Details
Powerglide (1985)
Released in the second year of Hasbro‘s The Transformers line, Mini Vehicle Powerglide transforms into an A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet (better known by its nickname “Warthog”), deformed to keep proportion with the previous year’s “penny-racer” styled Mini Cars. He is notable for being one of the earliest Autobots with an aerial alternate mode. Due to his transformation, Powerglide has more robot mode articulation than any other Mini Vehicle. His head can turn, his shoulders have what amounts to universal joints, and his elbows bend.
There are some very minor variants of this toy, involving the company stamping on the back of his mono-leg: he can have “© Takara 1984 Japan”, “© Takara Co. LTD 1984 Japan”, or the latter with “© Hasbro 1984” added above the Takara info.
In the Takara line, Powerglide 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.
A variant of Powerglide was made by El Greco and released only in Greece under his localized name of “Keravnόs”, now bearing a lighter and slightly more saturated shade of red. As with other El Greco Mini-Vehicles, his faction sticker is missing and his other sticker is slightly different.
This mold was also used to make Bad Boy.
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