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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