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VOOZH | about |
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VOOZH | about |
Argentina is a country on Earth. It's located at the south end of South America, and it is bordered by Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay. Its capital is Buenos Aires, and most of the population speaks Spanish.
It contains part of the Andes Mountains and claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica.
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In order to get the population of Earth to accept him as its new leader, Starscream decided to destroy three of its largest cities. Among these was Buenos Aires. Both the Autobots and Decepticons sought to stop him, and from this it was decided that Fortress Maximus and Soundwave would jointly lead the Buenos Aires rescue attempt.
Starscream went to Buenos Aires after the other two, having already taken out all the Decepticons and Autobots waiting for him there. The ones at Buenos Aires weren't any more difficult. After killing the first batch, Starscream landed at Avenida Nueve de Julio, where he addressed the humans until more Transformers showed up to stop him. All of them but Fortress Maximus perished. The giant Headmaster's life was saved firstly because he was partially organic, therefore less sensitive for the Underbase's powers, and secondly because Starscream realized keeping an eye on the proceedings aboard the Ark was more urgent, so he had no time to finish off his last opponent and left for space. Buenos Aires was thus spared. Dark Star
Hot on Demolishor's trail, Sideswipe made his way from Uruguay into Argentina. Their first confrontation in the country occurred at Ezeiza International Airport, where they were soon joined by Ironhide. Ironhide felt responsible for Sideswipe and hoped to convince him to stop his mad pursuit before the other Autobots had to take him out. Sideswipe was not to be moved by reason though, which pleased Demolishor, who challenged the two Autobots to follow him to a new battlefield: Buenos Aires.
Demolishor went to the city area specifically to optimize the damage and death toll of the battle. Ironhide knew this and didn't want Sideswipe to follow, but the younger warrior wouldn't listen. After Demolishor destroyed the obelisk at Avenida Nueve de Julio, Sideswipe caught up with him and attacked, though wasn't any more effective than back at the airport. In the end, neither would win as the Argentine Air Force arrived and unleashed a barrage of missiles on both. Sideswipe would have died there if not for the arrival of the other Autobots and the United States military, who asked the Argentine Air Force to stop shooting and whose numbers scared away Demolishor, presumably out of the country. Tales of the Fallen #2
Starting in 1985, Argentinian media company Ledafilms printed a localization of the U.S. The Transformers comic, with their editions having some entirely unique cover designs... And the quality of this art often being downright questionable at best.[1]. Ledafilms also distributed the original Transformers cartoon on home video.[2]
A common feature of the Transformers' early presence in Latin American countries was Hasbro's reliance on licensing out the brand to a given local toy manufacturer, which would then produce their own domestic Transformers figures (with smaller toylines, inconsisent quality, and many quirky-colored variants ensuing) - most likely; this strategy was adopted on the grounds of protectionist laws making it harder to directly export U.S.-made Hasbro products to these countries. But unlike most of their neighbors, Argentina actually received the original 1980s U.S. The Transformers toyline in its national stores... And, at the same time, also had a whole two national toy manufacturers who held the license to make their own Transformers toys!
The most notable of these was Antex, who presumably obtained their license from Brazil's Estrela rather than Hasbro. Their offerings consisted of a handful of Robocars and the Salt-Man X / Z duo, with most featuring new colors not present in either their original Hasbro or Estrela counterparts (despite retaining the packaging art and pictures of the Brazilian versions) [3]. Another company that'd get the Transformers license - this time directly from Hasbro - was Comando Toys, an electronic toy manufacturer which released the infamously odd Radio AM Robot and Walkie Talkie Robot toys [4]. Notably, the former was a bizarre rebranded bootleg that blended together elements of Generation 1 Megatron, Blaster, Omega Supreme, and Soundwave, whereas the latter featured a design clearly ripping off the titular mecha from super robot anime Rokushin Gattai Godmars, a level of carelessness towards copyright that hasn't been seen before or since with an officially labelled Transformers product - and yet, again; they still got that Hasbro-backed branding!
On top of all of these releases, a few original Estrela Minicars also managed to slip into the country, bearing a new strange packaging with the seemingly non-Transformers related name Invasion Galactica and generic art of a UFO (and void of the names of any manufacturers or distributors on the blister cards). The toys themselves were clearly just blatantly cut off the Brazilian blister cards and pasted into the new crudely-made ones, with the inclusion of a small "Industria Argentina" on the bottom right suggesting that these were probably repackagings done by toy stores wanting to distribute their foreign-made stock while avoiding protectionist laws that forbade them from doing so without paying extra tariffs [5].
Antex would become a Hasbro distributor in the Argentinian market during the 90s, with several Generation 2 figures showing up in Argentinian stores featuring joint Hasbro and Antex branding on the packaging [6]. They would also re-release their Salt-Men X and Z figures unchanged as the Decepticons Robot-Man X and Robot-Man Z. Eventually, Hasbro would move on to instead using their own supply chains for future Transformers releases in the country.
Also somewhat intrinsic to the aforementioned history of protectionist policies, Argentina saw a number of national toy companies becoming bootleg manufacturers: Rondi would make a variety of Zetar clones under their Robots Transformables series, Galago would make another similarly-named toyline called Galago Robots Transformables which was mostly comprised of Machine Robo / GoBots bootlegs but also featured a Generation 1 Scrapper and Bombshell thrown in and, separately; they would also release knockoffs of the Eletrix Jipe mold under the Jeep Transformable name. And speaking of molds sold by Estrela in Brazil and copied by bootleggers in Argentina, knockoffs of the Bat-Robôs without the attribution of any specific company beyond the previously-mentioned "Industria Argentina" label would also pop up across the country under the plain "Robot-Car" name.
