One thing it's surprisingly hard to find on the internet is a list of Transformers toys that the poor deprived children of Britain weren't able to get in the 1980s. Transformers were very cool back then, and the knowledge that there were certain of the toys that were only available in America was an endless source of misery.
The otherwise excellent tfwiki.net is rather disappointingly incomplete when it comes to specifically detailing what toys were sold in Britain. They just had a "Europe" section, even though the continent had a wide range of Transformer distribution, and it's been inconsistently modified over the years to give more details, while still leaving some important facts out.
I mean, I could go in and change it myself instead of just moaning about it on my blog - that's what you're supposed to do with wikis, after all - but the whole website is really very professional and stylish and nicely written, so I don't want to bulldoze all over it. It feels like that would be rude. So I'll just document everything here - research backed up by checking the comics and catalogues and leaflets of the time, and my own almost-reliable memories of up to 41 years ago...
1984
We did get the whole of the original range of Transformers. Eventually. The rest of Europe didn't get them until 1985, apparently, so the wiki probably still has some leftover pages saying that applied to us too, but I can personally assure any doubters that the toys were here almost as soon as they were in America. Except Megatron. And five of the Autobots.
(Just a note about terminology - the word 'breed' was used to describe the category of Transformers just a couple of times over the years, it certainly wasn't any kind of official phrase. I just think it's funny. The 'breeds' listed throughout this blog are the names by which the kinds of toys were generally known and advertised. Please pay attention to 'strike planes', because there's a tendency on sites like tfwiki to use 'seekers', which wasn't at all the term anyone used in 1984, I assure you. You don't get to make up new names for strike planes unless you were there and eight years old.)
The ones in the box at the bottom didn't show up on our toy shop shelves until around Easter 1985. It was well known (meaning it was entire guesswork, but very plausible) that there was some worry about releasing the toy of Megatron, which turns into a very realistic gun. But if that was the problem, then the toy makers' argument of "we want to make money by selling this gun" seems to have won out in the end. As for the other five, I guess someone just felt there were too many toys in the range, and just one assortment of six cars would be the most sensible policy. When the toys became super-popular, naturally they wanted to release the rest too. But not quite all of the 1985 toys made it to these shores...
1985
What a lot of exciting new toys! And since the 1984 range were all still available, those toy shelves were really crowded! But not quite as crowded as they could have been. Jetfire wasn't shown on the leaflet that came with the toys, which otherwise showed everything you could buy, so I assume he came out a bit later (there were probably copyright issues, since the toy was licensed from a different source to most of the others). The toy was definitely on sale well before the end of 1985, though.
NOT on sale, though, were characters prominent in the comic and cartoon that everyone in Britain followed. The awesome Decepticon leadership rival Shockwave couldn't be bought here. Nor could the Constructicons, who combined into a giant robot! Nor could Swoop, one of the five Dinobots, and I can't imagine what the reason for that one was.
Blaster and Perceptor were less well-known here until 1986, when they showed up in the comic and cartoons. The Deluxe Vehicles and Deluxe Insecticons were even more obscure - and again, probably because of licensing issues. Omega Supreme was a very very big toy, and perhaps it was just felt he wouldn't sell well enough over here. But that's seventeen toys we might have wanted in Britain if we'd even known they all existed, and America is starting to sound like a land that's hoarding all the coolest characters for themselves!
1986
1986 was the year of Transformers: The Movie, although it didn't get to our cinemas until late in the year. That caused the two Autobot Heroes to slip into 1987's toy range in this country, since the existence of Rodimus Prime is a spoiler for the thrilling climax of the movie.
The start of 1986, though, was all about the Special Teams - Protectobots, Aerialbots, Stunticons and Combaticons. They each combined into a giant robot, and since we had never had the Constructicons, this was something new and hugely cool!
But we didn't get the Predacons, the coolest of all combining teams. They were later additions to the 1986 range in America, but left out completely over here. Maybe they didn't want to flood the market. And this year shows the start of the British policy of not releasing spy cassettes. Since they were designed to fit into Blaster (who also hadn't been released here) and Soundwave (whose toy was old and being delisted) it makes sense, I suppose. And Sky Lynx is a big toy, and Trypticon even bigger, and having already released Metroplex I suppose the British powers that be thought that was enough to be going on with...
1987
Headmasters and Targetmasters were the big deal in 1987! They each came with a littler figure who transformed into their head or gun. But the biggest one of all, Fortress Maximus, was again denied to us. Not that we could have afforded something so big, of course, but it would have been nice to see that enormous box on the shelves of Woolworths or Beatties! A lot of the other non-available ones this year were featured on the video "Headmasters: The Rebirth", which was widely bought and enjoyed, at least partly because it told us about some fascinating toys that just weren't available to us!
1988
In 1988, we nearly got everything. Just a few spy cassettes and half the Pretenders were never released here. The missing Pretenders were delayed in America, apparently, as were the Pretender Vehicles - the latter aren't on this year's leaflet, but they definitely did come out here eventually. The six Normal Pretenders, though, became the last cool Transformers that didn't get to British collectors.
1989
A clean sweep of the American 1989 range was available to us limeys! Countdown and the Monsters don't feature on the leaflet, and may have come out later, but they were certainly with us eventually. Britain has now reached equality with America at last!
And we went on to greater heights than that! As the nineties dawned, the USA was giving up on Transformers. There were more Transformers released in Britain from this point onwards! It started in 1990 with 'Classics' rereleases of older toys, alongside all the new American ones, and then in 1991 when the entire range was cancelled in America, Britain just kept going, churning out more and more Autobots and Decepticons that stateside fans could only dream of! Revenge is finally ours!
