Now let’s get into Gobots, the other transforming robot from the 80s. The people who engineered these machines came up with some goofy ideas. I’ll always remember Tom Hanks in the 1988 movie Big where he had no qualms about calling out the naked emperor by stating that it wouldn’t be much fun to play with a transforming building. In light of that, it’s pretty hard for me to understand how I ended up with 4 of these Gobots (I’m pretty sure they came from that line) that were actually rocks that transformed into robots.
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See? Rocks, and not altogether convincing rocks, at that (do rocks usually have eyes?):
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A group of 4 Gobots– smaller, cheaper than Transformers. I recall that these were all benevolent Gobots:
As “adapted” on Cracked.com’s Poor Man’s Version feature (#3: Gobots vs. Transformers)
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And their transformations:
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A second batch of Gobots. 2 Shuttle Gobots (don’t remember how I procured both).
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The F-15 Gobot is Leader-1, head dude of the good Gobots. The Soviet MiG was a bad Gobot, though not the leader. None too subtle in the metaphors there.
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And a batch of busted Gobots. I can pretty well certify that these were all toys that other kids gave me after they didn’t want them anymore because I usually took much better care of my toys.
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Upper left robot is Scooter (thinking outside the box on the names). Lower left is Cy-kill, the renegade Gobot leader.
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I also used to have the Gobot command center. Quite a piece, that. I finally ditched that before I my last move, however.
wow! i remember playing with those many years ago. I remember them being favorites as they tended to transform better than the official transformers. I distinctly remember the shuttle, the airplanes, and the police bike.
Could you post some more pics of individual bots if you get a chance?
Feel free to email me privately and I can send the original 2272×1704 digital photos.
Excuse me if i’m wrong, but the Gobots you have labelled as “rocks that transformed into robots”, I distinctly remember these as “Rock Lords”.
Rock Lords had a TV cartoon series.
Look at this google search,,,one of your Gobots/Rock Lords (the brown one) is at the bottom. (looks like a bottom too).
Personally I had loads of Rock Lords, as they were the only presents my Father ever got me when I was a kid.
Um…just double checked that…my bad.
It was GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords.
Still great though!
yeah, I wan in to the Go-Bots, i still have some, I eaven still have the big Go-Bot Command Center…fun stuff….
HA! My Cy-kill looks exactly the same!
Yeah, and the rocks are definitely Go-Bots. I have a commercial on a tape of WWF Superstars.
I can actually identify a few mistakes in your identifications of the GoBots.
In pictures 3 and 4, you identify them all as Guardians, while two of them were Renegades. Specifically the broken orange one, named Crane Brain, and the red sports car, named Spoiler.
In pictures 5 and 6, you identify the green jet as one of the Renegades, when in fact, Royal-T was a Guardian.
Finally in pictures 7 and 8, you identify the motorcycle as Renegade leader Cy-Kill. He is actually a white variant of the Guardian named Night Ranger.
Just thought I’d point those out in case anyone is interested.
Thanks for keeping me honest. And good memory!
It’s a pity that not all of Gobots were released in Brazil, but at that time I bought those that were released, except the beach buggy, I saw it only once and when I went back to buy they had already sold it. Good old 80’s! How many good memories!