Estrela
From Transformers Wiki
Estrela is a popular Brazilian toy manufacturer, being first founded in São Paulo in 1937 and remaining active until today.
They are best known internationally for holding the license to produce and market multiple Hasbro toylines during the 1980s like GI Joe (under the localized name of Comandos em Ação, i.e., "Commandos in Action"), My Little Pony (under the localized name of Meu Querido Pônei, i.e., "My Dear Pony") and, of course, The Transformers (under the localized name of, uh, "Transformers"). Although much of the Transformers mainline was ignored by Estrela, their aforementioned freedom to manufacture their own toys during this time resulted in multiple variants of existing molds - and even some entirely unique ones! - that remained exclusive to the Brazilian market.
Estrela also distributed most Transformers toylines in the country up until Cybertron, being later replaced by Hasbro's own Brazilian subsidiary starting from 2007. The fallout was a long and complicated legal dispute between the two companies regarding royalties for the Hasbro-derived toylines that Estrela was still manufacturing domestically, lasting all the way up until its settlement in 2021.
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Overview
Estrela's Transformers toyline
Estrela's approach to localizing The Transformers was somewhat unusual. The first edition of the U.S. comics would be sold nationally in November of 1985 and the cartoon would only premiere on Brazilian airwaves in 1986, however; Estrela decided to preemptively release their Transformers line in May of 1985, quite a few months before most domestic audiences had been introduced to the characters.
The stars of this toyline were a handful of Mini-Vehicles and Jumpstarter redecos, each being renamed into Robocars and Salt-Man (the Salt here being a contraction of "salto", the Portuguese word for "jump") and releasing in packaging similar to their U.S. counterparts but featuring an entirely new Transformers logo instead. The fact that there was no known fiction for these figures within the Brazilian market left Estrela to name them after their alternate modes instead - and thus, the Bumblebee mold became known as Volks (per his Volkswagen Type 1 "Beetle" mode), the Cliffjumper mold as Carrera (per his Porsche 924 Carrera GT alt mode [1]), Windcharger as Camaro (per what seems to be a misidentification of his Pontiac Firebird Trans Am vehicle mode as a 3rd gen Chevrolet Camaro), and so on. The Topspin and Twin Twist molds were also renamed into, respectively; Salt-Man X and Salt-Man Z. The lack of a pre-established mythology also meant that this first batch of toys did not have faction insignia, instead featuring stickers identical to the original Micro Change and Diaclone versions of their respective molds. This was changed in a second run of the Robocars, as the introduction of The Transformers comic book in Brazil by the end of 1985 would bring about the renaming of the Autobots and Decepticons into "Optimus" and "Malignus" - and thus, the toyline would also get its own Optimus and Malignus factions in 1986, now also sporting much flashier decos.
The line-up was also supplemented by larger toys licensed from other companies which were not featured in any other of the many international Transformers toylines. These included the auto-transforming Bat-Robô figures with pullback motors (three years before the American line did the same) which were originally from Asahi Corporation's Attack Change Machine Powertron toyline, the also auto-transforming Eletrix figures that doubled as rudimentary remote-controlled vehicles (thirty five years before Robosen kind of did the same with uh, a marginal difference in quality) which were originally from Yonezawa Toys' Remote Change Robo Series toyline, and... that was it, these are all the figures released under Estrela's Transformers toyline, and also the only ones available on domestic toy aisles throughout the following years as the show premiered.
Noticeably absent from this line-up is nearly every single major Transformers character, therefore depriving Brazilian fans during the 1980s of some of the most important figures like Optimus Prime, Megatron, the Seekers, the Dinobots, the Diaclone Car Robots-derived characters like Jazz, Prowl, Sideswipe et al., and many, many, many more. A common part of the experience of being a young Transformers fan in Brazil, in fact, often involved filling in the ranks of missing characters with GoBots (which were actually localized twice in the country, first by toy company Glasslite as Mutante and then by Mimo as Convert), using toys like Road Ranger as a stand-in for Optimus or Leader-1 as a stand-in for Starscream!
