The ebay deals continue. A couple week ago I won a Generation 1 Transformers Jetfire. It is only missing a couple of pieces. The figure usually sells for close to $100 and I got him for $26 plus shipping. Not bad if I do say so myself. The owner actually found a couple extra pieces of the armor and included them for free. Robotech fans at first look automatically think “rip off!” This figure uses the same mold as the Robotech Valkyrie, but it was used with permission. Here is an excerpt from wikipedia about the figure
- Generation 1 Jetfire (1985)
- The first two years of Transformers toys were comprised of figures taken from older Japanese toylines, primarily Takara‘s Diaclone and Microman lines. 1985, however, saw several figures reused from lines created by Takatoku Toys, of which Jetfire was one – that of the VF-1S Super Valkyrie Fighter from the Macross/Robotech series.
- Problems over the Jetfire toy began when Bandai absorbed Takatoku Toys, and Macross regained popularity, leading to Bandai’s desire to reproduce the Valkyrie toy themselves. This led to problems for Takara when they imported the Transformers toyline – although Hasbro was able to market the Jetfire toy in their markets, Takara was not, nor could they promote it via the animated series, since the mold was owned by their main competitor. Although an animation model had been created for Jetfire based on the appearance of the toy (which could be seen in the original toy commercial advertising the figure), this was quickly scrapped and completely redesigned so as to no longer resemble the Valkyrie. This was the design that went on to feature in the comics and cartoons – additionally, the cartoon character was redubbed “Skyfire,” presumably because the character no longer served to advertise the Jetfire toy.
- Jetfire only saw a few American production runs, as the show the original toy was based upon, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, was exported to America to become the first third of Robotech. Ironically, since Hasbro released Jetfire first, there was never a U.S. release of an authentic transforming version of the toy for Robotech, even though the design was the series’ most recognizable and popular mecha.
