G1 Swoop And Redeco Energon Megatron Prototype Photos Offer Rare Look At Unproduced Variants

The people behind The Spacebridge on Facebook are at it again, digging out images of toys either unproduced entirely or that saw design modifications by the time they made it to retail. Included are G1 Swoop with elements of the Diaclone original release, the unproduced black recolor of Energon Megatron, as well as a set of new scans of unused Takara Autobot Mini-Vehicle recolors.

Swoop appears to be the Diaclone toy painted in the Transformers toyline colors, going by the lack of safety modifications to the wings and beak, and gold toes of the pteranodon. Megatron doesn't stand out much other than looking very painted, most likely this is testshot or one of the plastic colors actually made for retail which was hand painted in the colors intended for this version. Most interesting in these photos is the slight look behind the scenes of the way Transformers toys have been photographed over the years like the use of duct tape and bent wire to suspend Swoop while Megatron is using a transparent table to achieve the clean white background without risk of blown out highlights on the toy. These photos of course are at a stage before they'd have been retouched for use on packaging or catalogs, another rarity to see.

The Mini-Vehicles may look familiar to you, or at least some of them. These versions of Cosmos, Powerglide and Warpath were used as the basis for the colorings of the GoBots characters sharing these body types in the eHobby "G1 GoBots" boxset. Being discarded deco concepts for these molds from Takara during Generation 1, it's unusual to get so direct a look at original materials showing them like this. Our thanks to The Spacebridge for again posting some neat rarities for all of us!