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Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001 toyline)
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| The name or term "Robots in Disguise" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, seeRobots in Disguise (disambiguation). |
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TheTakaraCar Robots toyline, brought to the West asRobots in Disguise, marked a turning point for theTransformers franchise in both markets, both as the end of the "Beast Era" and the return of more "traditional" franchise elements... though the two companies differed in just howmany elements they brought back.
Both lines are predominantly filled with robots that transform into realistic (or close enough) modern-dayEarth vehicles, though a significant number of villains become robotic beasts. The classicAutobot symbol made its return, but theDecepticons would only appear in the Hasbro version of the line.
Though the toyline struggled in Japan (leading to another year-long gap inTransformers product there), it was a rousing success in Hasbro's markets, continuing well past its normal retail life through a number of storeexclusives.
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TakaraCar Robots toyline
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At the end of the 1990s,Transformers was floundering in Japan. Though the originalBeast Wars toyline had reinvigorated the franchise there just as it had in Hasbro markets, Takara's follow-ups/fillersBeast Wars II andBeast Wars Neo failed to retain its kid audience, to the point where theBeast Wars Metals series, aka "the Transmetal toys and the last two seasons of theMainframecartoon" couldn't gain purchase. While Hasbro would continue the Beast theme withBeast Machines, Takara decided to change direction.
A new toyline for the new millennium,2000'sCar Robots focused on modern-day Earth vehicles. The "headliners" of the line are all new-mold toys, with some redecorated toys from previous lines (most of which had not been released in Japan previously). The line is marked by anextremely wide variation in quality, complexity, realism, and posability. At one end of the spectrum were fairly simple designs from previous lines, such as theCombatrons andSpychangers. On the flip side, most of Takara's original mold designs wereextremely complex, with the three Car Robo Brothers carrying on the clearest lineage fromNeo in their rather fiddlyshellformer designs, and the larger toys utilizing a variety of oddball combination methods.
Standard retail
Wave 1 (3-??-2000)
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| Wave 2 (4-??-2000)
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| Wave 3 (5-??-2000) | Wave 4 (6-??-2000)
| Wave 5 (7-??-2000)
| (Dangar, Dolrailer, Greejeeber, Hepter, Shuttler) | |||||
Wave 6 (8-??-2000)
| Wave 7 (9-??-2000)
| Wave 8 (10-??-2000)
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Exclusives
| Daiei (8-??-2000) | JUSCO (8-??-2000) | Toys"R"Us (11-??-2000) |  | |||||
| BotCon Japan 2000 (12-17-2000) | Multiple conventions (9-24 / 10-9-2000)
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HasbroRobots in Disguise toyline
When theTranstech toyline concept was dropped,Hasbro needed additional time to develop a new franchise to follow theBeast Era. To prevent there being a gap inTransformers product on store shelves for the better part of a year, Hasbro ported over the ready-to-goCar Robots line, rebranding it asTransformers: Robots in Disguise. The line was filled out with other readily-available molds as new characters. Hasbro also made the classicTransformers branding more overt, applyingfaction symbols to the characters' vehicle modes (Car Robots kept the symbols to robot mode), and rebranded the Combatron sub-faction as Decepticons.
As sales rose and more toys were needed, Hasbro added in still moreredecorated toys to pad the line out toward its end. By the time all was said and done,Robots in Disguise included molds fromGeneration 1,Generation 2,Beast Wars,Machine Wars, andBeast Machines—in other words, every American toyline that had been produced to that point. Several cancelled/delayed/unproduced molds from previous lines were brought out as well, such asAir Attack Optimus Primal. The line even got fourSpychanger-styled figures released in the Basic Class assortment's fourth wave which werecompletely new molds created specifically for this version of the line, not originally from eitherCar Robots or any previous toyline. This demand for product from retailers also led to abig surge in storeexclusive releases in a shift from the preceding "Beast Era" lines.
