15 replies to this topic

[Beastformers]

Its been a while since some new info around the Battle Beasts line showed up but I recently bumped into a BB Bootleg line that was completely unknown to me. Having more and more eyes and ears out all over the world in order to find information about the Battle Beasts line this time I received info from a country I didn´t expect, Indonesia! Turns out that they had their own Battle Beasts bootlegs in the late 80´s begin 90´s called Animals Robot Master;

 

 

Although it was a little bit risky and expensive I got a shot at buying a couple of them in order to check their quality and origin.

So far there´s a limited amount of info I have about them but I´m still gathering some more. 

 

Looks like there are only 8 different figures available (the ones on the header above) in this line (in an enormous amount of color variation) and they´re randomly packed in a bag of 8. There´s no sign of any original marking on them so somehow they´ve erased this from the original figures in their molds or they´ve had some other origin for their molds because its interesting to see that the snout of the Pangolin is clearly differently shaped than the one we know. Being closer to Japan this is one of the few bootleg lines so far I know of that includes Serie 3 figures in it. 

 

When it comes to the quality I´ve to say they´re pretty well done, like the Greek Battle Beasts (GBB), although the peg holes of the arms are not as consistent and some of the arms easily come out. The rubber used is very flexible almost Gumball BB like although the body itself is a little more sturdy and less flexible than the gumball beasts but they´re more flexible than the GBB. Looking at the first pictures I got I was wondering whether I was looking at some uncommon unknown Greek beast colors (especially seeing that Light Blue Lion) until I got confronted with their origin.  Even though I managed to get a wide variety in colors this is probably only a fraction of the variety in colors they´ve had for these Indonesian bootleg Beasts.

 

Here are more pics;

 

 IMG_20140624_152211.jpg   114.9K   121 downloads  IMG_20140624_152229.jpg   132K   173 downloads

 IMG_20140624_152311.jpg   84.53K   186 downloads  IMG_20140624_152330.jpg   80.93K   191 downloads

 IMG_20140624_152405.jpg   112.41K   153 downloads

 

As mentioned above the snout of the Pangolin is different but it looks like they´ve also used some other arms on some of the Bat figures so they´re not always in the correct composition with the arms. Although for the Light Blue Bat some completely different arms might´ve been used/made because I can´t recall which Beast has that type of arms. 

 

Don´t think weapons were included as this was new old stock and everything showed up inside the original packaging so those should´ve been there if they´d be part of this line. 

 

Big chance these 8 figures ended up in Hong Kong or Indonesia from Japan and someone decided to have these produced in Hong Kong in order to sell them as Bootlegs in Indonesia.  

 

They were completely new to me and they´re a pretty colorful addition to the Battle Beasts Bootleg history in my opinion and I´ll go and do my best to get some more info about these Indonesian Battle Beasts, IBB !? 

 

As soon as I know more I´ll ad it here, wonder if anyone else out here has info about them or knows about these?

Edited by Beastformers, 15 January 2015 - 06:32 AM.

[bachamn]

Wow more stuff still popping up; this is great! Maybe one day those Chinese KO's will show up again. Where did you pick these up?

 

Seeing more sculpts in even more mono colors really makes me want to seriously consider taking up rubber casting myself.

 

Also love that they didn't know what the Pangolin was and based on the header card art, clearly assumed it was a lizard of some sort 

Edited by bachamn, 24 June 2014 - 06:49 AM.

[Draznar]

I need these

[majinmoo]

Awesome find!

[thenerdieststore]

I love those things. I am looking them up now

[trumanshower]

never seen them, nice find !!

[Ericnilla]

very cool~!

[Shadow Bat]

You amaze me yet again! nice discovery

 

looks like the arms on the bat were flamingo arms, the flamingo has gorilla arms the gorilla has giraffe arms

 

looks like they did them greek style and mixed them all up

 

since the bat in the artwork has his correct arms, more than likely all 8 were made with correct arms and just randomly assembled

 

 

what you mentioned about the pangolin reminds me of my mexican carps, one is normal and one they molded with a unicorn horn to make him narwhal like

[Beastformers]

You amaze me yet again! nice discovery

 

looks like the arms on the bat were flamingo arms, the flamingo has gorilla arms the gorilla has giraffe arms

 

looks like they did them greek style and mixed them all up

 

since the bat in the artwork has his correct arms, more than likely all 8 were made with correct arms and just randomly assembled

 

 

what you mentioned about the pangolin reminds me of my mexican carps, one is normal and one they molded with a unicorn horn to make him narwhal like

 

Yep, your correct about the arms  

Was focused to much on the Penguin arms looking at such small arms that I overlooked the most obvious one.

 

Although the majority of the Beasts seem to come with the correct arms there are some with the incorrect ones so we might´ve sort of a GBB infection here as well with the mixed up arms. Unlike the GBB ones I guess its just something I´ve to accept for these fellows from Indonesia as it´ll probably be impossible to get more so let alone finding the missing arms here.

