I don't think we did really. We would only know that we and nobody else we knew could find it. Like Shockwave and the Deluxe Insecticons - I never found them and nobody I knew had them. But they appeared in catalogues so I assumed that they were around, just that nobody I knew could find them. As a kid I only got Transformers at shops or shopping centres that my mum would go to - it's not until you're old enough to take public transport on your own or drive that you can cast a much wider net when toy hunting.

And I had no knowledge of Japanese Transformers until about 1992 when I was exposed to Masterforce... dubbed - and while I always knew that the dubs where horrific, I didn't know that they'd actually majorly screwed up translations, so I actually though that Ginrai was Optimus Prime and that the Trainbots were the Dinobots. Whoever made the StarTV dubs needs to savaged in the janglies by a pack of vornskrs.