Message: 4
   Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 00:08:31 -0000
   From: "Maz" 
Subject: Bumblejumper artwork - interesting opinion?

Here's something Dave said on Allspark about that White Bumblejumper
artwork that Bickmore has on his site...

"Problem with Bickmores Toy Archive is he likes to assume a hell of
alot. Estrella created thir own artwork, ALOT of it. Check out their
G.I.Joe line. Hell I have paid a load of money for some fo their
orginal Tiger Force box variants. Estrella art for an item like
Bumblejumper means nothing more than the fact that Estrella had
original art nobody else did. If you seen it first hand you know it's
on par with Estrella's other original art.

Hasbro could very well have thought it over, I won't go against that.
They could have thought about selling Browning, Magnus or the
Helicopter Triple Changer as well. But there's a logical and fairly
good reason why we got battery cover Blasters, metal plate Primes and
Bumblejumpers up until the Diaclone and Microman lines were not being
produced in factories anymore. And the reason doesn't happen to hinge
on the fact that Estrella has card art or a bio for a toy."


To which I replied:


" think maybe one of the main reasons why a lot of people (mainly
minicar enthusiasts) were willing to accept that the art on the
Robocar Sedan cards was Transformers-derived was because of the
specific time of release.

Estrela DID do much of their own art, even on the second-year Optimus
vs Malignus minis, in fact that was pretty much all their own work.

But during the early Robocar series (I think it was 1986, need to
check Minitropolis) all the cards and card art were G1-based, as was
the general design of the cards themselves (G1-Autobot grid
pattern/colour cards).

Having said that though, the Bumper art for Estrela Robocar appears
to be white, and I doubt Hasbro ever intended to release the Mazda
Familia mould in white, so I guess it does lend itself to some
Estrela imagniation....I don't know, I was one of the people quite
happy to accept that it was leftover Hasbro art mainly because of the
nature of the Estrela Robocar line being the first run and being made
to capitalise on TF image and popularity (taking what they could get
etc), then I assumed things got wild for the 1987 Optimus Malignus
stuff.

Out of interest, what year/era was the G.I Joe Estrela-exclusive
artwork from that you have/saw?

All the best
Maz "


And finally

"IRC, just about every year had at least one variant. I no longer
have the image files on my computer, but I can scrounge some up and
send to you if you wnat to e-mail me. The best alterations/original
works were from the Cobra Moccasin, the Python Patrol Swamp Fire (a
nice exclusive bit of art), Patrol exclusive characters, but the
Tiger Force Tiger Fly is a personal favorite. "


T h o u g h t s?


All the best
Maz

Message: 5
   Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 17:15:52 -0700 (PDT)
   From: destron@vcn.bc.ca
Subject: Re: Bumblejumper artwork - interesting opinion?


> But during the early Robocar series (I think it was 1986, need to
> check Minitropolis) all the cards and card art were G1-based, as was
> the general design of the cards themselves (G1-Autobot grid
> pattern/colour cards).

Woohoo! A reference to me! Yay! ;D

The first series came out in 1985. And if you look at the Estrela
first
series art (Which is, I believe, where Antex got their art from), it
is
(iirc) identical to the HasTak card art. So... draw your conclusions
youself. :)