWicky]

In France, Go-Bots had a pretty strange history. First they appeared in toy stores as "Robo Machines" circa 1982, and I believe the same thing happened in the rest of Europe and the UK. The British even had a comic strip published by the same people who were doing 2000AD. Then the cartoon was aired on France's biggest TV channel, while Transformers was aired on a newcoming pay channel (sort of a French HBO) that was accessible only in parts of the territory. In spite of that, Transformers sold better, I believe, and "Transformers" actually became some sort of general term used by grown-ups to describe those weird japanese transforming robots their kids wanted for Christmas. We never had the "Battle of the Rocklords" movie, but after they ran out of Challenge of the Go-Bots episodes, the distributors switched to Machinerobo Chronos no Gyakushu without giving us kids a moment's notice (many of us missed the first episode because of that). In a move that makes Carl Macek look like Frederik Schodt, they opted to use the Go-Bots names in their translation of Machinerobo : Rom Stoll became "Nick", Leina became "AJ", Blue Jet was "Leader(-1)" and Triple Jim was "Proto" (French name for Turbo). You can imagine the headaches caused to an 11-year-old not knowing any better...

I liked Chronos no Gyakushu quite a lot in spite of the repetitive story structure, but oftentimes I dream of what would have happened if "Challenge..." had been aired in Japan just like Transformers was. Maybe they, too, would have had actual sequels made in Japan, with better animation, new designs, and female Go-Bots that would actually look female. Maybe the Rom and Leina concept could have been introduced in the existing US continuity. I mean, some *other* pretty terrible Hanna-Barbera cartoons have been aired in Japan, so why not this one ?

And also, I never understood why the Japanese audience had to wait until 1986 to have their own Machinerobo-based cartoon. How come it took so long ?

[MattAlt]

"I never understood why the Japanese audience had to wait until 1986 to have their own Machinerobo-based cartoon. How come it took so long ?"

Unlike the vast majority of robot toys Bandai sold, the Machine Robo toys weren't "character toys" -- they came first, designed purely as products, and the show came much later, after the series had proven itself. (Ditto for the Transformers, actually, which were just an offshoot of Takara's Microman/Micronauts toy series in Japan.)

[JayWicky]

I get it. They were marketed as gadgets, kinda like a rubik's cube in humanoid form, right ? Still, there was a short-lived manga entitled "Ionoid Senshi Machinerobo", I believe. Pics of it appear in the Machinerobo Wedge book. Funny thing is, like in the Microman manga, the Machinerobos were tiny extra-terrestrial robots disguising as the young hero's toys.

[MattAlt]

Yes! It is really fascinating to me just how much the Japanese and foreign marketing campaigns for these toys differed. As an unabashed anime nerd who was raised on stuff like Mazinger Z and Gundam, the idea of giving the robots sentient personalities really rubbed me the wrong way as a kid. But it certainly represented a successful paradigm shift -- now the Transformers are far better known than the Diaclone toys, and I suspect a lot of American fans have very little clue about the toys' Japanese origins.

[JayWicky]

I do believe indeed that the "sentient transforming robot" motif has great potential as a subgenre. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I believe it could have the same potential as the super-hero genre in the right hands. Think about it : a whole society in which people transform into their own consumer's goods. It's mind-boggling. That's what bugs me the most about the demise of Go-Bots. Now, with the possible exception of some post-Yusha series (do they still put out that kind of stuff?) owned by Takara anyway, all that's left is Transformers. It's as if only Marvel was doing super-hero books. That can't be healthy. Thank God for Jeffrey Brown's Incredible Change-Bots !

[andres]

Hi!! When i complete my 1984-86 Transformers Collection I start to collect gobots and they are really cooll. I love all the die cast metal that they have and some of them are amezing (Tux i just outstandig), some of them have unique transformations as well.
Also i managed to get some brazilian robot machine toy. Especially the "mimo bus".
And, of course, who can forget the rocklords, really nice figures whit a very silly concept. I get recenty Fossilsaur and he is just UNIQUE!