Continuity kerfuffle
The fiction of the toyline is... fuzzy. The cardback bios for the Robocars are direct Portuguese translations of their base molds' Hasbro bios (with the obvious exception of Bumper-mold Sedan), thus this wiki places those toys as those already-established characters. However, the Salt-Men have unique bios, placing them as all-new characters. Every other toy lacks a bio. While this is not so big a deal when it comes to the Bat-Robo and Eletrix (who have no Transformers analogues whatsoever), things get hinky when it comes to the Optimus and Malignus, who use the same names as their Robocar forebears; for simplicity (or as close as this can generally get), this wiki treats all of the Optimus and Malignus as new characters. Odder still, since none of the pre-Optimus/Malignus toys or packaging featured any faction symbols, their allegiance is mostly conjecture, but between the re-use of "Autobot" character bios on "Autobot" molds and all of them using the "Autobot" style packaging, plus the lack of any indication in what bios exist that any of the toys are villains, the general fandom assumption (and wiki default placement) is "Autobot".
Add to all of this the fact that, as mentioned, the Optimus and Malignus factions were originally just the localized names for the Autobots and Decepticons in the comics, however; the 1986 toyline featured them with entirely new insignia while the cartoon that was concurrently rolled out in the same year abandoned the "Optimus" and "Malignus" names in favor of the original Autobot and Decepticon faction titles and insignia: the result, thus; was that fans tended to treat the Optimus and Malignus of the Estrela toyline as independent "good" and "evil" factions that exist somewhere in the Transformers universe, and this would eventually become part of the canon with cameos in later media like Beast Wars: Uprising and Transformers: TransTech. As such, for the sake of conformity with more recent material and in line with the most common fan interpretation, the toys in this wiki that were originally labelled as Optimus and Malignus will be treated as belonging to those factions specifically rather than either to the Autobots or Decepticons.
Licensing and distribution in Argentina
Estrela licensed out the Transformers toyline to Argentinian company Antex, who also released their Transformers toyline in 1985. Considering Hasbro's ownership of the brand, whether or not Estrela actually had the legal right to do so is... questionable, but regardless, neither company seemed to suffer for it, as both Estrela and Antex would go on to become official distributors of Transformers figures in their respective countries during later years. Antex's line-up was mostly similar to Estrela's pre-Optimus vs Malignus toys, featuring some of the Robocars (albeit in different colors) and the Salt-Men molds (also bearing some, albeit smaller, deco changes), but no Bat-Robôs or Eletrix. They also reused the logo created for Estrela's toyline, as well as the unique character names.
On another odd note, Estrela's original versions of the Sedan, Camaro, and Pick-Up molds were also sold across some locations in Argentina in 1985 under unusual circumstances by an unknown company: the toys and their bubbles were manually cut off the Transformers branded cards and then attached to new cards featuring the logo Invasion Galactica and art of a flying saucer. The original design of the Transformers cards was still plainly visible beneath the bubble, with the distinct red background elements now depicted as part of a newly-drawn fireball. Collectors from South America have long maintained that these packaging swaps were done by legitimate retailers and toy stores in Argentina, who were attempting to find a way to move their Transformers merchandise during a time when protectionist laws made it difficult to sell product that had been manufactured in foreign countries [2]. This is corroborated by the fact that, beyond the aforementioned Invasion Galactica logo, the only piece of writing in the packaging for these toys is a small "Industria Argentina" on the bottom left of the blister cards, a common label identifying a domestic product (essentially the Argentinian equivalent of a Made in USA or a Made in China): considering how these are the Brazilian versions of the Robocars, it stands to reason that this is, most likely, a sneaky little bit of deception added to the packaging to evade suspicion from authorities.
Despite the aforementioned protectionist laws, the regular international Transformers toyline also released to multiple retailers in Argentina at one point, with the more popular Autobot and Decepticon characters being commonly available alongside the domestic Antex products - something that, unfortunately, a lot of Brazilian kids could only ever dream of seeing in their national stores.
