Convertible Robot Pistol = Shockwave?

I don’t think the cheap transforming robot toy shown in this 1984 newspaper is the Radio Shack Galactic Man toy (review here). At least, I don’t know of a relationship between Radio Shack and Eckerd that would have put Galactic Man in both stores.

And we know that this can’t be an official Transformers Shockwave toy; other newspaper ads from the eighties (here, here, and here) tell us that $10 was way too low for an official Shockwave.

No, what we’re looking at in this ad has to be another variation on the Shockwave design. We know that mold traveled quite a bit — even finding its way into the Alien film — so seeing a version of the design in an Eckerd newspaper ad shouldn’t be all that surprising. Of course, now it makes me wish I knew exactly what the packaging looked like.