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Beastformers Blog: Τερατομαχους, Greek Battle Beasts (GBB) + Checklist


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#1 Beastformers

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Posted 24 October 2015 - 03:05 PM

Τερατομαχους
The Greek Battle Beasts

 

Attached File  GBB.jpg   24.47K   26 downloads

After the Maintenance Period of last month one of the pages that was added to the Beastformers Blog was the Τερατομαχους (Tepato Maxoi) page in which most of the known and verified info about the Greek Battle Beasts (GBB) is shared. So far the GBB have been discussed also out on LRG on and of in relation to various subjects and for various reasons but due to the topics being so diverse and the info and facts being scathered all over the place I thought it was time to gather everything we know, and more, and create one page for this in the hope to capture and answer a lot of previously asked questions but also to help out fellow and new collectors with info they might need in the  future. Have a look at the page;

 

https://beastformers...c/tepato-maxoi/

 

This page wouldn´t have been created without the help and discussions out here on LRG with fellow collectors so we can really see the result of a combined effort of Battle Beasts collectors here.

 

 

Another thing I was able to add to the Beastformers Blog today was a Renewed GBB Checklist for those who´re building, or planning to built, a Master-set because without a proper checklist it is almost impossible to keep track of the huge amount of parts you might have to deal with working towards a complete GBB set consisting out of 224 Figures! And knowing that each Beasts is composed out of 3 components of the same color (Left Arm (LA) - Right Arm (RA)- Body) we´re talking about a total of 672 parts that are needed...

 

The Greek Battle Beasts Checklist can be found here; https://beastformers...-gbb-checklist/

 

On that page also some additional info in relation to the Checklist can be found like how it could be used the most efficiently but I will also add the Checklist here so it is directly visible for all LRG members. The Checklist is composed out of 3 pages;

 

Attached File  gbb-checklist-page-1.jpg   124.02K   41 downloadsAttached File  gbb-checklist-page-2.jpg   124.5K   37 downloadsAttached File  gbb-checklist-page-3.jpg   109.78K   22 downloads

 

I hope that with all this research and fact checking that some of us have been working on for quite a while a lot of the questions in relation to the Greek Battle Beasts have been solved and there might also be some new details in the article for some of you so it is definitely worth to check it out.

 

Απολαύστε την Τερατομαχους !

(Enjoy the Tepato Maxoi!)

 


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#2 dabbuu

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Posted 24 October 2015 - 05:10 PM

Amazing


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#3 bot3ro

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Posted 24 October 2015 - 05:35 PM

Great work as always! Thanks and appreciation for all the work that was put into this. A most impressive thing to have a master GBB set!
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#4 Edmasta

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Posted 29 October 2015 - 01:52 PM

Real good man ;)
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#5 Grencats

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Posted 31 October 2015 - 04:22 PM

What a lot of work. It's great seeing all the info put together. The layout is also pleasantly done. I do still think that it is a stretch calling them bootlegs or K.0.'s. There is just to much partnership between Takara and El Greco for about 10 years before Battle Beasts were released. Takara worked with many companies in many different countries at that time and El Greco was just one of them. Takara only starting working with Hasbro for North American releases after their Diakron line failed. Diakron line was supposed to be Diaclone in North America but it never caught on. For example Takara worked with

 

El Greco in Greece with Micronauts and G1 Transformers

Ceji Joustra in France with Diaclone toys

Gig in Italy with Diaclone & Trasformers

Plastico IGA in Mexico with G1 Transformers

Estrela in Brazil with G1 Transformers

Antex in Argentina with G1 Transformers

Hasbro in North America with G1 Transformers and Battle Beasts

 

Takara's logo was not necessarily on the package.

Takara's relationship with El Greco seems to have started with Micronauts after Takara bought the line from Mego. This was in the late 70's, They released many El Greco Micronauts toys including many large sets. There are many El Greco G1 Transformers like Minibots, Devestator, and Defensor just to name a few. This was all years before Battle Beasts. There is just no way El Greco was able to acquire so many Takara toy molds for releases spanning 10 years without having a a true partnership. My bet is el greco purchased the Battle Beast molds from Takara in an agreement where they could come up with their own packaging for their own line. Battle Beasts at the time although a Transformers Headmasters spin off was ultimately a new idea. They could not release them as Transformers because they did not have alternate modes. Micronauts, Diaclone, and Trasformers toy lines had pretty much ended due to the success of G1 Transformers which was doing Series 3 releases when Battle Beasts came out. Pretty much when Fortess Maximus was released, the ultimate Base to stand Battle Beasts on. They made up Battle Beasts in North America, and Beastformers in Japan with Transformers logos on the packaging. Rather than trying to tie Battle Beasts in with Transformers in Greece, they left El Greco to do their own thing. El Greco would have had better insight on the marketing strategies that would make the line a success. 

