MICROMAN DIACLONE SERIES

There’s a sense of profusion here, which fires up a desire to “collect them all” that wasn’t present in the same form in similar American Transformers ads from the mid-’80s. The toys here just seem so much grander, flying or driving in massive fleets.

Even the kids in these commercials don’t engage in too much imaginative play they simply demonstrate the transformation mechanisms in a staid way. They let you, the viewer, project yourself into their adventures. Here the toys get to move, fly, drive on their own. The line reads were cringeworthy and, on some level, I knew that even as a 10-year-old in 1985. I think the thing that strikes me most about them is that they balance kids actively manipulating the toys with “hands-free” stop-action animations showing the robots and vehicles being propelled “on their own.” One thing I always hated about American ’80s toy commercials as a kid was how obviously cheesy the scenarios of kids playing with them seemed. By 1982, they’d introduced the transforming car models that would eventually become part of Hasbro’s American line of “robots in disguise.”

MICROMAN DIACLONE SERIES

Diaclone, introduced in 1980, was a toy series created to take advantage of the ’70s Japanese fad for transforming mecha. And such an uncanny one! Here are the Transformers I played with as a kid-Optimus Prime, Wheeljack, Ratchet, Sideswipe-in their original context as members of the Diaclone (ダイアクロン Daiakuron) line of toys from Japan. GRASSO: Having become an aficionado of YouTube compilations of television commercials from the ’70s and ’80s, being introduced to this particular collection was a real treat. Maker and Year: Takara Co., Ltd., 1980-1984ĭescription: ( Michael Grasso and Steve Toyoshima) Object Name: Diaclone television advertisements

Microman diaclone