The year 1987 was an exciting but tumultuous time for the Transformers brand. The cartoon had gone off the air after only three new episodes for the television season, and yet the toy line seemed stronger than ever before—we were getting new ideas like Headmasters and Targetmasters, we got the biggest Transformers toy ever, and they were really diversifying the play pattern. We got spring-powered Transformers who sprang up into robot mode, and motorized Transformers who could roll into battle, and even Transformers who could shoot sparks!

I remember a specific trip to Toys "R" Us (probably the location in Rockville, Maryland) where I was still looking for Springer, one of the only major characters from Transformers: the Movie and season three that I didn't own yet. I actually found one, and he was only twelve bucks. Then I laid eyes upon the beautiful creature known as Doublecross. His siren song called to me. He was so gorgeous. I set poor, forgotten Springer back down and I picked up the much bigger and much cooler Monsterbot, who retailed for some absurd price like $22. He went home with me that day.

Alas, a lack of media representation meant he ended up on the chopping block during my young adult years, when the monthly rent came due and I realized I was sitting on this gold mine of unloved toys. I remember an email conversation with a fan who would only buy Transformers if their legs could separate. What a curious thing to insist upon. Anyway, I've been needing to replace Doublecross for a while, and I happened upon an auction for one with the factory stickers still unapplied. Stickers that are damaged or misapplied absolutely grate on me. During my journey to complete my G1 collection, I've had the good fortune of actually being the "consumer" in "consumer-applied stickers" a number of times now. I know I'm pressing my luck, and this won't happen every time. But I do so love it when the stars and planets align and I get to put the stickers on myself.

So, in some ways I've always thought of the Monsterbots as like the 1987 version of the Dinobots. Aside from being an Autobot-allied team of creatures, they seem to borrow some transformation tricks and design cues from them as well. Doublecross is almost six inches tall in robot mode, mostly a neutral grey with a red pelvis and shoulders, and a white head and upper legs and "hands." Like Scorponok, released during the same year, he's got claws in place of proper fists. His gun actually mounts to his wrist, which sort of makes it look like he's holding it. (Weirdly, his instructions show him using the gun that came with Repugnus.)

I really love the 1987 aesthetic. I feel like it was the first year that the toy designers finally "got" the cartoon look, and there wasn't as much of a disparity between the two worlds. Toys like Battletrap and Slugslinger and Doublecross look like they stepped out of the cartoon universe. Doublecross even has painted blue eyes, another clear sign of synergy between the cartoon design ideas and the toy line.

So, he's got great articulation in his arms, because they serve as his dragon heads and necks. The shoulders can both rotate and pivot out, the elbows bend, and the claws (the dragon mouths) can open and close. All of these joints except for the claws do so with a really satisfying spring-loaded ratcheting "click" sound, a staple of G1 that delights me to pieces. However, his legs aren't as great. The lower legs are fused together, and can only move in tandem. I'm sure this was done to improve the toy's durability. His legs are basically like Sludge, and I've seen lots and lots of Sludge toys with broken knees. So, on some level it makes sense. Today, it's not hard to find an unbroken Doublecross, which cannot be said of every G1 toy. So, I guess Hasbro did their job.

He comes with one accessory, a rust-ray rifle that must be his only effective form of offense. His tech specs provide him with a Stength rating of one out of ten. I'm sure this was a mistake, but unlike a lot of other tech specs gaffes, this one was never corrected to my knowledge. So, we are left with the idea that he's completely ineffective when it comes to fisticuffs (or fistimouths... clawimouths... mouthicuffs... okay, I give up).

To transform him to dragon mode, the legs fold up like Grimlock, with the tail halves hanging off the sides of his legs snapping together in exactly the same way. The creature legs are tucked away on the side of the robot legs, Dinobot-style, and unfold. He reverses orientation so that his robot back becomes the dragon chest, with his wings clipping in place and revealing the creature forearms mounted to the wings. His robot head tucks away rather unsatisfyingly, and just sort of sits there, not unlike Razorclaw. The robot arms serve as the dragon's twin heads.

As a two-headed dragon, he's about 6.5" tall, depending on how you choose to position his legs and dragon heads. He's still mostly grey, with black wings and arms and legs, and white dragon heads. This is one of the first Transformers toys to boast organic styling—the wings and lower legs are clearly technological, but the forearms are sculpted as if they were furry, with visible musculature and bulging veins and organic-looking clawed hands. The dragon's hips, knees, and arms all have those same satisfying click-click-click sounds when you move them, as well as the aforementioned dragon neck joints. He could have used some painted detail to bring out the dragon eyes, since they're white and tend to blend in with the heads a bit..

