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Posted

I'm just clearing out all my old stuff, and was selling all my custom exo-squad toys on ebay, when I discovered some old prototype toy pictures from a Playmates Toys Catalog from 1995. I thought I would post scans before I sold them, so if you want to see all 22 pages (only several are Macross/Robotech related) go to flickr.com and search for "Exosquad Prototypes"

Here's a few of the pages:

post-917-1200305717_thumb.jpg post-917-1200305730_thumb.jpg post-917-1200305757_thumb.jpg post-917-1200305769_thumb.jpg

a few color variations that never made it, and some better detailed colorings than the actual toys ended up having in some cases.

Posted

I find it amusing that there seems to be no difference between the Civil Defense Corps and the Tactical division, listed as offensive mecha.

VFTF1

Posted

You can't really call them prototypes because these are the same toys that were in production from Matchbox a few years earlier. Playmates just bought the tooling and started making them - mostly to say "In Your Face, FASA" because of the BattleTech lawsuit. I know playmates re-released the destroids in original and funky colors. I never saw a playmates version of the Glaug and Regult. I have the Matchbox versions so I know they are the same toys.

Posted
You can't really call them prototypes because these are the same toys that were in production from Matchbox a few years earlier. Playmates just bought the tooling and started making them - mostly to say "In Your Face, FASA" because of the BattleTech lawsuit. I know playmates re-released the destroids in original and funky colors. I never saw a playmates version of the Glaug and Regult. I have the Matchbox versions so I know they are the same toys.

I guess you're right. I think with the Robotech/Macross toys only some colors were changed from the original Matchbox versions. Of the exosquad toys, some of them never made it to production, like the Space Conquest E-frame.

Posted

Cool pics! I have never seen the third picture before!

Playmates never actually issued any new color variations. But, as indicated above, Playmates did have plans to issue color variations of the large 7" destroids. There were also plans for a 3rd series of "Stealth" and "Special Mission" small destroids, but those never happened either. I'll try and find a pic of the prototypes.

What they released was basically all the Destroids from the Matchbox line aside from minor design changes such as plastic legs, "battle damage" paintjobs, and sideways cannons on the Radar X :)

Posted

One things for sure I'd much rather be a pilot in a Playmates Glaug than the "real" one, look at all the room that guy has, nothing like the ones in SDFM

Posted

The bigger destroids are exactly 1/60 scale. I inputed the height into a scale converter and was suprised by the discovery.

Posted (edited)

Notice the last scan says these toys were to appear in the ExoSquad tv show in 1995. Did that actually happen - Macross mechs in another animated show and called by their "Robotech" names? Does this mean that they were going to introduce the term Robotech and Zentraedi and Invid alien races to that show? Pretty crazy if that happened.

Edited by glane21
Posted
The bigger destroids are exactly 1/60 scale. I inputed the height into a scale converter and was suprised by the discovery.

1/60? Neat! I've still got some of those stored away in boxes, from way back when.

I surmised the Glaug and Regult must have been about 1/100-ish in scale. As I understood it, Zentraedi were roughly the same size as a VF-1 [or a bit smaller?] and I could never see how one could fit in and pilot them if they were any bigger than that [in proportion], even by anime standards.

Posted
I surmised the Glaug and Regult must have been about 1/100-ish in scale.

They're an even bigger scale. If you mean the Regult and Glaug on the 1st page, they are big enough to seat a 6" action figure.

A 1/200 scale regult is only 3.5" so a 1/100 would be 7". These ones stand about 16" IIRC - about 3 times as tall as the matchbox Destroids. Mine are packed so I can't measure them but I'd guess they are something over 1/50 maybe even close 1/35. Justing roughing it out, 16m (fullsize Glaug) divided by 16 inches is around 1/40.

Posted
LOL, I love the pic with them barely moving their arms "EXO ARTICULATION FOR REALISTIC BATTLE POSES" or whatever, funny.

Yeah, that had me laughing as well.

Graham

Posted
LOL, I love the pic with them barely moving their arms "EXO ARTICULATION FOR REALISTIC BATTLE POSES" or whatever, funny.

I could picture the meeting... the sales team of 3 suits feigning interest in the series and going on about the "super-illumination" and "exo-articulation" and talking these toys up as if they were the most ground breaking toys in the history of the world, when in fact the production models didn't live up to the prototypes, and all the "Robotech" stuff were just Matchbox re-releases.

Posted (edited)

Funny story, i had a mate that said i can grab his glaug, invid trooper and other RT stuff for free, but i declined, as i was trying to impress his 'sister' at the time haha, wish i took them. >_< Mind you even back then i thought they were too blocky and chunky.

Edited by ruskiiVFaussie
Posted
Notice the last scan says these toys were to appear in the ExoSquad tv show in 1995. Did that actually happen - Macross mechs in another animated show and called by their "Robotech" names? Does this mean that they were going to introduce the term Robotech and Zentraedi and Invid alien races to that show? Pretty crazy if that happened.

That never happened but i think the company had the rights to those molds and since Exosquad was the only robot show on america tv at the time they just used that to help sell the toys. I miss exosquad lol.

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