With the relatively recent release of TakaraTomy 2010 Universal Dominator Unicron, a new rush of Unicron-love has swept the fandom. Although I was unable to touch upon this much in my review, Armada Unicron was actually not the first time the demi-god had been given a plastic effigy. At least three iterations of Unicron had been conceived all the way to the hardcopy / testshot phase to ultimately never reach mass-production. According to a fantastic find by Japanese Transformer collector and ultra-seller Hydra of The AllSpark, there were in fact two different versions of the unreleased G1 Unicron toy designed and fabricated. The first was deemed “too small” by Hasbro and so back to the drawing board went the designer to increase the size. This could perhaps make sense of the two different photos floating around of the finished design. After some digging, it makes perfect sense according to this hacked together size comparison from an article on The Mechanical Maniacs.
So apparently, the “green bodied” G1 Unicron was a completely different design from the larger orange version. I have often heard that the green one is considered the Japanese prototype vs. the orange USA prototype. In reality, it appears that the green version was the first draft, followed by the orange one that Hasbro still has in their possession. It is also surmised that there have been multiple copies of this toy created as evidenced by the Unicron display at Botcon 2009 contained more than one of the figure in pristine condition.
And guess what – not all of those copies of the toy are owned by Hasbro! For the first time, I am sharing these photographs publicly. I’m not even sure where I got them anymore but the photos were taken sometime after 2003 as evidenced by the shirt in the photographs. I do not claim owenership of these, but since I will currently be the only source on the net to have them I’ll be watermarking them and blurring out the identity. If anyone wants to step forward and give me some more info about these, I’d love to get it. Privacy will be protected if requested.
All in all, I highly suggest checking out Hydra’s article for some incredible information that continues to dazzle. Dare I say I’d still like to see the original toy released?? Shame on me… BEHOLD – Unicron!
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