But, I love that his dragon heads are so dynamic. In a toy line where a lot of animals can't move their heads at all (Slag, Snarl, Mindwipe, etc.) Doublecross's heads have a wide range of movement. You can do one raised and one lowered, or them pointing away from each other, or even facing each other (and probably arguing, since he's characterized as an unreliable type whose two heads constantly bicker with each other).

The Monsterbots were conceived as a team of fire-breathing monsters, though they cheated a bit with Doublecross. Instead of the spark gimmick coming out of his mouth(s), it comes out of his chest. Pressing a button on his back causes the faux buzzsaw blade in his chest to pivot up and down, creating the illustion that it's spinning, and this also activates the internal flint striker in his chest, which spits out sparks just above the buzzsaw blade.

His consumer-applied stickers help to cover up some of the screws used for assembly—like the ones in the robot chest or the ones on the wings that hold his creature arms in place. He only has one Autobot symbol, though, which is supposed to go on his right wing (the left wing has his rub symbol). This has always bothered me a little, since it means he has no visible symbols for robot mode. He really needs one more right in the center of his chest.

The fact that the robot legs are fused together is the only thing I strongly dislike about the toy. But, it's the design philosophy that Hasbro adopted during this era, and Doublecross is hardly the only offender (weirdly, though, fellow Monsterbot Grotusque DID get independently moveable legs).

So I paid $135, and it's definitely possible to acquire this toy for less money than that. But, this was the only auction I've ever seen for a toy with unapplied stickers, and that really strongly appeals to me, so I had to jump on it. I would have kicked myself forever if I hadn't. If I had endless disposable income, I would be buying up sealed G1 boxes and ripping them open so I could be the first one to apply the stickers. But, I really have no use for the box or the paperwork or the inserts. All I really want is the sticker sheet. So, at least I'm not out there horribly devaluing sealed vintage toys.

Repugnus is not a difficult toy to find in good shape. Grotusque will be a little harder because he's got the removable wings in additon to his gun, so there are more parts to keep track of. So, we'll see how that goes, eventually. The specific toy(s) I go after each month is always an unknown variable, to a degree. Generally, I feel like I know the right one when I see it. But, I also seem to alternate between trouble-free purchases and problematic ones, so I'm almost scared to see what February will bring...

Zob (also got the new Thunder Punch He-Man, who still clicks without using capgun caps, and the new King Hiss, who you have to disassemble and rebuild instead of that weird pseudo-Pretender thing he used to do)

