Series 3, 1986 - Ramhorn and Eject MOSC ('extremely' rare Hong Kong variant(?))

One of my recent acquisitions - I got this from a buddy in Sweden, who I got to know off FaceBook (you know who you are!). I know, stranger things has happened and for the life of me, I never imagined that I would trade Transformers from someone I didn't know other than through FaceBook. The transaction turned out very well for the both of us and it was a win-win situation.

This was a trade with cash to me, in exchange for this MOSC Ramhorn and Eject from Sweden. I will not go into the details of the deal here, but it worked out very well and I am glad I had faith in the human race and dared to go ahead with this trade.

I have recently decided to acquire all the USA carded cassettes MOSC, another lofty aim and this adds to the tally, so far.

If you look closer, however, you'd realise that this is not a "USA carded" set, but a "Chinese release". Every man and his dog has theories about the "Chinese releases" or the "1990 Chinese reissues" as some would call it. The is good authority that they are legitimate, but some parts of the fandom think that there are knock-offs produced for sale in China in the 1990s.

To me, it matters little - because my view is that this is simply a USA carded version with some Chinese language stickers on it for non-English speakers.

If you have read the HighEnd TFs link, I would like to point out something - despite what is said there, I think that these are unlikely to have been produced for marketing to China. Why? China has for years used simplified Chinese (which is commonly used in China, Singapore, Malaysia), but the words on the packaging are actually in traditional Chinese (which is commonly used in Hong Kong and Taiwan).


The below shows the Chinese language sticker that is usually associated with "Chinese reissues". It says 'rhinoceros' and 'blue warrior'.

The below is in traditional Chinese - 犀牛 / 藍戰士
The simplified Chinese version of the exact same words are these - 犀牛 / 蓝战士

Thus, I believe that these were released for the Hong Kong market and quite possibly the Taiwan market back then - hence my title to this post.

However, even though these were likely released for the HK / Taiwan market, there is a China connection. These are made in Guang Dong, China.

Now that we've got the technicalities out of the way, time for something more interesting. The man who traded this MOSC set with me pointed out something - this could very well be one of the rarest (vintage) cassette variants out there, the Ramhorn that is.

This is the supposedly rare little critter. It quite obviously is a painted (or tampographed) Ramhorn, which itself is already quite out of the ordinary because while painted Rewinds / Ejects are pretty prevalent, painted Ramhorns (and Steeljaws) are not.

I quote from Fred's Workshop in relation to this variant "The only thing rarer than a painted Steeljaw would be:... 
The print version of Ramhorn! (Hong Kong). It has yellow, red and silver cassette details and the tape-roll is much brighter red than the normal one. It has it's MC60 text on the LEFT side of the cassette. It has a Hasbro 1986 , Takara 1986 But no Macau stamp. It came carded with the Macau Eject print version which only had silver weapons. If you look closely at this version and compare him with the print Eject that came with the normal Ramhorn , you can see it is slightly different."

For completeness, here is the painted Eject.

Now, I honestly have no idea as to the rarity of this set. And no one I asked has been able to tell me with confidence one way or another, but I did like this set to help toward my aim of completing USA carded cassettes.

If you are reading this and know something that is not captured above, please feel free to touch base with me. If this set is proven to be as rare as Fred seems to think it is, I would owe my Swedish buddy a beer or 10 or maybe another Transformer!