BEST. GIFTS. EVER. Advent Calendar Day 19: Much More than Meets the Eye!

Best Gifts Ever

It’s time again for another BATTLE POST on our BEST. GIFTS. EVER. advent calendar! This time, we’re keeping the fight within one generation – or more specifically, withing Generation 1

Transformers BATTLE POST

Omega Supreme

(1985)

VS

Devastator

(1985)

Omega Supreme vs Devastator
FACTION:

AUTOBOTS

FACTION:

DECEPTICONS

Omega Supreme and box Devastator and box
VITAL STATS

  1. Based on the “Mechabot 1” toy from ToyBox
  2. Rocket base with a battery-operated tank, launchpad
  3. The only Guardian Robot, an ancient form of Cybertronian, that attained true sentience.
  4. The Omega Supreme toy appeared in the October 2, 1986 edition of the Family Circus comic strip.
  5. Could actually walk and probably kill.
VITAL STATS

  1. Based on a series of toys from Diaclone
  2. Gestalt robot composed of a front end loader, mobile crane, bulldozer, excavator, transport, and concrete mixer.
  3. Conflicting origin, including being friends/enemies with Omega Supreme and strangely, the only earth vehicles that existed on Cybertron thousands of years ago…
  4. Popularized truck-nuts.
  5. For loves of stupidity, brutality, and collectibility.

These were two of my favorite major Transformers toys from this period, and two I could never convince my parents to get me. Devastator was the perfect toy: you had to collect all the pieces to make him, he was construction vehicles, and he was a giant robot. Sadly, it was too difficult for me to get all the figures that made up Devastator, and whenever I tried to make him he always seems off-balanced. Omega Supreme was expensive, enormous, and complicated – with the most kick-ass name ever to grace a glorified airport. As a giant giant robot and a rocket, I don’t think I could have asked for a more me toy. Sadly, my parents had drawn the line on the floor space I was allowed to take up with “race car” toys, and they wouldn’t hear of it. Clearly, these two missing patches in my life were a result of my utter failure to communicate the necessity of having these toys. I wish I had YouTube back then…

The interesting thing about pitting these two awesome toys against each other is that, to my surprise, it actually goes beyond my childhood wish for them and straight to fiction of the cartoon show. From the wiki:

“One of these Guardian Robots, through an unexplained means, attained true sentience like that of other Cybertronians and was the only one of his kind to display the ability to transform. Bearing a unique grey, red and yellow color scheme, this robot, named Omega Supreme, was the guardian of the beautiful Crystal City, and was friends with the six robots who had created it. Unfortunately for Omega, these six robots soon became the evil Constructicons when they were reprogrammed by Decepticon leader Megatron and his creation, the Robo-Smasher. Turning on Omega, they lured him away from the city and destroyed it in his absence, leading him to hunt them down and try to forcibly restore them to their original selves. Omega soon discovered, however, that not only could Megatron’s reprogramming not be reversed, but also that the Constructicons possessed the new ability to combine their bodies and minds into the gigantic Devastator. As Omega and Devastator grappled, the Robo-Smasher attempted to reprogram Omega himself, and although he was able to wrench the device free and destroy it, it affected his mind, taking away all feelings save for the hate he now felt for the Constructicons, and the revenge he desired against them. Abandoning conventional speech, Omega adopted a clipped, emotionless, analytical manner of talking, always taking the form of suffixed words and short phrases. When the Constructicons fled Omega’s wrath by leaving Cybertron in a starship, Omega pursued them across the galaxy.”

I loved the show and I probably knew this story, but it had slipped my mind over the years. In the end, I just wanted both toys because they were awesome, so I guess that’s one hell of a win for the infamous 80s model of television being just one long commercial for insanely collectible toy lines!

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