 

Strange thing is the complete absence of anything that could´ve been traced back to the known Takara Hasbro and year stamp on the back or feet of those figures. It might´ve been removed in the mold they made out of the original figures since they obviously were not licensed to produce these but I also wondered for a while whether they somehow might have got the original molds in hand but that´s something that would´ve made this whole find even more interesting. So after this thought and while writing this reply I took the Serie 3 figs (Pangolin and Flamingo) out knowing they should have had this long square shaped stamp underneath their feet and surprisingly with some proper light that´s the exact shape that shows underneath their feet so they´ve somehow filled it up. Also looked at the wings of the bat for those marks and even though very vaguely there are some small sign of the original markings there as well but they´ve been pretty properly covered in the mold or removed from the original figure in order to have this outcome.

 

As mentioned those were part of a find of new old stock and all the other packages were sold within Indonesia in no time and I had a hard time convincing the seller to sell me the last two packages and the 4 loose beasts he had remaining. He mentioned that they´re part of nostalgia over there and that there´s an avid group of collectors out there as well so I´m glad that in the end I managed to get at least these because I obviously needed to get them in hand  

[ScreaminDemon]

Wow GJ!
Thanks for the header art as well.
That's a nice template for a custom painted BB set

[Beastformers]

Wow GJ!
Thanks for the header art as well.
That's a nice template for a custom painted BB set

 

Feel free to use the header art for custom ideas, they´d definitely become colorful beasts than  

It also might get tricky with such small lines but please share the result if you decide to do so. 

 

 

On topic: I´ve forward a list of questions I still had about them to my connection in Indonesia so more info will follow (probably).

[thenerdieststore]

Feel free to use the header art for custom ideas, they´d definitely become colorful beasts than

It also might get tricky with such small lines but please share the result if you decide to do so. 

 

 

On topic: I´ve forward a list of questions I still had about them to my connection in Indonesia so more info will follow (probably).

 

I hope more information does come I am extremely interested lol

[Beastformers]

Over a half year has passed and I´d never heard back from my initial lead but recently I was lucky enough to find a new lead and get myself a few figures again to join my Indonesian Battle Beasts army.

 

BUT first of all there´s an important correction to make since in the first post I´d named these guys Animalsrobot Master which was the name I extracted from the headers I had but since these were a little damaged is was unclear whether there was a space between Animals and Robot or not. I also got a few headers in a better condition and on those it is clearly shown that it is Animals Robot Master so I corrected that in the Topic name right away.

 

Here´s a few pics of the latest figs I got in and below I´ll share a bit more additional info I managed to get.

 

 IMG_20150114_212648.jpg   117.2K   11 downloads

The arms are still an issue and this was confirmed by the figs I received now since all figs had the wrong arms, similar to the Greek BB, and as stated in the opening post within this topic. Both Flamingos show here did have Flamingo arms though although some might´ve two left or right ones.

 

 IMG_20150114_214812.jpg   92.03K   11 downloads

Strange thing was the fact that the figure I already had didn´t match in color and sturdiness with these. 

The color of the ones I found last year (top row), more pics above in this topic, are much more neon colored like compared to the 3 recent finds on the bottom row. So where I sort of expected to find a color match, with the chance of completing figs in the same color, there´s been another interesting issue. Because its not only the color that´s different but also the rubber of  these recent ones is much more flexible. This might be caused by the way they´ve been stored or kept over the years since the ones from last year all came inside the original packaging meaning they might´ve somehow dried out a little bit since even though they were pretty flexible as I stated in the beginning they´re not even close to how bendable those recent finds are. 

 

There´s also a chance, which is sort of half confirmed by my lead, that there´ve been a few production runs of these so this might´ve caused the difference in color/material.

 

The headers are similar though although there was another oddity I noticed looking at them because one of the headers showed a misprint since the header image was also shown on the inside of the header card but without showing the Animals Robot print because it looks like that was printed or stamped on top later on in the production process. See the pics below;

 

 IMG_20150114_223437.jpg   100.17K   8 downloads  IMG_20150114_224946.jpg   114.87K   5 downloads

 

 

Than there´s a little bit more insight on the years they were available and how they were sold in Indonesia.

During 1994-1995 these were (still) sold but not via regular toy shops or supermarkets because in Indonesia it is pretty common to have street vendor stands and even directly outside of the elementary school so that´s where they could be purchased for around 100 IDR each back in the days. So guess that´d be around 800 IDR for the standard 8 pack. It´s not clear if figs were sold loose as well but I don´t think so, at least not via those stands. 

 

So piece by piece, bit by bit and story by story the real story behind this line starts to become visible and I´ll continue with my search for more info and facts so hopefully I´ll be able to come up with more in the future. For now this is it concerning the Animals Robot Masters a Bootleg Battle Beasts line from Indonesia.

[Ericnilla]

 received_1626526097645144.jpeg   45.07K   19 downloads

[Rubberhammer]

Sweet.

[Draznar]

I gotta own me some of them!