Beachcomber (1985)
Released in the second year of the Hasbro The Transformers line, Mini Vehicle Beachcomber transforms into a blue and gray 1982 M1040 Chenowth “Hellfire” Fast Attack Vehicle (which is an amusingly well-armed vehicle for such a peace-loving Autobot). Although not documented in his instructions, Beachcomber’s legs are slightly extendable, providing much-needed clearance for his lower legs to transform between modes without scraping against his torso.
The figure has several minor variants. The initial releases of the toy have his thighs, headlamps and wheel hubs cast in silver plastic that matches his torso rather than the usual light gray, which is the vastly more common coloration. Later releases of the light-gray version altered his right arm to add a “Hasbro” stamp to it (removing half the “mesh” pattern). The French release of the toy by Ceji, aside from using the “half-mesh” arm variant, has a slightly different headsculpt with narrower eyes, different wheel-pins with four “rivets”, plus slightly different shades of blue and gray plastic.
Beachcomber continued on into the 1986 Mini Vehicle assortment, with no notable changes. He was also released in Greece by El Greco in 1986, being virtually identical to his international version besides bearing a very slightly different shade of blue and featuring no rubsign.
In the Takara line, Beachcomber was not part of the initial 1985 “pre-movie” series (despite being in the pre-movie cartoon), but premiered in 1986’s post-movie Transformers 2010 line. Like all of the smaller toys sold by Takara at the time, he was packaged in a small box and came with a collector’s card inside, rather than on a bubble-card. It is currently uncertain which arm-variant was released in Japan; presumably the latter “Hasbro”-stamped one, but this has not been confirmed.
