Gobots! The poor kid's transformers

Gobots weren't actually a knockoff of Transformers and they may have actually pre-dated them on the American market. Both came from Japan originally, but Transformers quickly and clearly took over as the most desirable transforming robot toy in America. No matter how you look at the history, children in America knew what was up. Gobots were lame and Transformers ruled. Maybe they were less creative and flashy or maybe they were just marketed poorly. Either way, we wanted Transformers for our birthdays/christmas. Invariably, some well intentioned, but ill informed relative would buy us a Gobot (Look honey, it's one of those robots you love so much!) and we'd be forced to integrate it with our Transformer population.

Looking at the photos online, I realize that we had several more than I ever remembered. This one was called Zeemon. As you can see, it's pretty boring. I remember liking it because of the realistic interior portion of the car. It was almost a die cast model that turned into something that slightly resembles a robot.Here's a screenshot from the cartoon that was only created to sell the toys. Notice how the animation is terrible. The car/robot/whatever looks like a bad guy from Space Ghost.These were called Rock Lords. They were robots that transformed into.....ROCKS! What better way to spark your childhood imagination other than figuring out scenarios for your robots to get themselves into once they converted back into ROCKS. Oh no! Here come the bad guys. Better transform into a rock and just sit here until they pass by.

Fun side note: My brother and I named our first band ever "The Rock Lords," based on the toy name and the implication that we ruled at rocking. We used the pails and buckets that McDonalds sold with their Happy Meals as drums and had a few sweet plastic guitars.
I also had this toy and really thought it was awesome. This is probably due to the fact that it says "Future Machine" on it. I never knew it was a Gobot until today. I always assumed it was an even more off brand transformer.


This commercial, as with all 80's toy commercials, showed the children with access to play areas that none of us would ever have. Notice the presence of water and sweet accessories (logs/string).