Robots in Disguise was the first (and thus far, only) time an existing Japanese line was brought over wholesale to the U.S. The line was met with a generally positive reception by fans (particularly those who'd found theCar Robots import prices to be more than they were willing to dish out), and more importantly the line sold well to kids, setting up the upcomingArmada line with a nice receptive audience.
Standard retail
- Basic class
| Wave 1 (July 2001) | Wave 2 (September 2001) | Wave 3 (October 2001) | Wave 4 (January 2002) |  | ||||
| Wave 5 (April 2002) |
- Tiny Tins
- An odd side-class, theTiny Tins were actually sub-licensed releases, singleSpychanger toys that came with a small tin carrying case.
| Wave 1 (July 2003) |  |
- Deluxe class
| Wave 1 (July 2001) | Wave 2 (September 2001) | Wave 3 (October 2001) | Wave 4 (November 2001) |  | ||||
| Wave 5 (January 2002) | Wave 6 (April 2002) |
- Mega class
| Wave 1 (July 2001) | Wave 2 (October 2001) | Wave 3 (April 2002) |  |
- Ultra class
| Wave 1 (July 2001) | Wave 2 (December 2001) |
- Super class
| Wave 1 (July 2001) |
Exclusives
Following the end of theRobots in Disguise line's general retail assortments and the launch of its successor,Transformers: Armada, Hasbro continued using theRobots in Disguise branding for store exclusives. While they had only been isolated occurrences under previous lines,Robots in Disguise made store exclusives amuch more common phenomenon, with some of them even being available in markets outside the United States. While all the 2002 exclusives still featured the originalRobots in Disguise packaging design, the 2003 releases instead adopted the overall template also used forArmada packaging (but still retained theRobots in Disguise branding), with the last batch of KB Toys exclusives even using the colors from the packaging of theArmada line'ssubline imprintThe Unicron Battles.
| KB Toys/TargetSpy Changers assortment 1 (August 2002) | KB Toys Spy Changers assortment 2 (June 2003) | KB Toys Destructicons (May 2003) | Other KB Toys exclusives
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Target
| Toys"R"Us
| Walmart | Canceled (
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SonokongCar Bot toyline
In 2003, Takara-licensorSonokong imported theCar Robots line into the Korean market asJeonguiui Yongsa: Car Bot (정의의 용사 카봇, "Brave Heroes of Justice: Car-Bots"). For the most part, these imports followed the Japanese toy line, with only cosmetic changes on the boxes. At the tail end of the line, however, Sonokong repackaged several Destrons from the older KoreanBeast-War line inCar Bot boxes; the toys themselves were unchanged, which meant that the figures who were sold as heroic Cybertrons still had thePredacon insignia on them. While most of these re-releases had new names, the Sonokong line also re-releasedBeast-WarGalvatron as the Destronger "Gigatron Z", seemingly an additional version ofCar Robots Gigatron/Robots in Disguise Megatron.
Cybertrons
| (J-Five,J-Seven,J-Four) (Build Boy,Build Cane,Build Typhoon,Build Clone) (w/Braver &Plasma) | (with "Victory Bomber") (D-17Scoutstinger, D-18Scoutslasher, D-19Scoutjet, and D-20Scoutlauncher) | Destrongers
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Post-Robots in Disguise releases
Following the end of theRobots in Disguise line, key characters have popped up in subsequent series. Admittedly, a large percentage of these releases come from a seriesimmediately followingRobots in Disguise, when the line was still fresh in people's minds (and the molds used to make the characters in the first place were readily available).
 This item is currently scheduled for release, but is not yet available at mass retail. |
Innovations and lasting effects
- LikeBeast Wars before it,Robots in Disguise also integrated the robots' weapons and accessories into theiralternate modes, now applying the concept to Transformers who transform into vehicles as well.
- Robots in Disguise firmly establishedredecos of previously released toys from the same line marketed as the same characters as the older toys (as compared to different characters), with the accompanying fiction often identifying the new decos as the result of a "power-up".
