Penny Racers = Transformers?
Oh, Penny Racers, how you love to tease us by looking almost like classic Transformers mini-cars. That’s probably because some of you were Transformers toys . . . without the transforming feature. Wikipedia can help make sense of this.
No matter, though, because here in the US we were sold these silly little cars. And we even got some that glow-in-the-dark, as this commercial demonstrates.
What the Wikipedia neglects mentioning is *WHY* they were used in Transformers. The original toys in Transformers came from Takara’s Microman: MicroChange line and were originally meant to be full 1/1 scale miniature robots that disguised themselves as full scale ChoroQ cars (also owned by Takara).
The Microman line was focused on small alien cybernetic life forms, and its MicroChange sub-series was all full scale robot toys that changed into various items like cassettes, microscopes, guns, etc, which half of G1 came from in turn (the other half from Takara’s Diaclone series of mostly 1/60 scale transforming robots).
More info on Microman and MicroChange at: http://www.microforever.com