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Powerful Living Rocks
In 1986, another transforming toy robot movie was released to theaters. Yes, I know. Transformers, Robotech, and Gobots all in one year. What were these companies thinking?
Battle Of The Rock Lords was meant to kick off a Gobots spin-off, the Rock Lords, powerful living rocks! This film is the only recorded attempt to kick off a series which never actually took place. Not only did the Rock Lords grind to a halt, but so did the Gobots. The Gobots were dead and buried months before the Transformers movie followed its lead in theaters.
This film features the talents of Telly Savalas, Margot Kidder, Roddy MacDowall, Michael Nouri, Frank Welker, and Peter Cullen.
Topics
Walking and talking
Sticker faces
Toy-accurate designs
Riding on a lava boat
Hanna-Barbara’s B-Team
Leader-1 is Jimmy Carter
Turbo is the Gacy clown
Scooter saves the day
Telly Savalas neither knows nor cares who Cy-Kill is
Margot Kidder passed up Superman III for this
The Rock Lords theme is utter butt rock
Gobotron vs Unicron
Not actually from the movie. Look how much cooler Fitor looks in Japan!
The true evolution of Scooter.
This was one that I had never heard of, and this was during the time when I was actively watching cartoons (and making snide comments about the bad stuff to my best friend while we both watched them). I’ll leave an additional comment after I listen to your show, as I am now intrigued to find out more information about this movie.
Actually, this movie was easy to miss. The promotion was pretty weak. I think I only saw an ad for it once, and it was in and out of theaters in a flash.
Man, this movie is the same age as me. So glad that my brother show me the Transformer movie instead of this movie. But unfortunately I still saw this movie, even as a kid I know this was a bad knock off movie. Am I the only one that hear Jar Jar Binks in Scooter?
Love that youtube video of Unicron eating Gobotron
That has to be an internet rumor that Go-Bots predated Transformers. Go-Bots stink too bad to be the predecessors to Transformers but instead Go-Bots is an inferior knock off of Transformers that came out later.
No, it’s true. I was there. I lived it.
You have to remember that both of these toylines existed prior to their American debut in 1984, although there were vast conceptual differences from their origins in japan. Both Transformers and Gobots were essentially rebranded and Americanized versions of Diaclone and Machine Robo. And beside that, there were many other toylines around the same time that were basically the same concept, such as Macross, Southern Cross, Mospaeda, and Gundam, to name a few.
As Chuck pointed out on the prior episode, a lot of the reason why Transformers didn’t catch on with Japanese kids was because they already had those toys.
But there is one notable piece of trivia that we keep forgetting, and I think this will set your mind at ease. A year before either Gobots or Transformers were released in America, there was a very limited release of Diaclone’s Car Robot line in America, without the Transformers branding. They’re very rare, but they were here first.