On Thursday, January 5, 2023 at 5:50:43 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> The year 1987 was an exciting but tumultuous time for the Transformers brand. The cartoon had gone off the air after only three new episodes for the television season, and yet the toy line seemed stronger than ever before—we were getting new ideas like Headmasters and Targetmasters, we got the biggest Transformers toy ever, and they were really diversifying the play pattern. We got spring-powered Transformers who sprang up into robot mode, and motorized Transformers who could roll into battle, and even Transformers who could shoot sparks!
>
> I remember a specific trip to Toys "R" Us (probably the location in Rockville, Maryland) where I was still looking for Springer, one of the only major characters from Transformers: the Movie and season three that I didn't own yet. I actually found one, and he was only twelve bucks. Then I laid eyes upon the beautiful creature known as Doublecross. His siren song called to me. He was so gorgeous. I set poor, forgotten Springer back down and I picked up the much bigger and much cooler Monsterbot, who retailed for some absurd price like $22. He went home with me that day.
>
> Alas, a lack of media representation meant he ended up on the chopping block during my young adult years, when the monthly rent came due and I realized I was sitting on this gold mine of unloved toys. I remember an email conversation with a fan who would only buy Transformers if their legs could separate. What a curious thing to insist upon. Anyway, I've been needing to replace Doublecross for a while, and I happened upon an auction for one with the factory stickers still unapplied. Stickers that are damaged or misapplied absolutely grate on me. During my journey to complete my G1 collection, I've had the good fortune of actually being the "consumer" in "consumer-applied stickers" a number of times now. I know I'm pressing my luck, and this won't happen every time. But I do so love it when the stars and planets align and I get to put the stickers on myself.
>
> So, in some ways I've always thought of the Monsterbots as like the 1987 version of the Dinobots. Aside from being an Autobot-allied team of creatures, they seem to borrow some transformation tricks and design cues from them as well. Doublecross is almost six inches tall in robot mode, mostly a neutral grey with a red pelvis and shoulders, and a white head and upper legs and "hands." Like Scorponok, released during the same year, he's got claws in place of proper fists. His gun actually mounts to his wrist, which sort of makes it look like he's holding it. (Weirdly, his instructions show him using the gun that came with Repugnus.)
>
> I really love the 1987 aesthetic. I feel like it was the first year that the toy designers finally "got" the cartoon look, and there wasn't as much of a disparity between the two worlds. Toys like Battletrap and Slugslinger and Doublecross look like they stepped out of the cartoon universe. Doublecross even has painted blue eyes, another clear sign of synergy between the cartoon design ideas and the toy line.
>
> So, he's got great articulation in his arms, because they serve as his dragon heads and necks. The shoulders can both rotate and pivot out, the elbows bend, and the claws (the dragon mouths) can open and close. All of these joints except for the claws do so with a really satisfying spring-loaded ratcheting "click" sound, a staple of G1 that delights me to pieces. However, his legs aren't as great. The lower legs are fused together, and can only move in tandem. I'm sure this was done to improve the toy's durability. His legs are basically like Sludge, and I've seen lots and lots of Sludge toys with broken knees. So, on some level it makes sense. Today, it's not hard to find an unbroken Doublecross, which cannot be said of every G1 toy. So, I guess Hasbro did their job.
>
> He comes with one accessory, a rust-ray rifle that must be his only effective form of offense. His tech specs provide him with a Stength rating of one out of ten. I'm sure this was a mistake, but unlike a lot of other tech specs gaffes, this one was never corrected to my knowledge. So, we are left with the idea that he's completely ineffective when it comes to fisticuffs (or fistimouths... clawimouths... mouthicuffs... okay, I give up).
>
> To transform him to dragon mode, the legs fold up like Grimlock, with the tail halves hanging off the sides of his legs snapping together in exactly the same way. The creature legs are tucked away on the side of the robot legs, Dinobot-style, and unfold. He reverses orientation so that his robot back becomes the dragon chest, with his wings clipping in place and revealing the creature forearms mounted to the wings. His robot head tucks away rather unsatisfyingly, and just sort of sits there, not unlike Razorclaw. The robot arms serve as the dragon's twin heads.
>
> As a two-headed dragon, he's about 6.5" tall, depending on how you choose to position his legs and dragon heads. He's still mostly grey, with black wings and arms and legs, and white dragon heads. This is one of the first Transformers toys to boast organic styling—the wings and lower legs are clearly technological, but the forearms are sculpted as if they were furry, with visible musculature and bulging veins and organic-looking clawed hands. The dragon's hips, knees, and arms all have those same satisfying click-click-click sounds when you move them, as well as the aforementioned dragon neck joints. He could have used some painted detail to bring out the dragon eyes, since they're white and tend to blend in with the heads a bit.
>
> But, I love that his dragon heads are so dynamic. In a toy line where a lot of animals can't move their heads at all (Slag, Snarl, Mindwipe, etc.) Doublecross's heads have a wide range of movement. You can do one raised and one lowered, or them pointing away from each other, or even facing each other (and probably arguing, since he's characterized as an unreliable type whose two heads constantly bicker with each other).
>
> The Monsterbots were conceived as a team of fire-breathing monsters, though they cheated a bit with Doublecross. Instead of the spark gimmick coming out of his mouth(s), it comes out of his chest. Pressing a button on his back causes the faux buzzsaw blade in his chest to pivot up and down, creating the illustion that it's spinning, and this also activates the internal flint striker in his chest, which spits out sparks just above the buzzsaw blade.
>
> His consumer-applied stickers help to cover up some of the screws used for assembly—like the ones in the robot chest or the ones on the wings that hold his creature arms in place. He only has one Autobot symbol, though, which is supposed to go on his right wing (the left wing has his rub symbol). This has always bothered me a little, since it means he has no visible symbols for robot mode. He really needs one more right in the center of his chest.
>
> The fact that the robot legs are fused together is the only thing I strongly dislike about the toy. But, it's the design philosophy that Hasbro adopted during this era, and Doublecross is hardly the only offender (weirdly, though, fellow Monsterbot Grotusque DID get independently moveable legs).
>
> So I paid $135, and it's definitely possible to acquire this toy for less money than that. But, this was the only auction I've ever seen for a toy with unapplied stickers, and that really strongly appeals to me, so I had to jump on it. I would have kicked myself forever if I hadn't. If I had endless disposable income, I would be buying up sealed G1 boxes and ripping them open so I could be the first one to apply the stickers. But, I really have no use for the box or the paperwork or the inserts. All I really want is the sticker sheet. So, at least I'm not out there horribly devaluing sealed vintage toys.
>
> Repugnus is not a difficult toy to find in good shape. Grotusque will be a little harder because he's got the removable wings in additon to his gun, so there are more parts to keep track of. So, we'll see how that goes, eventually. The specific toy(s) I go after each month is always an unknown variable, to a degree. Generally, I feel like I know the right one when I see it. But, I also seem to alternate between trouble-free purchases and problematic ones, so I'm almost scared to see what February will bring...
>
>
> Zob (also got the new Thunder Punch He-Man, who still clicks without using capgun caps, and the new King Hiss, who you have to disassemble and rebuild instead of that weird pseudo-Pretender thing he used to do)

