Review – Marchon Roadbots Hookorr

Line: Roadbots * Manufacturer: Marchon * Year: 1984 * Ages: 4+

One effect of the sudden success of the Transformers (and, to a limited degree, Go-Bots) was an overwhelming flood of transforming robot toys hitting the store shelves. My first Transformer toy, Windcharger (which I’ve already talked about on my LiveJournal), was a great source of fun when I was a kid and, as the months passed, more transforming robot toys were added to my growing collection.

Many of those transforming robot toys were official Transformers but, not surprisingly, my parents also bought me some of the more generic transforming robot toys. One in particular, a dump truck that snapped apart and could then be reassembled into a robot, stuck into my head for years and, every now and then over the last decade, I’ve run searches online trying to figure out just what that toy was.

Finally, after a lucky search for “transforming robot dump truck,” I managed to hit a series of pages that eventually led me to The Vintage Spotlight, a webpage where I found a photo of the dump truck and discovered the name of the toy: Marchon Roadbots. Yes!

Hookorr, shown here, is one of three robots in the series. After discovering the name of the series I immediately jumped to eBay where I found a seller offering all three of the models in both the red and yellow and blue and silver color variants. Out of nostalgia, and after several rounds of negotiation, I bought the set in red and yellow (since the dump truck I owned was red and yellow).

Hookorr is typical of the Marchon Roadbots; in crane mode the crane swivels and elevates and the hook can grab onto small toys. The motorized rear-half of the vehicle — all of the Roadbots are motorized — works perfectly, propelling the crane across the floor with a satisfying click-click-click sound.

Transforming Hookorr to robot mode is pretty easy (check out the card back, above, for the instructions included with the toy).

Closing Thoughts

One of dozens of different transforming robot toys that hit the market in 1984, Hookorr — and the other two robots in the set (Cementorr and Loadorr, reviewed here) — isn’t exactly in demand with toy collectors. I’m willing to bet there are other 30-something nuts like me out there who remember owning the toys who would like to add these to their collections, but the toy only has value because of my childhood and isn’t one of the better transforming robot toys you can buy. (Let’s face it, the toy doesn’t even transform in a traditional way; you’ve got to snap every piece off and then reassemble it.) I love it, but I might just be the only person in the world who does.

Philip Reed would write more about the Marchon Roadbots but he’s got to take time to play with his toys (and answer mail; work doesn’t wait for toys!).