 

Maybe it's worth noting that Milton Bradley Logos are sometimes on G1 Transformers packaging particularly in Europe and Canada because Hasbro and Milton Bradley merged together in 84.


Edited by Grencats, 31 October 2015 - 09:39 PM.

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#6 Beastformers

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Posted 05 November 2015 - 05:37 AM

Sorry for the late reply...

 

@Grencats thanks for the response and throwing up the ball again for the discussion of the GBB being a Bootleg line or an actual Licensed line.

It´s something you´ve done before and because of that and the arguments you´ve brought and bring in its definitely something we´ve taken into account and looked into but the problem is all the ¨info¨ and thoughts of it possibly being a licensed line come back to you.

 

There´s no doubt the arguments you bring in are grounded and seem more than reasonable to assume a possible license but there simply is not hard evidence for this and simply accepting the complete absence of the TAKARA or HASBRO logo or any kind of reference on the packaging is not something that can be that easily ignored looking at all the other Licensed release all over the world. Because with that knowledge there´s no way either TAKARA, HABRO or in a second layer MB would´ve allowed the usage of the Beasts in such a way, at least from the TAKARA perspective.

 

All the Greek connections and persons I´ve spoken and asked about this seem to agree on the fact that El Greco was known for their Bootleg lines and none of them were able to confirm or gave the assumption of there being a solid and licensed relation between El Greco and the other companies. IF there´d indeed be a direct line between TAKARA and El Greco, in which case I'd say there´d definitely be an even tighter contract related to logo´s and naming, this might be something which will be hard to verify without info from the Japanese side... 

 

We still have sort of a blank when it comes to the true route of the molds making it to El Greco although it is confirmed they´re identical to the ones that MB used for the production of the Beasts in Spain (BDC) but that doesn´t exclude the option of the molds being duplicated and send out to for instance Greece directly as well. In which case there would indeed be a connection to TAKARA because all the mold and production work was done via the TAKARA factory in China initially. So there´s a slight possibility of the molds having another origin but so far there´s just not enough solid information to get this confirmed apart from the info you mention which just isn´t enough....

 

TAKARA might´ve contacted HASBRO for the release in North America but the release of the Beasts in Europe via MB went directly via HASBRO so from that point of view it´d be weird to see TAKARA trying to set up their own direct line within the EU for Greece at that time knowing MB also provided Italy with the Battle Beasts. So there´s quite some conflicting information as well if you look at it from that perspective.

 

At some moment there´s been a clash between TAKARA and HASBRO because of the almost sudden stop of LB releases which were clearly planned for the US as well so its unclear if this might be one of the issues that has been of any influence as well as I can imagine one of the two companies would´ve been pretty pissed if they´d figure out the GBB were produced by El Greco in original molds meaning on of the two sides most have known, and made money, of off this. 


If you can see if you can dig up some documents which clearly state a direct link between TAKARA and El Greco because who says the Chinese factory that was producing for TAKARA back at the day didn´t have a leak resulting in original molds going to Greece for a longer period already!?

 

 

Hope we´ll find out the true origin of the molds someday but for now with everything we know I think its more than fair to keep it at the bootleg status for the GBB.

 

To be continued I´d say....


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#7 Grencats

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Posted 07 November 2015 - 02:59 PM

Hey Beastformers great to hear back from you. Here are a few more words on the subject as I try to address some of the things you have brought up in your blog and here. I hope I’m not repeating myself to much with what I said earlier.

Transformers has been going constant in North America since 1984. They have released new toys every year. Battle Beasts only ran a few years because they were really just part of the Transformers line of the time. Big bases were being made including Trypticon and Scorponok and the Battle Beasts were the perfect figures for them. The Headmaster and Powermaster figures were the same scale and they all interact very well.

In North America the marketing of Transformers under Hasbro changed in 1990 with the Action Masters line which was completely different. They basicially ended what they had been doing and restarted everything with a different kind of figure that just didn’t work with the previous Transfomers.  This also ended Battle Beasts, because Action Masters was supposed to be the new thing. Transformers declined in North America and finally found some fans with Beast Wars a few years later.

Transformers in Japan under Takara however never had the Action Masters. They continued on with the good stuff and got several more years of G1 figures that North America never saw including some of the best to be released.  The whole Masterforce, Victory, and Zone toys are exclusive only to Japan and of course Laser Beasts were released at the same time and have these exact Transformers logos on the boxes as from these series’. Liokasier is one of my favorites.

Takara and Hasbro still work together today. They release Transformers every year. The release the same toy in Japan under Takara, and in North America under Hasbro.