I always really loved the Monsterbots, and thought they made great counterparts to that same years' Terrorcons.

(Incidentally, I agree about how weirdly satisfying that clicking ratcheting sound is! Hun-Grrr also offers it, which I appreciate).

Great review, Zob.

JB

>
> Alas, a lack of media representation meant he ended up on the chopping block during my young adult years, when the monthly rent came due and I realized I was sitting on this gold mine of unloved toys. I remember an email conversation with a fan who would only buy Transformers if their legs could separate. What a curious thing to insist upon.

I have so many questions...

>
>
> So I paid $135, and it's definitely possible to acquire this toy for less money than that.

It's good to know what the going rates are - sometimes folks post about getting great deals, and I'm never sure what their definition of a great deal is.

I wonder how the Titans Return version compares to the original. It seems that modern era updates aren't always 100% improvements over the originals, other than added articulation.

On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 8:55:52 AM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:

> I have so many questions...

Not sure what parts you have questions about, but I guess I'll try to cover some more ground and hope that I hit upon them!

So, as a young adult, I was doing what I imagine a lot of young people were doing—try to establish a foothold in the workplace and struggling to make ends meet. I was a hard worker, but I couldn't exactly make my employer give me more hours. It was around this same time that I discovered this very newsgroup (along with alt.toys.transformers.marketplace) and quickly came to realize that there were people out there who would pay some serious cash for some of the things I'd been hanging onto since my childhood. Even weird stuff that I had no real love for, like the Find Your Fate, Jr. books or instruction booklets for G1 toys that I never actually owned. This was before eBay was a thing, and BotCon had only been going on for two or three years, so the online marketplace was virtually the only accessible venue to sell things.

And, at the time, I had much more love for the characters from the cartoons and comic books than I did for the toys who never made it into the fictional stories. I had a whole box full of plastic toys who didn't really exist as characters to me—like Skystalker and Skyhammer and Roadblock and Waverider and Flattop and a few others. Heck, even *pieces* of toys were worth money. It was shocking to me how much cash I could make in such a short space of time, just by unloading some toys I didn't have a lot of love for in the first place.

Of course, decades have passed since that time—I've got a stable full-time job in a two-income household, and I'm making more than $5.25/hour or whatever ridiculously low wages I was earning back then. I'm not saying I don't ever have financial struggles, but I'm not at a point where I have to sell things left and right just to have a place to stay. I've been hunting some of those same toys I sold off back in the 1990's, but now they're much more pricy to reacquire, of course. I don't think I realized when I was 19 that I was still going to want those toys when I was 46. But, live and learn, I suppose.

Regarding the connected legs, it was a specific person who was interested in what I was selling, but that was his main concern. He didn't like toys whose legs were stuck together. He didn't have an intimate familiarity with all of their designs and transformations, so he would message me with questions like, "Is Hosehead complete? And are his legs connected together? Do you have both of Grotusque's wings? Wait, are his legs separate or are they connected together?" For any toys that didn't have individually articulated legs, it was an instant no-go. I mean, I guess we all have our make-or-break stipulations. (For me, it's stickers. I will nope out of looking an an eBay auction faster than lighnting if it's got badly-applied stickers. Yes, I could remove then and replace them with reproduction labels, but that's so much work...)
> It's good to know what the going rates are - sometimes folks post about getting great deals, and I'm never sure what their definition of a great deal is.

