Skip to main content

GoBots: Guardian Command Center


If there is one thing that gave GoBots a leg up on Transformers it was that they had playsets. They had two official, two unofficial, and one unproduced set. Playsets go a long way with me and if you've followed this blog for awhile that shouldn't be a surprise to you. Probably the most important GoBot playset was the Guardian Command Center. I never had one growing up but I did get a brand new one from Dallas Vintage Toys this week.



There is always a magical feeling when you get something brand new. It is a little bit like time travel for the emotions. Everything here was brand new but unfortunately it had water damage, as you can see in the pictures. This wasn't a huge problem but it did cause me grief in the stickers department. The entire sheet had developed a few layers of grime from dust and being in a water damaged box. I was able to clean it a little bit but some of the stickers were unusable. To compensate I ended up finding some repro stickers from various Star Wars vehicles and playsets online. I like the end result and I might work on adding some more.


The directions were in really bad shape and unsavable. I took pictures of each page before getting rid of them.







The set also included a mini comic. The story inside predates the cartoon but unlike the Masters of the Universe mini comics, this one really didn't improve on the overall story, save for the fact that it gives an explanation for why the GoBots look like Earth vehicles.


The exterior of the Command Center:


Walker mode. This guy is scaled pretty well.



Spaceship mode.




The back hatch.






One of my favorite stickers above the head.

And now the interior:


Trauma Center/Med Bay



The Interrogation Center.



The cool red screen was supposed to help identify Guardians and Renegades. It was a cool concept. The included stickers could be applied to your figures. These were some of the beyond saving stickers unfortunately.


Notice how the top row stickers became F's for Friendly and the bottom row became E's for Enemy. A pretty thoughtful add on that they didn't need to include.



The Detention Center and, yikes, De-Materializer. Guess you could only cross Leader 1 so many times.



Again, yikes, the Reprogramming Center.



Perhaps for the best, the GoBot Cafeteria sticker was damaged.
So this became a computer terminal.



The GoBot Maintenance/Refueling area


I feel like there is a lot of unused space here.
I'm going to try to find some things to add to the area. 
Maybe a maintenance lift.



The Vertical Transportation Module. Again, notice the details here. 
The sticker labels each floor of the Command Center. Pretty cool.


And finally, the Strategic Command/Strategy Center.


I still might add in some more buttons and computers.



All in all, a pretty cool toy. It really bummed me out to have the sticker sheet so dirty, especially because there are not a lot of options to replace them. No one has them scanned online and the only place selling replacements is Toy Hax but $66 is ridiculous. However, they do have Guardian and Renegade insignias that I might pick up. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mega Bloks Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Updated pics + Custom Tiger Zord

  A few years ago, I came across the Mega Bloks Mighty Morphin Power Rangers line on Amazon and went all in.  The result was this blog and even my twitter account  @BeyondUbernerd .  Over the years, though, there was still one zord that I was missing, the Tigerzord. Using an extra Saber Tooth  Tiger, I finally filled that void. And since I was already taking pictures, I decided to go ahead and take new pictures of the rest of the zords. And then, of course a shot of the bad guys. I'd still like to make an Ivan Ooze and a Scorpina at some point. I still have the Megazord, my stand in for Titanus, and my custom Serpentera but they were too large for camera shots I was doing at the time. I'll work on getting new pictures of them in the future. 

Mattel DC Retro Action Batman

  Late in 2020, I went back through The Toys That Made Us series on Netflix and the Star Trek episode took some time to really dig into the history of Mego. Many of the toys I played with growing up or have collected are technically before my time but Mego was WAY before my time. I always kind of had a general idea of the toys, mainly thanks to Robot Chicken, but something about the presentation of the episode really gave me an itch to try this type of toyline out. I decided to get just one figure, to try it out. If I didn't like them, no big deal, not a lot of time/money wasted. My favorite superhero is Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern/Ion) and I remembered that Matty Collector had a Mego-like brand for a few years. A google search later and I found a Kyle Rayner figure for $10! Perfect. I could hardly ask for a better price for making a trial run. A week later, the figure arrived and I loved it. They had an entire sub series of GL's that I bought and some other items but that is fo...

Bandai Thundercats Tower of Omens Playset

I'm resigned to the idea that I will more than likely never own a Cat's Lair playset. I was truly hoping that we would get one with Funko after seeing the DC Primal Age set but after all of the production snafus, it seems like Funko is washing their hands of the scale. I hope I'm wrong. Anyway, the original Cat's Lair is hard to get ahold of and the ones available online are hugely overpriced in my opinion. I've known about this playset from the 2011 series for a long time but now that I have the Funko figures it felt like a good time go for it. The scaling is NOT perfect at all but it does make a nice display piece. Plus, these are dirt cheap. I've seen some as low as $10. Here is the completed set. Basically a giant cat's head, gate, and tower. The set has magnetic Thunderlynx features. If you use the intended figures, the doors will open automatically on the gate and the towers Cat symbol will light up with a voice yelling, "Thundercats, Ho!...

Replacement MOTU leg connectors by Rama and Amos Del Retro

Back in February, I came across a post on one of the Masters of the Universe Facebook fan pages about replacement leg connectors from a group in Argentina. I had already known about the screw and o-ring method, thanks to He-Bro -  http://he-man.us/Innovations/BrokenLegs.html , and I had used it on a broken Teela earlier this year. It worked well but it doesn't feel permanent. I have a feeling that I will have to replace that sometime soon in the near future. Plus, I am having to actually damage the figure by screwing eye hooks in their legs. Anyway, these new leg connectors felt like something worth looking into. If you go to their website, www.stands-rama.com , they have a tutorial posted on how these work: Now, my spanish isn't great but I kind of got the idea of how these work. Heat the legs, push the connectors through the crotch and attach. Seems easy enough. I searched for some more tutorials and found this one from Toy Palloi: And this one from Michael Mercy: ...

Custom Vultureman

    With the apparent ending of Funko's Savage World, my dreams of MOTU scaled Thundercats seems to rest in my own ingenuity. To that end, I started google searching all the various MOTU scaled lines like Remco, Savage World, DC Primal Age, and ZOLO. I came across this guy who immediately jumped out at me as Vultureman: A few days of painting later and Vultureman is mostly complete! I still need to decide if I want to paint his tongue, add a skirt, and give him a weapon but I think he turned out wonderfully. The Mutant army continues to grow... ...and Castle Plun-Darr is getting fuller.  I might need to start seeking out Mumm Ra's tomb or a good stand in for it.