The early G1 Japanese boxed seekers - Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Ramjet and Thrust.
Notably, Dirge is missing. There was never a Japanese boxed Dirge because it was a mailaway toy in Japan back then. However, unlike some other mailaways, no Japanese exclusive packaging was created for Dirge - it was simply mailed out in its USA box.
Back of boxes.
Side of boxes.
Top of the boxes. Can be seen that 22, 23 and 24 has a different top of box format from D-56 and D-57.
Bottom of the boxes - for 22, 23, 24, it features a cropped image of their box art.
Beautiful, beautiful box art....
The Dirge Story
Like I mentioned above, there was never a Japanese boxed Dirge back in the 80s. Dirge was a mailaway in Japan and what was mailed away was actually USA boxed Dirges. This is proof if there was any.
The below photo is mirrored from the FaceBook page of The Spacebridge (https://www.facebook.com/TheSpacebridge/) and according to him, shows the Takara office in the 80s, preparing to mail out USA boxed Dirges.
The first ever Japanese release of Dirge then, came in 2001, during the highwater mark of Takara reissuing early G1 Transformers molds. Dirge was a 20th Century Toy Museum exclusive and was released in July 2001, limited to 1,000 pieces (this is commonly referred to as "eHobby Dirge", even though it was not actually released by eHobby).
To me, this was the very first official Japanese boxed Dirge - a little disappointing that it came in a pretty generic box, however.
Japanese boxed Dirge can be seen on the bottom row, right most box.
There, with Japanese boxed Dirge and Sunstorm, my Takara boxed seekers are complete.
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Nice pics HD.
ReplyDeleteI have a "eHobby Dirge" on its way to me as well. I knew it was limited to 1000 but I had never really looked into the backstory of it.
thanks for the info.
Cheers,
Joe
hi Joe, thanks for stopping by. Dirge is an odd turkey. I have no idea why Takara wanted to make him an exclusive rather than just a regular release with a regular box - perhaps its because its the least "interesting" of the 3 later year jets and Takara was afraid it might suffer from poor sales?
DeleteEven during the early 2000s reissues, Dirge was a separate release (where T'Cracker / Skywarp is a set and Ramjet / Thrust was another separate set; Starscream was reissued earlier already in a box that looked like the vintage box).