Marvel/Grandreams TransFormers Annual 1986

It has occurred to me that, if I'm not going to blast through all four of the TransFormers annuals I own as quickly as possible, I should at least try to deal with one every year... and, having dealt with the 1985 annual in January of 2022, I'm a little overdue on this one, even in the worst case scenario.

With the advent of Marvel/Grandreams TransFormers annuals, and since I was a regular reader of the TransFormers comic (when the newsagents actually received it and remembered to add it to our newspaper delivery) it became inevitable that I'd continue to receive them as Christmas gifts. I mentioned in the write-up of the 1985 book, I'd been getting other annuals for years already, and TransFormers pretty much became my primary interest once they appeared on the scene.

While I probably enjoyed the first book at the tender age of 11, looking at it again, more than thirty years later, I found its content almost frustratingly bad, not helped by the distinctly variable artwork throughout. Let's see if the second collaboration presents any improvements...

Marvel/Grandreams TransFormers Annual 1985

Back in my youth, publishers of comics and teen-oriented magazines habitually ended the year with a hardbacked book featuring either retrospectives or - frequently, in the case of the comics - some wholly new material. In those days, I would always get such annuals for Christmas, and amassed quite a selection over the years, from The Beano to The Eagle (shared with my sister) to TransFormers, all of which ended up in the loft at my parents' place.

Cut to just before Christmas 2021, and my mother mentioned that she wanted to do a massive clear-out of the loft. Earlier this month, I popped over there a little earlier than I normally would when attending a local computer club, and assisted with the sorting effort. While most of my time was spent identifying toys/toy parts and grouping them together by type, we did find a couple of bags of annuals, so I grabbed the four TransFormers ones just for fun...

But then I figured I may as well take the opportunity to write about them, as they're as much a piece of TransFormers history as the toys. Here's the first...

TransFormers Collectors' Club 2016/Combiner Wars Impactor

Marvel's TransFormers comics sometimes introduced characters who were not and, in some cases, still aren't going to be available as toys. Hasbro occasionally paid lip service the fans desires to see these characters in plastic, and created a version of the Wreckers' irascible leader, Impactor, in 2013, using the much-maligned Fall of Cybertron Onslaught mold. He was made to be the torso of Ruination, a combiner formed wholly of Wreckers, each a repaint of the terminally underdeveloped FoC Combaticons. This version of Impactor didn't look anything like the Marvel Comics character, and didn't even have the right colourscheme.

Subsequently, back in 2016, the penultimate Subscription Service from the TransFormers Collectors' Club - amounting mostly to the Decepticons' Mayhem Attack Squad - was concluded with the second ever official figure of Impactor, this time created using the mold originally used for Combiner Wars Rook. Was the Club's attempt any better than Hasbro's?

Generations Darkmount

I've always wondered, as a reader of Marvel Comics' G1 TransFormers comics, with all the characters available in the toyline, why did they feel the need to create new, key characters that weren't available as toys: Impactor, Emirate Xaaron, Scrounge, Spanner... and, of course, Straxus.

Or should that be Darkmount? Yes, yet again, trademark issues prevented Hasbro using the right name, but Darkmount is a suitable alternative for the first ever toy of one of Marvel's original TF Villains, since it's the name given to his base of operations in the comics. Considering that Straxus was only seen to transform once, and turned into some kind of wierd flying cannon - vaguely similar to Galvatron in some ways - what sort of alternate mode does he get for his first toy?