#972 METALCAR - RONY ROBOT (Around 1986)

APRIL IS THE MONTH OF THE BOOTLEGS and KNOCK-OFFs!

Some years ago, I published an unknown toy car that some reader helped me identify as a Metalcar from Hungary. Since then, I have as a task to write an entry about this company. 

Unfortunately, there is nothing I could find about this maker from Hungary, maybe there are some information sources in Hungarian in the net, but I didn´t found them, so I cannot talk about the company at all.

What I could find are many products made by Metalcar, where most of them are Matchbox knock-offs. This ambulance robot is much rarer, as it was more expensive to produce due to its great number of parts and difficult assembly.

The model may be familiar to many of you, as it is a knock-off of a Go-Bot called Rest-Q, released by Tonka/Bandai in 1983. It was probably made around 1985 or 1986 and it is an ultra rare figure. It was probably made in very low numbers, and its construction is not very sturdy. You can see that the paintwork is not very good, and some parts are scratched or missing its stickers.

It was sold originally in a blister pack, either with the Metal Car brand and the name Rony Robot, or in a generic blister card with the name “Transformer”. In the pictures I could find (in the-liberator.net), the blister “Rony Robot” shows a figure with red body, while the Transformer blister has a robot with blue body. Maybe they were packaged randomly, or there could have been even more colours available. The figure is completely unmarked.

Blister packs taken from www.the-liberator.net

 As a knock-off, the figure is the same size, construction and even the materials are similar. There are only subtle differences among them. The most significant is the wheels, which in this knock-off case, are made of only one piece. The original Go-Bot wheels had plastic hubcaps and gum tyres.

The cast and the stickers are also copied, but they are not identical. In the blister pictures, we can see that the stickers came unapplied.

Other differences are: red windshield, no chromed parts, body in red or blue instead of White, simplified head part.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: RONY ROBOT (GO-BOTs REST-Q Knock-off)
• Toy Line: None?
• Year: Around 1986
• Company: Metalcar (Hungary)
• Size of the figures: Around 7 cm (between  2’’ and 3’’) in robot mode

#971 MICRO ACTION/ FUNRISE – BIG RIG TRUCKS (1988)

APRIL IS THE MONTH OF THE BOOTLEGS and KNOCK-OFFs!

Funrise was one of the main competitors to Galoob´s Micro Machines at the time. Their models were great and had a variety that included many different vehicle types.
 
In this case we are showing four different cards with truck trailers, that, interestingly included two trucks but just one trailer, although other cards came with one, three or seven complete trucks, as well as other variations or as part of other sets. These are almost identical to the Semi-Truck collections of Micro Machines, but the Funrises do not have practicable parts. 

The trailers are interesting as many of them show existing commercial companies, unlike Micro

Machines, that were all invented (except Galoob itself)
 
There are two types of truck, that come in several colours, so there is not a great variety of models here, so having a few of them is enough for most collectors like me. I am very happy with this small collection, I do not need any more Funrise trucks.

The four cards are priced 1,99 dollars at Kay-Bee (K.B. or KB), which was a American toy store/retailer founded in Massachusetts in 1922 by the Kaufman brothers and went out of business in 2009, being absorved by Toys 'R Us. Below the sticker there seems to be some text indicated that one of the two rigs go for free, what would explain why there are two instead of only one. On the backcard, there are eight models depicted, but I would say there are even more.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: BIG RIG TRUCKS
• Scale of the cars: 1:150 aprox.
• Year: 1988
• Company: Funrise (U.S.A.)
• Size: approx. 2 cm truck / 3.5-4 cm trailer