Die-Cast Battery Operated Robo Gun from 1984

Not quite Shockwave (review here), kids! And it’s not the Radio Shack Galactic Man (review here) toy. Nope. This 1984 newspaper ad offers up another variant on the Shockwave toy design, which isn’t all that shocking when you think about how the transforming robot toys were everywhere for Christmas that year. And knock-offs, licensed uses, and authentic toys all blurred together that very first year as the toymakers raced to match the demand for Transformers and GoBots.