Scramble Power!

Like an unwanted second-disc padding DVD extra, here's some supplementary material for my Ultra Magnus post a few days back. Really, I should just update that with these links, but then I wouldn't get a quick post bump would I? You've got to think short-term bonuses when blogging.

Above is a scan of a Diaclone advert for Powered Convoy, the figure that would eventually become Ultra Magnus.

Here's some vintage Japanese adverts for various forms of this playset.

First, a 1984 advert for Diaclone Powered Convoy

Next, a Scramble City (Japan exclusive instead-of The Movie feature) branded ad for Ultra Magnus; seen here battling Decepticon City Commander Galvatron

Couple of interesting things to note:

1. Powered Convoy isn't a standalone character; he's a fleet transport alike, used for transporting legions of Diaclone vehicle-bots. Although the name Convoy would be become a supreme hierarchy title in Japanese continuity (in the same way that Prime denotes a leader in western plots), here it simply describes a kind of mob rank - Powered Convoy is the bouncer muscle for this truckin' support group.

2. Everybody's flying. Here's one for the real Transformers nerds - Autobots are classically depicted as being incapable of flight. In continuity applicable to Cybertronian warfare, the Autobots are a bourgeois class of artists and white-collar bureaucrats; the Decepticons are usually either gladiators or military robots who form their own break-away worker revolt faction under Megatron. Decepticons are innately superior combat wise, flight being their trump card. It's never really dwelt upon in any fiction, but the Autobots are pretty much dicks aren't they? They shit all over a slave class, and get a cob-on when they get a whiff of self-determination. Really, Megatrons' a Hero of Communism. That looks like a Nazi. And transformers into a Luger (look alike).

3. Unlike every subsequent continuity ever, these adverts depict the Prime / Convoy cab slotting into the trailer and assuming the Ultra Magnus identity. No wishy washy double-dealing here. Your toy is presented as definitive text! Quite the turn-around from disappointing western storylines that wished you'd forget about certain figure features.

4. Japanese Transformers ads of this vintage very rarely depict children pretending to have fun; instead we get fantastic little stop-motion vignettes of the toys acting as if they really are intergalactic mercenaries dying to shoe-in their foes. Take this and that scale environment!

Two sequences in the above videos really stood out for me: In the Powered Convoy ad, it's the rain soaked close-up of the trailer wheel as the toy screeches to a halt, the rain droplets give it a kind of rustic scale, and the steam pouring off the wheel suggests a real sense of power. You're going to buy something that kick ass! In the Ultra Magnus ad, I get my joy-joy from Galvatron's reality bending black-out transformation sequence - LOOK! As he morphs and contracts mode! SEE! As black inserts suggest a near demonic expression of power! Cower! As he stands there laden with guns looking like some kind of noble-robo devil!

Impressive stuff.