I’m home for Thanksgiving, and so this weekend I have access to some of my old TFs and TF-related items from back in the 80s. One of the oldest items that I still have in my possession is a Diaclone catalog. This catalog came with the Dinobot Slag, or to be more accurate, the Dialcone toy that would eventually become Slag. I was already living in the United States at the time, and my aunt bought me the toy during one of her trips to Asia. I loved the toy of course, but I had no idea that he would eventually become part of the Transformers cast. And so I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw him in War of the Dinobots and thinking, “Yeah! He’ll be a Tranformer and I already have him!”

All true TransFans know that the Dialcone toys made up the majority of the TF cast in the first two seasons. I’ve had some other Diaclones from those days, but this is the only catalog that survived. As you can see from the scans, this catalog is pretty wrinkled. As a kid, I used to look at this thing day and night, wishing I had every single one of these. Now that I’m a grown man I’m still kinda wishing for the same thing 🙂

Behold the awesomeness of a 80s Japanese catalog and witness these images for yourself below. oh, this catalog reads from left to right (like an American book).

This is the cover. Other than the title, everything’s in English. The Constructicons were to “rescue” and “keep peace” in the Diaclone line? That’s a trip.

I guess the opening pages goes into some back story. I can only read the Kanji, but that alone makes little sense.

Here we have Optimus and all the Autobot cars. In the Diaclone line, I have the red Tracks and red Sunstreaker shown here. Tracks is still in decent shape, but I have no idea what happened to Sunstreaker.

Jumpstarters are featured on the left page. The toys kinda sucked after you get past the gimmick. Also, they did not at all appear in the G1 cartoons, but it’s nice to see them get some love in the War Within series. On the opposite page we see a graphic introducing the combiner toys.

The Constructicons have a very different color scheme in the Diaclone line. Devastator’s head looks different too. The 6 trains combiner team never made it to the TF universe. That’s a shame, but trains are not half as interesting has construction vehicles, so I guess Takara/Hasbro made the right choice.

Pics of the Constructicon toys, and a graphic introducing the Dinobots. Go Dinosaur Robo!

All 5 Dinobots are featured here. Colors in robot mode looks slightly different. Notice Slag’s chest is blue, which is what I had. In the TF version he is red. I’m hoping that the Encore series would re-release all of these. I get them all. Come and think of it, I like to see Encore versions of the Constructicons also.

These “Double Changers” became Omnibots. They were special mail-in only TFs in the Hasbro line that required you to pay money and collect those special Hasbro points on the box. I don’t know anyone that had these, probably because getting them was such a pain in the ass. Plus they were never featured in the cartoons. I don’t think War Within mentioned them either.

This is the back cover. Here we see some Seekers and the Insecticons in their Diaclone colors. Don’t recognize the rest.

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Transform and Roll Out!

Teletraan I Communiques