Exciting times if you’re a fan of early European Transformers history like me. Especially if you’re interested in a little niche section called Joustra Diaclones! For the uninitiated, Joustra is the name of a French toy company that briefly held the exclusive rights to sell Diaclone transformers in a major part of western Europe in 1984 and 1985. This was right before the Transformers onslaught hit Europe properly. What sets Joustra’s Diaclone releases apart from Japanese, Italian and Finnish Diaclones is that Joustra went to great lengths to customize the packaging for the European countries where they sold their stuff. Mindblowingly beautiful and exclusive packaging art work and a mini comic were produced especially for this line.

So why are these times exciting? Well, first off my good friend Maz of TF-1.com has just published his magnus opus on Joustra Diaclones. It’s a huge article that aims to be the definitive source on the exciting story of Joustra Diaclones and it succeeds at that (in spades!) I have tremendous respect for Maz, because his passion is so genuine and makes his articles a joy to read. In fact, Maz really inspired me to start collecting MB Transformers after I read his article on said subject matter. He is also partly responsible for me picking up the gauntlet and publishing my own articles that you can find on this website. One of the most humbling experiences for me is that Maz’s original article on MB Transformers has been updated now to reflect new information that has come to light because of my research and contains references to this site. That’s so über cool! Please check out Maz’s new article on Joustra Diaclones here and his updated article on MB Transformers here!

“Joustra-Diaclone.com”

But that’s not all. The Joustra Diaclone party is not over, because yesterday a brand new website has launched that is devoted exclusively to Joustra Diaclones, aptly named Joustra-Diaclone.com. This website is a labour of love of another very, very good collector friend of mine, RPChristophe. RPC hails from France and is the most devoted Joustra Diaclone collector I have ever come across and is one of the nicest human beings I have ever had the privilege of knowing. His website is available in both French and English and contains scans of all the Joustra Diaclone catalogs and of nearly all the Joustra Diaclone packaging ever released. This guy even has a direct line to the Brizzi brothers, the French/Italian artists who were responsible for the wonderful art work for the Joustra Diaclone series!

“Mostly Transformers”

And last, but certainly not least, I’d like to draw your attention to another blog that I make sure to check out at least once a week and that’s Arkvander’s Mostly Transformers Redux blog. Although he lives across the pond I consider Arkvander a very like minded collector. His blog postings are well written, a joy to read and accompanied by great photography. I try to stay focused on collecting G1 Transformers, but this guy’s blog is testing my resolve. One of these days I’m probably going to cave and buy more recent TF stuff and it will all be his fault! :-)

So, is there anything my lazy ass has to offer today, you might wonder? Not yet, unfortunately. I am working hard on the 6th installment of my MB Transformers series of articles. Besides that, I’ve been extremely lucky in scoring some cool TF and GI Joe items that I was after (that’s on top of the stuff I mentioned in my previous postings). So collection wise, there is no shortage of cool stuff that I hope to photograph and publish here as soon as those packages have arrived safely here in the low countries. Have a great Sunday (or what’s left of it) and see you soon!