Review – Lanard Ro-Bots

Possibly one of the ugliest, cheapest pieces of plastic transforming robot toy from 1984, the Lanard Ro-Bots car is — sadly — as worthless today as it was when it was released at the onset of the Transformers craze in 1984. This plastic transforming robot, standing about 6″ tall in robot mode, reminds me of a time when I would buy almost any transforming robot toy on the market. Why? Because I was a stupid, stupid child.

Ro-Bots in Vehicle Mode

In car mode, the Landard Ro-Bots toy is a chunky, ugly, Corvette-like contraption. As you can see in the photo, the toy’s vehicle mode looks more like a small child’s toy car than it does something more detailed like most Transformers toys of the time were. Those original Autobot cars — not the minis, but the basic-size cars — even though they were small, were packed with detail. A lot of the reason for their cost was the die-cast metal components and the detail involved. Landard’s Ro-Bots toy has none of that so it was cheap, cheap, cheap. A mark of any Lanard toy; you may know Lanard best from their The Corps line of military action figures, those G.I. Joe-like action figures that are priced lower than Joes (and aren’t as nice). There’s even an entire website dedicated to collectors of The Corps line.

There’s no such website for Ro-Bots, and with good reason.

Ro-Bots in Robot Mode

As bad as the toy looks in vehicle mode it looks even worse in robot mode. As you can see in the photo at left, this blocky, rigid robot represents all of the worst of the transforming robot toys that hit the market in 1984. Unlike Marchon’s Roadbots line (which I’ve already reviewed here), Ro-Bots has zero style and looks like a perfect fit for the listed 3+ age range. That is not a complement.

Closing Thoughts

The Ro-Bots toy is so unloved that the only website I could find with any information on the series, www.counter-x.com, had only this to say:

“Simple, all-plastic transforming cars with friction motors. Possibly only one mould (a deformed Corvette Stingray) in several colours. Origin unknown – possibly self-designed.”

“Probably the worst name of any of these lines, no mean feat when you’re up against Pow-R-Tron.”

Sure, it’s a junky plastic transforming robot. Sure, it’s very ugly. Sure, there’s no “collector’s value” in it at all. You know what? I’m gonna keep it anyway, as a reminder of a time when I used to bike down to the crappy gift shop in Aneta, North Dakota where I could buy the knockoff Transformers toys that were so cheap that even back then the kids with any intelligence passed them by.

There are days when Philip Reed thinks that he should write a book and title it I Was a Stupid, Stupid Child . . . but then he wakes up and realized that there’s not a soul on the planet who wants to hear — in detail — about the dumb things he used to do as a kid. Like the night he stayed up all night and ran around outside, chasing after imaginary sounds and drinking way too much Elf soda. Elf soda? Yes, Elf soda. Other people out there know what I’m talking about.