Among collectors El Greco is considerd a vintage authentic item when in regards to Hasbros 2 main toy lines Transformers and My Little Pony. Here is a Greek G1 Transformers toy commercial showing both Hasbro and El Greco logos at the end.

Hasbro was known to work with international companies in the 80’s. It was a great way for them to make some money. At the time, selling the licenses to international manufacturers and sending the molds was a much better deal than shipping their own product all over the planet.  “Under Alan's initiative in the late 1980s, Hasbro moved to increase international sales by taking US market failed toys overseas and selling them for as much as four times the original price. This increased international sales from $268 million in 1985 to $433 million in 1988.”

El Greco was the manufacturer Hasbro worked with in Greece. My Little Pony Collectors all over the world go crazy for the rare and expensive ‘Nirvana’ Pony’s including the Greek ones by El Greco.  They even had different scents. A bootleg Pony is called a Fakie and the El Greco’s are not Fakies. Interesting to note that the Greek Pony’s have no stamps on them but the El Greco logos are on the package. It actually varied from country to county as to if the pony toys had stamps or not. My Little Pony as a toy line is nearly just as prolific as Transformers starting in 1984 and taking just a few years off from 93-96 in North America since then. Here is the master list of International My Little Pony manufacturers, and of course El Greco in on the list.  http://www.modelhors...HCs_Hasbro.html

If El Greco was stealing like over 100 Hasbro molds and releasing bootlegs the lawsuit would have been legendary. Hasbro had International reach and would have not let it happen. Hasbro had won a case in 1985 regarding their Transformers Jumpstarter figures which had been K.O’d. They also definitely would not have purchased El Greco like they did when the company fell if the company had been known for doing counterfeits. If not El Greco, than what company did Hasbro work with in Greece?  They had licenses sold as far as India (MLP) so why leave out Greece?

The way a line was marketed was apparently up to the manufacturer from the international country other than Hasbro/Takara. Takara for example thought they could release My Little Pony in Japan and came up with the strangest variation of almost any toy line. It doesn’t really even look like a pony.

The Greek Battle Beasts were released as Exogini toys. Gig owned the Exogini line and Takara’s had already worked with GIG several years earlier releasing the European exclusive line Trasformer Auto Robots and Diaclone. True there are no logos on the Greek Battle Beast box but that could have been somthing as simple as a printing error that they ran with.  For example, some of the Diaclone figures from France made by Ceji Joustra have box art stating a comic included inside. The comic was never included becuase it simply would not fit in the package. The boxes were not reprinted and they ran with the error. The Greek Battle Beast figures themselves have clear Hasbro and Takara stamps on them. Also looking into it, other Exogini Greek packaging are also missing any manufacturer logos. https://www.facebook...40512655&type=3

Another link between El Greco and Takara is evident within the El Greco releases of Takara’s  Micronauts toy line. So it is not all that strange to see Takara on an El Greco toy as is the case with the Greek Battle Beasts. Check out this FB page with images. https://www.facebook...?type=3

Note that the El Greco Micronauts figures came with the exact same safety Rubber Bopper Missles from GIG/Takara Trasformers Auto Robots. Micronauts were also released in Italy with GIG, which just shows more of the partnership history between Takara, GIG and EL Greco long before Battle Beasts. Looking closer at Micronauts toys, Takara didn’t change the stamps of existing toys after purchasing the line from Mego, they released the toys under Takara, GIG, and El Greco with the same old Mego stamps on them. It apparently wasn’t all that important to them.

Another interesting tie in is that the company Otto Simon seems to have been the Exogini and My Little Pony Manufacturer in the Netherlands, somewhat linking Hasbro to Exogini.

In conclusion I have found that the general consensus among collectors including collectors from Greece is that El Greco was the authentic Hasbro manufacturer for the local market. You only have to look to G1 My Little Pony and G1 Transformers forums to check this. It also only makes sense that the El Greco toys were authentic because Hasbro from a successful business point of view would not have worked with known counterfeiters. Especially since they were working with international companies at the time. El Greco was known to show their logo on Hasbro licensed items and the 2 logos can also sometimes be found together on various toy packaging.


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#8 Beastformers

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Posted 07 November 2015 - 04:22 PM

Thanks Grencats, this does clarify a lot more and its great to see you´ve this much background information I´m pretty impressed!

What´s the reason for having this much and extremely wide spread information because this clearly is covering a multitude of lines, which is clearly working towards the consensus that the Beasts were indeed original Greek Beasts instead of Bootlegs, showing there were much closer connections between Habro en El Greco for other lines other than TF as well. Due to my focus on the Beasts ALONE this is info I didn´t and can´t look in because the amount of things that´ve to be clarified within the BB line alone is already massive enough and it doesn´t allow me to look into other lines in case there are not very solid connections or assumptions that give away there might be more info to be found there. BUT that´s clearly the case here although I´m still hoping for that one piece of solid info making the direct connection between an official License and the GBB from El Greco because even though there´s no way to ignore there seems to be a solid connection, with the info you shared now, its still missing THE facts for the GBB line.

