20th Century Toy Collector

Diaclone toys were the actual predecessors to the Transformers. Made by Japanese toy company Takara, the Diaclone toys were also exported outside of Japan in the first half of the 1980’s. In Europe a French company from Strasbourg, called Ceji Joustra, released the Diaclone toys in some countries, most notably in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The most interesting aspect of the Joustra Diaclone releases is that they went through the effort of creating new artwork and a back story to the Diaclone toys, instead of simply copying the Japanese packaging artwork. Joustra had special artwork created for the packaging of all their Diaclone releases and also had a mini-comic created that was included with all the boxed, series 1 Joustra Diaclones. All this artwork was created by artist twins Paul and Gaetan Brizzi.

I have most carded and boxed Joustra Diaclone items in my collection, but nearly all of them have their mini-comic missing, except for one. My Joustra Diaclone Robocolt has the original mini-comic still included, which I have scanned and posted here for you to enjoy! Judging by the text inside the comic this is the 8th and final part of the mini-comic series. It is not exactly clear to me which comic was included with which toy (if there was a pattern there at all), but this mini-comic happens to feature the robot it was included with, being Robocolt.

Wow! Very cool artwork, right? Another noteworthy fact is that this comic is in French, but I have seen scans of the same comic in German. Given that the languages on the Joustra Diaclone packaging were French, German and Dutch, I suspect that all 8 mini-comics must have been released in all 3 languages. I’ve never seen a Dutch Joustra Diaclone mini-comic, but would love to have one! As far as I know, there has never been an English Joustra Diaclone translation. I might try and post an English translation of the current comic one of these days, but for now please enjoy the great artwork of the Brizzi brothers and check out some more Joustra Diaclone here. More Joustra Diaclone pages and photographs from my personal collection are coming soon to this site! Check all the pages of the mini-comic included with my Joustra Diaclone Robocolt below!

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Here’s something that won’t come up for sale very often. A collector acquaintance of mine is putting his Milton Bradley (MB) variant Red Tracks on the market. A rarity in any condition when complete with its original packaging, this specific Tracks though has never been removed from his box and is in absolute mint condition! At the time of writing the auction has already reached 650 US dollars and is probably going to keep on rising. This is one of those rare moments when a complete and boxed Milton Bradley Red Tracks is for sale in public, so if you’ve been waiting (and saving your cash), this might be your moment.. UPDATE: The auction ultimately ended at $935 US!

You can find more information about the Milton Bradley (MB) Red Tracks here.

MB (Milton Bradley) was responsible for the distribution of the first Transformers toys in mainland Europe. MB was taken over by Hasbro in 1984 and they decided to market the first wave of Transformers toys in Europe under their newly acquired MB brand (MB was a very well known brand in Europe in 1985, contrary to the Hasbro brand).

For the European launch MB released a selection of the first (1984) and second (1985) series of Transformers that were released in the U.S.  I recently acquired a very, very rare dealer catalog that MB released for its 1985 line up in Europe. Dealer catalogs are special toy catalogs that are usually sent out only to toy shops to sway them into carrying the product line. The catalog is beautifully designed and is printed on glossy paper.

One of the more interesting details about this catalog is the fact that there’s a seperate inlay that, obviously, seems to have been added later after the initial version of the catalog had been printed. It contains photos and catalog numbers of the MB Transformers that weren’t present in the original MB catalog that was included with boxed MB Transformers and the toy store catalog that was meant for consumers. It includes Optimus Prime, the Autobot cars, some more mini vehicles, Starscream and two Decepticon cassettes. To my knowlegde, these photos haven’t been published anywhere else as part of MB’s promotional material for its 1985 Transformers line up! Please enjoy these sneak peeks.

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A couple of months ago I picked up this very nice MOSC (mint on sealed card) Cosmos from the G1 (Generation 1) Transformers line. As with most G1 Transformers that I have in my collection, this is the MB version that was released in 1985 in mainland Europe.

Cosmos is part of the second series of mini vehicles released in the U.S., but part of the first series of Transformers released in mainland Europe under the MB (Milton Bradley) brand. Like most of the other mini-vehicles Cosmos featured pretty often in the Sunbow cartoon and was quite the likeable character.

Cosmos’ alternate mode is based on the Adamski type UFO, named after George Adamski, the man who made the now famous 1952 UFO photograph.

I found this item on a classified ads website. It’s in very nice condition, with just minor flaws on the card and the bubble still firmly attached to the card.

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G.I. Joe burst onto the European toy scene in 1987. The first series of toys that were released on this side of the Atlantic were mostly lifted from the 4th or 5th U.S. series of G.I. Joe toys. Hasbro released the first two series in the Netherlands in all-Dutch packaging. The promotional material was all Dutch too. Below is a scan that I made of the very first promotional flyer of G.I. Joe toys that were released in the Netherlands in 1987. The scans are relatively large so please have patience while downloading them!

This flyer was included with most of the boxed G.I. Joe toys and was also included in an edition of the weekly Dutch Donald Duck magazine in 1987, which is how I remember seeing it for the first time. This same flyer was probably also translated into all the other European languages in countries where Hasbro were pimping their G.I. Joe stuff. I have an identical, all-French flyer inside a French Snow Cat box. My goal is to obtain each and every item from this flyer boxed and/or carded. I’m already quite a long way towards collecting all of the boxed items, but so far I have none of the carded action figures. MOSC (mint-on-sealed-card) Dutch G.I. Joe action figures are so hard to find it’s unreal. If you have any for sale, please contact me!!