Later partnership with Hasbro and lawsuit
Eventually, as the 90s came and the Transformers brand proved itself to be a reliable long-term investment for Hasbro worldwide, Estrela went from being a manufacturer to a distributor for the post-Generation 1 toylines, with figures from Beast Wars, Beast Machines, and all the way into the 2000s with Transformers: Universe and the "Unicron Trilogy" getting Estrela-branded releases in Brazil. Other Hasbro toylines, like the then recently-obtained Star Wars license (formerly belonging to Kenner before it was absorded into Hasbro), were also similarly distributed by Estrela. In contrast, multiple popular Hasbro-owned board games like Monopoly (sold in Brazil as Banco Imobiliário, i.e., "Real-Estate Bank") and Cluedo (sold in Brazil as Detetive) that had been provided through similar licensing deals kept on being manufactured locally by Estrela, as well as a few other toys like Play-Doh (sold in Brazil as Super Massa, i.e., "Super Dough").
By 2007, Hasbro had stopped renewing their distribution contract with Estrela in favor of a self-owned South American distribution chain - thus, future Transformers figures, starting from the 2007 movie toyline and beyond up until today, were released in Brazil directly by Hasbro. Still, Estrela kept manufacturing Super Massa and the aforementioned board games under their own localized titles, which led to Hasbro suing Estrela for royalties in 2008 and culminated in a long legal battle lasting a whole 15 years. Eventually, the Court of Justice of São Paulo ruled in 2021 that while some of these brands, like Detetive and Super Massa, still belonged to Hasbro, others, like Banco Imobiliário, had been made sufficiently legally distinct to belong to Estrela instead [3]: thus, to this day, both the original Monopoly and its localization as Banco Imobilário can be found in Brazilian stores. Interestingly, this court ruling also determined that Comandos em Ação / Brazil's localization of G.I. Joe was a property of Estrela rather than Hasbro, although nothing with the Comandos em Ação brand has been done by Estrela since.
Toys
Transformers
As mentioned, the 1985 line was mainly made up of a small handful of Mini-Vehicle and Jumpstarter molds from the Hasbro toyline, and it was further bulked up by giving most toys two different decos: one resembling the Hasbro originals and one in all-new colors. Notably, this line made repeated use of the "Bumper" mold (perhaps because of his shared engineering with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper helping to keep manufacturing costs low) that was extremely rare in the US, and not released as a Transformer at all in Japan. The Bat-Robôs also had two decos each, whereas the Eletrix somehow had the restraint of only providing a deco for each toy. On top of the reused Micro Change and Diaclone sticker designs in place of faction insignia, one of the redecos - the blue and red version of Salt-Man Z - also features the same color scheme as its original Diaclone counterpart.
| Robocars | Salt-Man
|
Bat-Robô | Eletrix |  |
Estrela's second batch of Transformers toys, usually known as "Optimus x Malignus" (per a concurrently-released sticker album featuring this as the sub-title), are their most well-known outside of Brazil. The six Robocar molds were trotted out again in 1986, each one getting two new color schemes, but this time they were split into proper good-vs-evil factions. These releases are particularly rare, and even loose samples are expensive, especially the (generally more gorgeous) Malignus.
| Optimus | Malignus |  |
Merchandise
On top of the toys, Estrela also backed their toyline with a staggering amount of merchandise, boasting everything from the usual knick-knacks you'd expect like the aforementioned sticker album, puzzles, lunch boxes, and pencil cases, to more esoteric stuff like wall clocks, multiple extensive home decor sets with bed sheets and curtains [4], and, for whatever reason (perhaps for those keen on starting their own separatist nation using the Estrela Robocars as national icons?), even a large yellow flag featuring Pick-Up / Gears. [5] While most of this merchandise was based around the Robocars, it also occasionally featured art of the more popular characters that weren't included in the toyline, like Optimus and Megatron, serving as a constant reminder to Brazilian kids of all the toys they wouldn't be able to get unless they had rich parents who traveled abroad.