 

The reason for sharing these things on here is also to keep the discussion going in order to gain more input and info so its great to see that with your reply we might be going towards another direction because it would have quite an impact at least for some BB collectors if the GBB do turn out to be licensed figures because it puts them in a completely different perspective as they´re now considered to be Bootlegs which is a little different as we all know.

 

We keep on diggin´ and I´m sure we´ll get there, if you might ever have some more info or thoughts (this also goes for all others out here) please continue to share and discuss it here because this is something we´d all like to see solved and clarified!


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#9 Beastformers

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Posted 08 November 2015 - 03:24 PM

Oh @Grencats there´s still a couple of issues I´d like to hear your thoughts about because those are things I´m unable to clarify from my point of view considering they´d be original licensed Beasts;

 

- How do you explain the fact that the GBB came with loose rubs, or actually stickers, that don´t have the whole rubsign idea on them while ALL of the original released BB came with their rubsigns attached and not with loose stickers that were already showing their symbol. I´ve been thinking the warmer climate for Greece might´ve been of influence there because some of the symbols would automatically show anyway but that also goes for Spain and locations within the US so that´s not a very solid thought. 

 

- If HASBRO and or TAKARA were involved with El Greco´s release of the Beasts than how is it possible they created a GBB Pamphlet that shows Beasts with the wrong arm combinations resulting in the fact a lot of the GBB made it onto the market in the wrong arm/body composition!? Imho if they got the original info and guidelines from one of the two companies this would not make a lot of sense to me?

 

- How did El Greco end up having even some of the original molds of the Laser Beasts weapons, showing up with their version of the Visionaries line, while there were no Laser Beasts ever released in Greece...? Wouldn´t it make sense that if there was a real connection and thus either HASBRO or TAKARA send them the LB weapon molds as well they´d also have received the figure molds and thus there should´ve also been Greek Laser Beasts (GLB) around?

 

- On the packaging I could (although hardly) believe they´d released a run of misprinted boxes but the absence of the logo´s does not only go for the Boxes because the logo´s are also absent on the Can and Wrap packaging so it´d be hard to hold on to that idea assuming those would all have been misprints as well?

 

So as far as I can follow all your background info on the connection between El Greco and the other companies for the other lines there´s more than just the absence of the HASBRO of TAKARA logo on the El Greco packaging.

 

Also to clarify it wouldn´t have been about 100 stolen molds because based on the sprees the Body and Arms came on its fair to assume they´d only need a whole less molds in order to get them all for a full Series 1 production. Knowing the arms came with the arms of at least two different Beasts on a spree as known from the Can packaging and the same goes for the bodies. So that´d mean its most likely that one mold would house the print for two different Beasts. Also I think the weapons were most likely produced in molds containing more than one type weapon as well.

 

Wonder about your thoughts on these issues, let´s keep it going ;)


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#10 zfisher323

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Posted 09 November 2015 - 08:32 AM

Wow! Nice work! Would it be okay for me to use this to update the Greek Battle Beasts section in Toy Collector? Maybe I should even pull out the Greek section and make it it's own section?

 

Thanks,

Zack

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https://itunes.apple...d919363870?mt=8

 


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#11 Grencats

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Posted 09 November 2015 - 07:23 PM

Hi Beastformers, great to hear back from you again. I try to supply some answers to your questions here at least from my perspective, and didn’t realize it would turn into another long write.

To me Tepato Maxoi Battle Beasts having various forms of packaging really tells me this was an authentic product.  You could buy the figures in 1, 2 ,or 4  quantities. Almost like there is a retail display out there for them. Possibly with the same imagery similar to the house ad you have posted on your site that includes the El Greco logo. Releasing them in with Exogini toy line really just adds to this idea. Like they were a new series just hitting stores for an already popular toy line. To top it all off, the Tepato Maxoi cannisters are very similar to the Otto Simon Exogini figure canisters.

The Disney comic book that you have on your site with the Tepato Maxoi ad is pretty exciting. Disney would have had to approve the ads in the comic before distribution. So getting a bootleg toy by the editor would have been a huge error and is really unlikely. I bet the ad in the comic was the same one that you already have a sample of with the El Greco logo on it.

