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| Blackbird Robo AKA the Renegade Swoop |
To the uninitiated, Machine Robo was a series of transformable toys released like Matchboxes in 1982 (34 years ago) by Popy, a division of Bandai. Some of the simply designated Machine Robos were actually even Mecha.
American Toy Maker Tonka loved the idea, licensed it from Bandai, but made them all sentient robots, gave them better names rather than just simple designations, and divided them into "Good-guy" and "Bad-guy" categories - or Guardians and Renegades. The Challenge of the Gobots would rise to give the Transformers a run for their money when the cartoon aired 65 episodes starting in 1984.
Machine Robo meanwhile would have its own 47 episode cartoon released on Tokyo TV from 1986 to 1987 called Machine Robo: Revenge of Chronos (Released as Revenge of the Gobots in the US).
Hasbro eventually won the war though and purchased Tonka and the rights to the Gobots. Unfortunately, as Tonka has only leased the rights to the images of Machine Robo to Tonka, Hasbro owns an empty concept.
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