Addendum
What’s really interesting about the Collectible of the Week is the amount of information one either forgets to add to the entry, or how much they subsequently learn. It would be a shame not to share this with you, so as more salient details emerge, I’ll prepare addendums to keep you in the know.
Addendum: Collectible of the Week Pt. 1: Bring Me the Head of Ultra Magnus
Three points of interest here. First, the company responsible for the head of Ultra Magnus, Nasta, is also responsible for the red Rumble “Enemy” voice changer unit, smaller Ultra Magnus voice changer, and the Megatron Wireless Microphone. Neat!
Second, remember how I mentioned that I found the elusive head on sale at Botcon 2009 for $70, that I passed it by, and then returned to find it long since sold? Well, it turns out it was bought by none other than Crazy Steve himself, which is both ironic and gratifying. Ironic that someone who read the post was behind the purchase. Gratifying because I know the Magnus went to a good home.
Lastly, I wanted to share with you the instructions that came with the radio for posterity.
Addendum: Collectible of the Week Pt. 2: Of Fates Found and Corgi’s Too
In my haste in putting together the entry on Find Your Fate and Young Corgi books, I neglected to mention that Ballantine also marketed a similar line of books for the G.I. Joe crowd. What is particularly interesting about this sister book line is that the G.I.Joe set of books numbered twenty in total. Why the Joes got almost double the number of books is something lost to me. But would make a great future Addendum.
In any case, for a full list (with relevant images), you can visit the archives at yojoe.com. They also have an image of the Slipcase Edition, which bundled the first four books together that can be found here.
From my experience collecting old ads I know Nasta also did a set of intercom telephones with each reciever/transmitter shaped like Optimus Prime. They also did another voice changer but this one was a child sized helmet somewhat reminiscent of Optimus Prime’s head, kind of like a precursor to today’s voice changer helmets. There was another “Enemy” that was an AM radio with a Decepticon sigil behind which hid a small Enemy figure. And there was also an AM radio with an Autobot sigil attached to its front that turned into Optimus Prime’s face, but I’m unsure if that was a Nasta product. Given that they did just about every other Transformer radio I wouldn’t be surprised that one was theirs.
Comment by Evil King Macrocranios — January 15, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
I actually went back through the tfwiki and your site to check on what Nasta made. But though the Ultra Magnus is clearly a Nasta product, there was no sign of an advertisement for it, nor is it easy to pin down online. I wonder how limited the production run was, or whether it was the last gasp of a dying company…
Comment by fairplaythings — January 19, 2010 @ 12:29 am
I never thought of using the Space Toaster Palace that way-I’d always thought it would only be good for prices. A couple of other good sources of artifact info I use are Lewis Brooks’ TFMuseum.com and Raksha’s Artifacts list. Lewis usually has a picture of almost everything on Raksha’s list.
Just do a search on Lewis’ list for “radio” and you’ll see Nasta made all sorts of other stuff. If you could compile all the product numbers off the Nasta boxes I wonder if the Ultra Magnus radio’s release could be pinned down, if not chronologically then at least sequentially. Just because they didn’t make more Transformers items that doesn’t mean they died, they may have lost the license or went on to other things.
Comment by Evil King Macrocranios — January 20, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
The idea on tracking down box numbers is intriguing. Might be something to it.
Been a long time since I’ve visited TFMuseum. It has a lot of material but has some limits there too. And of course it’s exciting to put up pictures of things other collectors don’t have sited (which is what I’m doing tonight.) I find it funny though how his list of transformers originates from electric-escape.net; although it’s not mentioned, that list actually originated from a complete U.S. mainstream G1 list I put together back in 1995 for alt.toys.transformers. Oh, those were the days…
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