Referring to 100 molds, I was including all of the Hasbro molds El Greco would have had to have stolen in order to have been a bootlegging company. There are just that many Hasbro toys with the El Greco logo on the box. G1 Transformers, Micronauts, My Little Pony, releases just to name a few. El Greco products had all Hasbro/Takara toys in the packages. You can’t find a El Greco package with Hasbro and Mattel toys in the same box. Hasbro and Mattel were/are bitter rivals so both of the company’s toys in an package together would be a big red flag of a bootleg. A K.O. company does not put their logo on the package on a product that is blatantly not their own design and keep doing it successfully. It would basically be telling the license holder where to look in order to collect their lawsuit.

As an example, here is what is believed to be a unlicensed K.O. Transformer called Alpha Base Robot. He is the same mold as Transformers G1 Overlord except he has the head and shoulders from G1 Transformers Star Saber. It is vintage and was put out by Academy Toys. This is virtually the only thing they are known to have released. So if the company did keep making toys they changed their name with each release to stay under Hasbo and Takara’s radar. Although a bootleg, it is actually a very nice quality item. http://www.collectio...lpha_base_robot

That is really a great ZZoids packaging you have on your site. I think it shows a few things. The Visionaries line was also by Hasbro. So everything within the ZZoids package is indeed from Hasbro and released by El Greco. It also shows how Habsro let El Greco do their own marketing with Hasbro product. The fact that the accessories are not the exact scale as those released with the Laser Beasts hints that El Greco had the real computer files to make the molds rather than just the molds. We know this because they were actually able to scale the file so the accessory would fit better in the Zzoids hand. Picture this, they opened the Laser Beast file, grabbed the accessory from it and made it  for the Zzoid figures. El Greco was just that close to making the Tepato Maxoi Laser Beasts.

We have already established the relationship with Habsro and El Greco through Transformers and My Little Pony showing that El Greco was a legit toy manufacturer. So the ZZbots may be the proof that El Greco had the Battle Beasts molds. Now it’s not like Tepato Maxoi were made by a different company in Greece, and at the same time El Greco only made some out of scale Lasers from their Battle Beast molds. It was El Greco making Tepato Maxoi Exogini all along they just forgot their own logo on the box for one reason or another. Maybe it was on the retail display and that was good enough. They must have gotten the Exogini license from GIG. They had dealt with them years earlier to acquire Takara's Micronauts molds.

The ZZbots packaging and product also helps confirm that El Greco didn’t have fancy printing technology. They didn’t print the fancy holograms from the Visionaries line, they just used gold chrome stickers. So it seems quite likely El Greco just did not have the technology to print the heat sensitive rub signs for the Tepato Maxoi Battle Beasts. So they printed the small decal sheet and let the customer decide what faction the Battle Beast would belong to. A similar example with a different rub symbol can be seen with the international G1 Transformers Mini Bots released in Brazil which did not have the heat sensitive rubs signs either. They had these printed decals with simple images of Optimus or Malignus factions.

Here is a rare example on ebay right now showing the Optimus faction sticker on the roof. http://www.ebay.com/...yIAAOSw~gRVkGKE

Here is also another one with the Malignus sticker shown in the third picture. http://www.ebay.com/...FIAAOSwMmBVsyMa

Still trying to address the absence of the El Greco logo on the Tepato Maxoi Battle Beast boxes. I don’t know what it was like using a computer in Greece in the 1980’s but I imagine it would have been pretty frustrating. Were the graphic programs they used for the packaging even in Greek? The ZZbots packaging shows one of El Greco’s own toy lines and the box art looks very basic. Based on the Transformers and My Little Pony El Greco releases it seems they were able to open the files they got from Hasbro and printed them after making very few changes. Possibly they were not the best at altering the files they got and even worse at making their own. It could be as simple as the computer went down with all logos and they wanted to make the deadlines they had set out so they released the Tepato Maxoi without the logo. The project does appear to have been rushed becuase of the inclusion of the figure pamphlet being in the wrong language. The pamphlet was maybe printed in a rush as just an image file and they totally forgot that it had text on it that had to be altered. Maybe the artist put the wrong language in thinking it was Greek.

So why were there mistakes with the arms on the figure pamphlet? How about the artist that designed the figure chart originally had a monotone prototype set of figures in black that had arms still on the trees. The artist put them on wrong and proceeded to draw them the same way, and that’s how it appeared on the pamphlet. The pamphlet made its way to print and no nobody noticed for years possibly. It really could have been anything. I don’t think anyone thought the packaging would ever be kept, and I also don’t think they thought we would be talking about it basically 30 years later. Even still maybe the arm variation was intentional. International My Little Pony’s and Transformers have all sorts of crazy variations. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it was actually a decision or an error.

-The G1 Transformers Minibots made in Mexico by IGA for example. They released series 2 with the wrong molds. They used series 1 molds with the series 2 color schemes, rather than series 2 molds with the series 2 color schemes.