I mean, really, the secondary marketplace sets the pricing. I spent a long time telling myself "well, back in 198X, this toy retailed for $XX.99, so I should never have to pay more than that" and that's why I didn't collect vintage G1 for, like, decades. But once I got over that kind of thinking and just accepted the current marketplace pricing, it was easier for me.

The marketplace pricing is so highly variable, though. It depends on things like the condition of the toy, whether it's missing parts, the status of the paint and stickers, whether the toy's been broken and repaired, whether it's sun-damaged, whether it comes with goodies like the box or sticker sheet or catalog, etc. Whether a specific character has recently gotten a neo-G1 toy also factors into things, because that almost always drives up the interest in the vintage toys. It's a highly complex mechanism and it's not always predictable.

I set the bar pretty high when I'm looking for vintage G1—I don't care about the box or instructions, but I want the toy itself to be in nearly perfect shape, with no obvious or glaring defects or broken parts (unless I can score a second junker and mash the two toys together to build one unblemished one). So, there are a lot of toys that would probably be acceptable for a lot of other people, and would be inexpensive, but I skip over them. I mean, if all you want is the tactile and sensory experience of actually holding and transforming the G1 version of Scoop or Astrotrain or Mirage or whoever, you don't necessarily need all their little guns and things to accomplish that. What I'm after is a definitive edition that I can put on a glass shelf and look pretty, and that's a different sort of need. So, I skip the boxed toys, and I usually skip the low-end toys.

I did put together a price guide some time in late 2019 or early 2020 to give myself an approximate idea of what these toys were going for, but it's already out of date. I think 2020 was an uncharacteristic low period for the market, because a lot of people were losing their jobs during the pandemic and had to sell things off to make do. Pricing for a lot of stuff has jumped in just a couple of years since that time. I'm almost scared to see what the 2023 market is going to look like.

> I wonder how the Titans Return version compares to the original. It seems that modern era updates aren't always 100% improvements over the originals, other than added articulation.

Titans Return Twinferno is a cool toy. He's a bit floppy (no click-click-click joints to be found) and his transformation is a little fidgety, but it's a very faithful Doublecross update. And, you know, he's got separate legs, so I'm sure that made somebody somewhere very happy.

Zob (took some DayQuil and feeling a little zoomy)

On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 2:24:28 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:

> I don't think I realized when I was 19 that I was still going to want those toys when I was 46. But, live and learn, I suppose.

In a way, you've really gotten the best of both worlds. You enjoyed the toys in your youth, then made some money off them. Then you got to enjoy them all over again when you repurchased them later. You had the money when you needed it, and you had the toys when you wanted them. #winning
>
> Regarding the connected legs, it was a specific person who was interested in what I was selling, but that was his main concern. He didn't like toys whose legs were stuck together.

Gotcha. I suppose it never occurred to him to buy a duplicate, then cut the legs to separate them...

> (For me, it's stickers. I will nope out of looking an an eBay auction faster than lighnting if it's got badly-applied stickers. Yes, I could remove then and replace them with reproduction labels, but that's so much work...)

It couldn't be worse than the PoTP stickers...could it?

> I mean, really, the secondary marketplace sets the pricing. I spent a long time telling myself "well, back in 198X, this toy retailed for $XX.99, so I should never have to pay more than that" and that's why I didn't collect vintage G1 for, like, decades. But once I got over that kind of thinking and just accepted the current marketplace pricing, it was easier for me.

I'm mostly over that as well, thanks to picking up a lot of the Thrilling 30 toys and realizing how flimsy many of them feel. The BM Tankor "Deluxe" doesn't measure up to a Siege Deluxe in any way, and it justifies the premium, at least in my mind.
>
> I did put together a price guide some time in late 2019 or early 2020 to give myself an approximate idea of what these toys were going for, but it's already out of date. I think 2020 was an uncharacteristic low period for the market, because a lot of people were losing their jobs during the pandemic and had to sell things off to make do. Pricing for a lot of stuff has jumped in just a couple of years since that time. I'm almost scared to see what the 2023 market is going to look like.

Once folks got their stimulus checks, and had nothing else to do with their time and money, it feels like the era of Marie Kondo went out the window, and the era of renewed online shopping really took off, and the prices reflected that. I got an MISB Machine Wars Starscream for about $30 at the start of the pandemic, and there's no way I'd get anything close to that today.