Thanks to kidkorrupt for bringing up an old debate with me. Astromagnum is the mold for G1 Shockwave. Astromagnum was sold by Toyco in japan.
I am curious to know about Toyco. I wonder who they got to do the tooling of Astomagnum? I know that Studio Nue was tapped for some of the diaclone toys and microchange toys like perceptor. I met the toy designer of perceptor at Botcon this year. For those of you who dont know, one of the employees at Studio Nue, was Shoji Kawamori. He designed the original Battle Convoy toy aka Optimus Prime.
Jason Jupiter pointed out uncanny similarities in Astromagnum's tooling to Takatoku's 1/55 Macross valkyries.
Carefully look at Shockwave's leg. The Silver/grey panel and look at the panel lines.
Then look at this Bandai 1/55 elintseeker, Look at the leg panel
Now look at Shockwave's upper arm/bicep area.
And look at the elintseeker's arm.
Not only are they similar, the ratcheting design in the arm is similar to the 1/55 toy technology.
I dont think it just a coincidence. unless one company blatantly ripped off designs from the other.
I cant remember who actually designed the 1/55 toy? what is specifically Kawamori? I know he came up with the transformation concept of the toy. but did he do the actual tooling? Was it someone in Studio Nue? was it an employee of takatoku? Did they contract someone else? Could that person have worked on Astromagnum because the evidence seems to support that. Or maybe they were huge macross fans haha.