-Red Foot G1 Optimus Prime. It is basically a paint application error that still got released. http://www.tf-1.com/...t_template.html

-Transformers G1 Megatron. The Canadian version named Megatron as an Autobot on the tech spec card on the back of the packaging. Although he is the Leader of the Decepticons. http://tfsource.com/...1-transformers/

-MB G1 Transformer Sideswipe was released that actually has a Yellow Sunstreaker in the box. This is a completely different figure that is depicted on the box and is a completely different color.
http://tfsquareone.b...1-sunswipe.html

-One of the Peru Variants of the My Little Pony called Bowtie was made as a unicorn, although no other Bowtie figures are supposed to be. Lots of other similar cases as this one, like releases with wings where they should have had none. Similarly, Blossom was produced as a pegasus instead of her usual pony form.

-“Piggy Pose” My Little Pony’s from Spain by MB and Brekar. They were thought to be Fakies becasue of the rare mold that was used, until a sealed on card figure was found. mylittlewiki.org/wiki/Piggy_Pose

-This Hasbro toy is a Llama that was from the Jem toy line. However only in Canada they released it as a My Little Pony toy instead. http://www.pranceatr.../ramallama.html

I could list example all day. So in conclusion these errors happen all the time and the toys still go out and get sold. Looking at the bigger picture of Hasbro and El Greco it’s easy to see the missing logo on the Tepato Maxoi box isn’t that different of an error. El Greco although not as organized as Hasbro in North America, or Takara in Japan, was the authentic toy manufacturer in Greece.
 


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#12 Beastformers

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Posted 12 November 2015 - 05:52 AM

Hi Grencats, we´ll keep it going ;)

 

I still have an odd feeling about all this despite all your clear leads and info so it might be my crazy mind but there´s still things that just don´t seem to fall in place for me;

 

- I (we) have always been under the assumption that the LB weapons produced in Greece were smaller simply because of the production temperatures they used to produce the weapons instead of actually having a fully scaled mold in the exact size. And I honestly doubt if there were actuall computer files for the BB line back in the days and if so if these would´ve been shared by TAKARA that easy.

 

- The complete absence of the logo IS and remains a big issue for me because I´d already have a hard time accepting one type of packaging with the absence of the logo due to a ¨mistake¨ but it goes for all 3 different types of packaging known......

 

- Maybe the fact that El Greco did receive a lot of molds via the Official way has been the perfect cover for them getting molds of lines they weren´t supposed to produce as well. I can imagine they´re indirectly getting molds from Hasbro, maybe via MB Spain, and they had better and more insight contacts than Hasbro would´ve known and original molds were sold under the table!?!? 

 

- Last but not least; Don´t you think it is weird El Greco actually released the GBB as a sub-series of the Exogini which is a line that had nothing to do with Hasbro at all right!?! So why would they release a line of Hasbro figures under a completely different name that was licensed to another company, were they trying to cover something up?

 

- I agree with you on the Disney advertisement because it is a little bit weird they´d publish this so out in the open if they didn´t have the rights. BUT the magazine might´ve been familiar with El Greco adds of Hasbro toys because they did have licenses for most of the other stuff meaning they (the magazine) assumed it´d be ok and so El Greco managed to sneak that ad in.

 

- The GBB Explanation with the Artist composing the Beasts himself from Scrap is also a strange thought because if they´d have the license and maybe even the computer files (if there were any) those would definitely have been numbered and a pamphlet as such would never have existed....

 

I know this is all speculation but so far most of it when it comes to the GBB specificly has not been based with a lot of facts from your side either so why should this not be a possibility we should consider? There´s just a lot of blanks I simply can´t ignore or accept filling them in with the insights you´ve been sharing so far because it´s all pointing and based upon other lines.....

 

The discussion continues ;)

We really have to figure it out now LOL

 

ADDITION:

And about that Greek Artist for the Pamphlet one more thing; he´d probably had to be drunk as well while creating that pamphlet because the Bison is not only holding the Lion Sword upside down (bit weird if you´d ask me) but he also ignored to look at the Artwork they did have (for the packaging) on which some of the Beasts are clearly shown with their correct weapons so that shouldn´ve have been to hard to extract or figure out either I´d say.


Edited by Beastformers, 12 November 2015 - 05:57 AM.

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#13 Grencats

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Posted 14 November 2015 - 06:11 PM

Hi Beastformers, I’m trying to not repeat myself with anything I said previously, so as in the case someone else may want to read all this.

It doesn’t make sense to me about the plastic shrinking because of the ‘Production Temperatures” used. The Laser Beast accessories from the ZZoids packaging looks like the same as the chrome pieces that were used in G1 Transformers. Particularly with the Dinobots. They have lots of chrome parts that needed to fit exactly because they would make up huge sections of the robot. Some parts interlock so precisely that there was no room for error. They would fit a chrome part inside a clear plastic part so you could see the “mechanical insides” of the dinobot. They could not be having the chrome pieces changing size while curing.

