No… this post is not a cop-out… I promise. G1 Topspin!

I am only vaguely distracted right now. There’s these dragons, and Frost Atronachs,

and Snow Trolls,

and did I mention dragons?

See, there was this little game called Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that came out last month and it’s been very, very, verrrrrrrrry difficult to pull myself away from it.

Did I mention dragons?

Ok, sorry, back to Transformers. I like Jumpstarters! No. Really. Jumpstarters.

Now that the half of the readers that didn’t check out at the pictures above are gone, I can go back to playing Skyrim. What? There’s still someone reading? Oh, alrighty then.

I seriously don’t understand all the hate they receive. They don’t have any less articulation than a good portion of the other toys from that year, it’s just they have a very simplified transformation. Ok, fine, they fold in half, but I would think the auto-transformation gimmick when rolled on the ground would have made up for the simplicity.

I like them purely based on their robot modes. There’s just something very Transformers about them, particularly their Diaclone era headsculpts.

However, they are very much disliked in the Transformers community. Both of them are in the Wreckers, which basically means they fare far, far worse in the comic book fiction then they deserve. So why do an entire post about just one of them? No, it’s not so I can get back to Skyrim. It’s because I noticed something odd on my Topspin.

Upon closer inspection I realized that his wings have “D•A•R” on the stickers.

Though I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about Transformers – and especially about the little oddities – I had never noticed that before or knew of any G1 Topspin variation. The tiniest bit of digging and I was educated on the fact that there was, in fact, an early variation of Topspin that retained the “D•A•R” from his previous incarnation.

Diaclone Attack Robo. Both of the Jumpstarters started life as “Baku-ten Attack Robo” in the Diaclone series. “Baku-ten” in this case meaning “blast-flip”, though Google Translate’s version “Forward Explosion” is way better. Topspin in particular was the “Jet Type”, seen in pictures from Diaclone.net.

I’m not going to lie, I’m really thinking about hunting down the red and dark blue version there.

Though maybe I’ll focus on just getting a decent Twin Twist first.

I had already made peace with the fact that I will never be devoted enough to Transformers to know absolutely everything, but I’m still learning things about toys in my own collection.

I love this franchise.