- Robots in Disguise also introducedtrilingual packaging to the United States market, which would last four years.
- While storeexclusives had existed since almost the beginning of the brand, the expandedRobots in Disguise line was when the concept really took off beyond "three or four exclusives for an entire line".
Notes
- TheRobots in Disguise line marked a transitional point formultilingual packaging in several of Hasbro's markets:
- In America, Hasbro decided to abandon English-only packaging for all the general retail assortments, making trilingual packaging (featuring texts in English, French and Spanish) not only the standard for Canada and Latin America (which it had been sinceBeast Wars), but also for the United States. The only exceptions were all of the 2002 store exclusives,some (but not all!) of the 2003 exclusives, and theTiny Tins re-releases of theSpychangers, which were never intended to be released in Canada or Latin America, and were thus still available in English-only packaging.
- Meanwhile, in Europe, Hasbro had reorganized the specific combinations of languages for multilingual packaging: One version now featured texts in English, French, Dutch and German, while the other version featured texts in French, Spanish, Italian and German, which meant that both French and German were featured on both versions. On top of that, the wave 1 figures released in the United Kingdom were sold in trilingualAmerican packaging (English, French and Spanish), with additional stickers featuring European age labels and contact information for Hasbro UK (though regular European packaging for these figures exists as well), while some of the 2003 exclusives (which were available asToys"R"Us exclusives in the United Kingdom) and the Tiny Tins re-releases of the Spychangers were released after the successor line,Armada, had made a single European packaging version featuring texts in all six languages (i.e. English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch) the new European standard, and thus these 2003Robots in Disguise releases came in multilingual packaging feturing that language combination as well.
- The Transformers: Super Spychanger Lottery, sold byTakara in 2003, features theCar Robots Spychanger characters, and its pack-in catalog makes reference to the end of theCar Robots TV show, essentially making it a short-lived continuation or spiritual successor line.
- The2008Universe toyline includes toys marked as "Robots in Disguise series".
- Robots in Disguise is the first time realistic vehicle licenses became an issue when a licensing company representingDodge andMercedes-Benz happened to notice Side Burn and X-Brawn, respectively. Super Side Burn was the first Transformers figure to carry licensed car branding. In a case of turning lemons into lemonade, this led to theAlternators line, access to actual car engineering references and files, which in turn eventually led to partnerships that allowed the2007 Transformers film to happen.[1][2]
Foreign names
- French:Robots Déguisés (Canada, "Disguised Robots"),Les Robots Mutants (Europe, "The Mutant Robots"),Robots Mutants (Europe, "Mutant Robots", Destructicons only)
- German:Getarnte Roboter ("Disguised Robots")
- Spanish:Robots Camuflados (America, "Disguised Robots"),Robots Transformables (Europe, "Transformable Robots")
- Italian:I Robots Trasformabili ("The Transformable Robots"),Robot Trasformabili ("Transformable Robots", Destructicons only)
References
- ↑ "I believe it started to be—for Hasbro, it started to come up in theRID era, right? So like I said, the Viper, and the Benz. [...] So we had to, y'know, deal with that, at the same time we were doing the G1 reissues, and I believe we were about to re-release Tracks, and it came up with Corvette at that same time, where they're like, "y'know, you've been making this Corvette for a long time and not paying anybody... why don't we come to some arrangement?" [...] So we started to have conversations with these companies, we did come to an arrangement with Corvette to reissue the G1 car. That, and the Viper deal—long-range—created the relationship that would end up inAlternators, and why the Viper was one of the first cars we did."—Aaron Archer onThe Toy Armada, 2022/08/22
- ↑ "Behind the scenes, we are growing this brand, we're trying to get new deals, we're starting this whole thing in the background to talk to producers, we're getting our ducks in a row aboutArmada and how much business we're doing and how beloved these characters are after 20 years, now we're bringing in real licenses and real cars—you don't think that's going to be a factor when we talkto Michael Bay down the road?"—Aaron Archer onThe Toy Armada, 2022/06/08
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