The give away of how to know about it being the same plastic in the G1 Dinobots and the ZZoids package can be seen in toys where the chrome has worn away revealing the plastic underneath. The chrome seems to have been sprayed on, and sometimes didn’t stick very well so it’s fairly easy to find a spot that didn’t get a full cover.  The plastic looks white under the chrome in the ZZoids case and the G1 Dinobots international releases used the same white underneath the chrome. The USA releases of the dinobots used black plastic under the chrome. Some other Diaclone accessories have red or yellow plastic under the chrome. G1 Dinobot collectors know the rare Canadian release of Slag with the red face is a prized item. You can tell an authentic Canadian Slag if it has white plastic under the chrome on the figure and its accessories. So there is no throwing in USA Slag Dinobot accessories with a Canadian Slag Dinobot. The plastic under the chrome can also always be seen where a missile accessory had originally connected to the spru.

The Battle Beasts were definitely made with computer files. Imagine creating a prototype Battle Beast to scale by hand, it would just not be to par with the originals.  There would be no way to get rid of the tool marks used with sculpting, and you just can’t get the details. Look at the figure Grencats whiskers for example. The way the makers were able to be so detailed is by scaling the figure down after designing it in a 3D computer program. Computer Aided Designs (CAD) had been around since the early 70’s. I remember using a Mac computer in 1991, it was pretty sweet for the time. It had this awesome 3D design software that was quite impressive. Check out a Takara Diaclone Driver from the early 80’s they are 1 inch tall and would be impossible for even a jeweler to replicate without computer software.

Sharing files would have been a different issue because it wasn’t all that easy to do. It was like the art file you would make would be larger than any disk could hold, so the only way to share was to plug in another hard drive and copy it over that way. You would probably have to format the hard drive because there wasn’t a wide range of compatibility with even other similar computers. It would also take a really long time.

Now imagine the Tepato Maxoi retail display box that has never been found. It would be a printed box with Tepato Maxoi imagery on it. They would be sealed when the retailer got them, and the retailer could sell it only as a sealed box if they wanted. Or they could open it up and sell the individual packages and throw out the retail display box when they were sold out. When opened the box would reveal that it would be full of several of either the plastic 4 figure canisters, 2 figure boxes, or 1 figure bags. The retail display box would have the El Greco logo on it, so it would not be necessary for the individual packages to also have it.

Tepato Maxoi was released under the Exogini toy line, rather than Bestformers/Battle Beasts. The Exogini toy line was made by GIG which was Takara’s go to company in Italy. El Greco, GIG and Takara/Hasbro had such a long history together. Trasformers Auto Robots were Takara/Hasbro toys released by GIG in Italy and El Greco in Greece. Before that El Greco and GIG released Takaras Micronauts toys. They released lots of toys together over the years so releasing Tepato Maxoi as a Exogini was just continuing the relationship. Exogini was already popular so they went with that. The Transformers toys that tied Battle Beasts into the line were not released in Greece or Italy so they just marketed the release different. The must have thought Exgogini had the brand recognition that would sell the product.
 


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#14 retroactive80z

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Posted 19 November 2015 - 04:14 PM

Wow great work and information as allways if only we knew 8 years ago what we know now when it comes to collecting Greeks. It would have helped me a lot with my collection.

Thanks again GJ.
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#15 zfisher323

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 01:33 PM

Just wanted to thank GJ for helping out with adding the Greek Battle Beasts section to Toy Collector. iOS only for now, so he can't even use it, but that didn't stop him from taking the time to really help me flush it out. Live (and free) now on the iTunes Store https://itunes.apple...d919363870?mt=8

 

If anyone has some images they can contribute, I would really appreciate it!

 

Zack


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#16 Grencats

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Posted 05 May 2016 - 07:21 PM

Wow, I was at a friends place in Vancouver last week and we were talking about this a bit. He has in his collection the full set of original El Greco/Hasbro G1 Transformers Minibots sealed on their cards. I was able to see the full set for real and could inspect their authenticity. For me  being a massive Takara collector I have no doubts about the authentic relationship between El Greco and Hasbro.


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#17 Beastformers

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Posted 07 May 2016 - 11:53 AM

Wow, I was at a friends place in Vancouver last week and we were talking about this a bit. He has in his collection the full set of original El Greco/Hasbro G1 Transformers Minibots sealed on their cards. I was able to see the full set for real and could inspect their authenticity. For me  being a massive Takara collector I have no doubts about the authentic relationship between El Greco and Hasbro.