Most notably, this line-up of merchandise included an original board game, also manufactured in-house by Estrela:
Board Games
- Jogo dos Transformers (The Transformers Game)
(featuring miniature vehicle mode versions of Volks, Camaro, Carrera, and Sedan)
Notes
- Surprisingly, the Bat-Robô molds were also simultaneously released in Brazil by rival toy company Glasslite as the Crash Tron figures Blocker and Turborg, under the GoBots-localized Mutante toyline. It's still hotly debated amongst GoBots fans whether or not the Mutantes were a true licensed localization or just bootlegs - on one hand, Glasslite was a reputable company that produced official Brazilian releases of many toys from popular mass-media franchises like Thundercats and Star Wars and the quality of the toys does seem to check out as being on par with official products, but on the other hand, none of the packaging and known promotional material for Mutante actually mentions Bandai unlike Estrela did with Hasbro - but assuming that they are, this might make for an unprecedented instance of a toy being simultaneously a Transformer and a GoBot, and at the same time in the same region to boot!
- The promotional catalogue for the toyline featured box art of Salt-Man X in his original Topspin colors, rather than those of either of his two redecos. Eventually, this was changed by the time that the figures actually hit shelves.
- The aforementioned 1986 sticker album (introducing the Optimus X Malignus logo seen on this page) would be constituted of stills from the cartoon - a bizarre oddity, however; is that all of the Autobot and Decepticon faction insignia was scrubbed out of the images, even as the previously released comic books had them! Perhaps Estrela was really banking on the idea that their Optimus and Malignus would replace the Autobots and Decepticons, or perhaps some licensing issues regarding the use of insignia in that specific format could be involved, but in either case; as the cartoon eventually released on the same year with both the Autobots and Decepticons retaining their original titles and emblems, it's difficult not to be at least a little confused as to why exactly this was done.
- Despite still owning the distribution rights to Transformers in the early 2000s, Estrela would also release a small self-branded line of transforming toy robots under the Mutantes toyline (which, strangely, seem to bear no relation to the previously mentioned Glasslite Mutante toys) during this time. These were simple bulky figures that'd transform into either die cast vehicles or plastic dinosaurs, with the molds consisting of basic budget toys repackaged from other non-Transformers toylines that you'd commonly find in budget toy shops during the 2000s.
- Estrela brought back the Mutantes line again in 2014, eight years after their relationship with Hasbro had ended, with the introduction of the dinosaur-based Mutantes Dinossauros figures. Among these were a Velociraptor and a Deinonychus which, despite being heavily simplified, are nonetheless very clearly molded after the engineering of the original Beast Wars Dinobot toy [6] - meaning that yes, Estrela technically became a bootleg distributor, albeit only briefly! The extent to which they were even aware of the similarities between these figures and the Hasbro originals is debatable since again, as with their first batch of Mutantes, these were simple repackages of common budget toys licensed from other companies, but it is nonetheless interesting that a company would have both a relationship with Hasbro and yet also distribute Transformers knockoffs throughout their history. Even crazier that they were not the first to do so, and neither would they be the last.
See also
- Antex, the Argentinian counterpart of Estrela's Transformers
- Multibrink, another Brazilian company that produced Transformers merchandise
- Grendene Transformers watch, the sole post-Estrela instance of a Transformers toy being exclusive to Brazil
- Category:South American-original characters
References
- ↑ Cliffjumper's original Micro Change version refers to him as a 'Porsche 924 Turbo', but his rear fender flares are clearly inspired by the Carrera GT version of the 924 instead.
- ↑ https://www.toyarchive.com/Transformers/Brazilian/Invasion.html
- ↑ https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2022/02/14/em-nova-decisao-de-disputa-com-hasbro-tj-sp-manda-estrela-destruir-apenas-super-massa-brasileira-segue-com-banco-imobiliario.ghtml
- ↑ https://www.toyarchive.com/Transformers/Brazilian/Novlety.html
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/groups/351790058700754/?multi_permalinks=1717331488813264
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqaPbruw8Nw
External links
- Estrela (official site)
- Brazilian Transformers at the Super Toy Archive
