Badge ID :confused:

[Skullcruncher]

This is a G1 badge released in 1985. What did it come with?

[griffin]

I don't recognise it, and didn't think a fanclub existed back then... unless the STARS base thingy was officially labelled as a club. I'm curious to find out where it is from, if it is from an official source.

How do you know it is from 1985?

[Sky Shadow]

It could be an early version of the Japanese Fan Club's badges. From 1986 to at least 1988 they looked like this:



Unfortunately the Transformers Wiki has been erroneous on this for... (looks at history)... the past eight years, when it says:

"The Japanese Transformers fan club also included a cardboard command base which many label the "Japanese S.T.A.R.S." This is inaccurate. The Japanese command base was a cardboard environment for the toys to play in, not a roleplay center, and there was no equivalent of the S.T.A.R.S. story in Japan (at least as far as the fan club went)."

The base they're talking about:



Came with all sorts of stuff covered in a familiar acronym:

[Skullcruncher]

I don't recognise it, and didn't think a fanclub existed back then... unless the STARS base thingy was officially labelled as a club. I'm curious to find out where it is from, if it is from an official source.

How do you know it is from 1985?

On the back it reads

- Some Japanese which doesn't show very well in a photo (well my iphone anyway).
- Copyright Takara.co.ltd 1985
- "Trans Formers" is a licensed trademark of Hasbro Bradley Inc

I have a feeling Sky Shadow is correct about it being an early version of the Japanese Fan Club's badges.

[griffin]

That's interesting then, as it was the year Transformers started in Japan, giving kids there a club to join up to straight away to get them hooked.
The Hasbro STARS "club" came out in the third year in Hasbro countries if I recall (I got mine in mid-1987 and remember it having a lenticular membership card instead of a badge).


I wasn't too sure if Hasbro or Takara had ever set up anything officially labelled as a "fan club" before 3H set one up in 2003. (or before we were authorised as a fanclub by Hasbro Australia in 1996)
Takara I would believe, as they are more fan-focused with their products and interaction... but the STARS thing was a one-off thing, so didn't really fit a "club" concept (which is more of an ongoing, membership thing).