 

Was the link between El Greco and Hasbro also expressed on the packaging as in both logo´s where on it or was it similar to the GBB packaging and thus with the absence of the Hasbro connection? To me that complete absence is still weird because if you translate that idea to the other EU countries where MB was in most cases responsible for the distribution on behalf of Hasbro the packaging should´ve shown the MB logo instead of the Hasbro logo but that´s clearly not the case. Think the markings on the GBB are fooling us because if El Greco bought or got the original molds from the closed Hasbro Factory in Spain (which is obviously where the molds came from) they´d automatically have the stamps of the originals which doesn´t mean there was a legal contract between Hasbro and El Greco.....


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#18 susha

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 01:24 PM

I'm sorry. I'm still skimming through the thread, which is a good read but a bit long, as I do so however I have some questions popping up.

 

- have you compared the level of quality/detail between El Greco and for example the spanish bb bootlegs? Wouldn't a KO line have defects and differences? The El Greco line seems incredibly detailed and complete. The spanish bootlegs are just a couple of bb right? Wouldn't it be much harder to obtain GOOD molds for all the figures illegally?

 

- Forgive my ignorance and thus loose use of terms and names, maybe some transformers fan can better affirm this BUT: I have read somewhere (possibly in the notes section of one of the pages of http://tfwiki.net) that during conventions Hasbro or Takara has provided a 'Canon question time?' where fans can ask questions pertinent to canon of all TF universes and have them answered, usually by someone taking the vests of Primacon or some TF diety. Would it be innapropriate to try and have this question answered during one such session during an official convention? After all BB as has been pointed out are within TF cannon.


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#19 Shadow Bat

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 01:46 PM

 

- have you compared the level of quality/detail between El Greco and for example the spanish bb bootlegs? Wouldn't a KO line have defects and differences? The El Greco line seems incredibly detailed and complete. The spanish bootlegs are just a couple of bb right? Wouldn't it be much harder to obtain GOOD molds for all the figures illegally?

 

 

 

The reason KOs tend to have more differences is that they are made from a secondary mold made from an original figure. Every step away from the original mold is a step down in quality. With the original mold, you maintain the original quality minus any changes in plastic quality.

The spanish bootlegs were made from a new mold, and their quality shows it

 

In today's market with the world as interconnected as it is, yes it would be difficult to obtain the mold through "illegal" or questionable means, but 30 years ago with an ocean in between? Not something to just be assumed in my opinion.


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#20 susha

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 04:17 PM

Ok but wouldn't that apply to the spanish KO's? why did they have trouble obtaining the mold and the Greek didn't. Moreover, why is there such a difference in quality between the two, one would assume from the spanish one's that it would be difficult to obtain the original mold at the time.


Edited by susha, 19 May 2016 - 04:17 PM.

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#21 Shadow Bat

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 08:21 PM

Ok but wouldn't that apply to the spanish KO's? why did they have trouble obtaining the mold and the Greek didn't. Moreover, why is there such a difference in quality between the two, one would assume from the spanish one's that it would be difficult to obtain the original mold at the time.

 

The person making the Spanish KOs would have had trouble for the same reason you would have had trouble obtaining the molds, it wasn't a yard sale. A large factory would have sold to molds to a large company. The factory in Spain making licensed BDC for Hasbro had different mold marks than any other Battle Beast except the Greek Battle Beasts. Japanese and American both have their marks in a spot identical to each other but different from the Spanish BDC.

 

Again, the difference in quality from the Spanish KOs are of a lower quality because they are from a reproduced mold of inferior quality. I could make make mold at home using one of my figures, and the lack of quality would show.

The person doing the Spanish KOs most likely used some kind of silicone mold while the Greeks and BDC were from a metal mold, more expensive but capable of producing many more figures with no deterioration.


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#22 susha

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Posted 20 May 2016 - 03:59 AM

How about getting an answer from Hasbro then? As I mentioned above hasbro does provide a 'fan question time' or something of the sort, during conventions. If no one here goes, I'm sure we could ask some tf fan to bring the question for the BB community?


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#23 Shadow Bat

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Posted 20 May 2016 - 06:09 AM

How about getting an answer from Hasbro then? As I mentioned above hasbro does provide a 'fan question time' or something of the sort, during conventions. If no one here goes, I'm sure we could ask some tf fan to bring the question for the BB community?

I think a few members have tried contacting Hasbro for one reason or another over the years (though not for this particular question), I haven't heard of anyone getting any significant information from them yet, but it couldn't hurt to try. I just wonder since it is such an old and obscure line of toys if they would have a good answer on the spot.


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#24 trumanshower

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Posted 08 September 2017 - 09:36 AM

question for GBB collectors : about tortoise, were all the greek turtles full sheel, or do variants exist ?


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#25 Beastformers

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Posted 09 September 2017 - 01:43 AM

@trumanshower Full Shell only
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