European-made Minibots, or Mini-Vehicles as they also go by. Unique in their very own way. Color-, packaging-, and manufacturing-wise. A special niche amongst variant collectors and Minibot collectors in particular.
This article is about two different series of European Minibot releases that seem to be very related to each other. I am talking about the Made in France Ceji Minibots and the Greek El Greco releases. Besides the obvious color differences and the absence of a rubsign on the El Greco ones, at first glance, they look very similar. But are they identical? In other words, did they come from the same factory injection mold?
Long story short, Ceji made six Mini-Vehicles in 1986 as part of their deal with Hasbro Bradley for mainland Europe. Five from series 2 (US releases) Beachcomber the dune buggy, Cosmos the UFO, Powerglide the plane, Seaspray the hovercraft, and Warpath the tank. Then there is one release from series 3 which is Pipes (theoretically a blue recolor of Huffer) who transforms into an American Truck. These same Mini-Vehicles were also released by Greek company El Greco. The five mentioned above from series 2. And the one-off truck cab, but instead of releasing it as Pipes of series 3 as Ceji did, they decided to keep it in its original colors as an orange Huffer. But if you set the colors aside, they are technically the same. Or are they? That leaves one Mini-Vehicle that only El Greco released and that is Brawn. Weirdly enough this one was absent in the Ceji line-up. But I will come back on that specific one later.
Without being a specialist, looking at both toy series and especially the stamps of both lines, it is easy to see that the Ceji Minibots have the same unique stamps as the El Greco ones. But is that enough to prove they are coming from the same mold? That they are identical? First of all the blocked stamp is already a good giveaway that we are dealing with foreign variants. This becomes even more evident when we look at the Ceji cardback. It has detailed copyright information on the back where these toys were made. It clearly says Made In France! The El Greco Minibots also came on their unique cardbacks, but unfortunately, they do not have any copyright information written on them. So we only can be sure about the place and date of manufacturing of the Ceji Minibots. They are not made by Takara and are made outside of Japan. Of course, this does not prove anything about the correlation between both the Ceji and El Greco Minibots.
So how did this all start? A while ago, back in January 2021, I wanted to have some more information concerning El Greco and Ceji Minibots. I just picked up an El Greco Beachcomber. After doing some research I stumbled upon the Ceji release of Beachcomber. Both versions showed a lot of similarities. The same blocked stamp on the back of the head, unique wheel rivets and both originating from Europe. It made me wonder if they could have been using the same molds. I asked this question in the Minibot Collectors Facebook Group. A group with a lot of knowledgable people about every Minibot variant out there. The question sparked a great discussion about the possible link between both Minibots releases. A lot of people assumed that they could potentially be the same, but no one knew for sure.
One of the people who responded to the discussion was Daniel Smith. Daniel happened to be an injection molding subject matter specialist. So really someone who has all the right expertise about the matter. He also did in-depth research and comparisons about the relationship between Antex and Estrella Minibots before. So definitely the right person for these questions.
Here’s Daniel’s response. “I have the Ceji and El Greco Huffers. I can inspect them under my microscope and confirm if they share any tooling marks that are the same. That will tell me if they came from the same piece of steel. Like a fingerprint, any injection mold will get scratches or have other machine marks that will replicate in the plastic. That’s how I determined that the Antex and Estrela Cliffjumper and Bumblebees came from the same injection mold.”
So why compare Ceji Pipes (Blue Huffer) and El Greco Huffer? Both are unique in a way that they don’t have any stamp on them. Which is odd for any Transformers toy. Most carry production stamps on them (some first releases are the exception on that rule). So that’s a first giveaway that we are dealing with something out of the ordinary. Because both of them are, besides the colors, the same toy, it raises the question if they could come from the same injection mold as Daniel likes to say. Well here’s what Daniel found out by putting both toys under his microscope.
“As promised, I had a chance to do a bit of a forensics analysis on the subject of whether Ceji and El Greco utilized the same molds. Unfortunately, I only have one Ceji figure for comparison, the blue Huffer (Pipes). But I have all the El Greco figures. So I compared a standard El Greco Huffer to the Ceji Blue Pipes (Huffer mold). It is my day job to look at these things, so I geek out particularly hard on this type of stuff. In the images below I identified a few areas on the figures that had some easily identifiable marks. These marks would be dings or scratches that happened on the face of the molds themselves, into the actual steel. So they will replicate on to every part molded in that tool.”
“The first image just highlights the areas I did a closer inspection on. The ejector pin to the right of the head and the left shin.”
“The second picture is a close-up of the ejector pin marks. The markings on the head of the pin are an exact match!”
“The last picture is the close-up of the shin. Again, the markings on each are a perfect match to each other!”
“I also identified a few other areas on other parts of their bodies that align as well. So I can conclusively say that at least the Huffer injection mold was indeed shared by Ceji and El Greco. I wish I had other Ceji figures to compare to the El Greco's.”
Another thing that stands out, besides not having a stamp, is the different molded ladder detail on both the Ceji and El Greco Pipes/Huffer. Something that has been mentioned before in other articles. They are a lot more defined than on any other Huffer release. Even more pronounced than the original first release of the Micro Change version MC-04. Maybe those details are carried over from the original Knickerbocker mold. Those might even outdate the MC version. It could be an explanation of why both versions do not have a stamp. But this is just mere guessing. What also differs from the Takara releases is the “M” molding on the side of the truck. Instead of a smooth “M” surface, it is more rugged on the Ceji and El Greco releases.
The other six Minibots
Fast forward to the beginning of this year. I reached out to Daniel. We started talking again about the possibility of the other six Minibots also being identical to each other. Since Daniel only has one Ceji Minibot and I do not own a microscope, we had to share detailed photos of the stamps and marks on these other Ceji Minibots that I own, so we could compare those to his El Greco Minibots.
So let’s examine and compare the other remaining Minibots closely. Let’s look for easily identifiable marks on Cosmos, Powerglide, Warpath, and Seaspray. Because they are all four very similar. All have stamps on the bottom of the toy, and have the word Japan blocked.
Cosmos
We will start with the Cosmos comparison. Dark green and yellow for the Ceji release and bright green and yellow for the El Greco one.
Daniel, being the expert here, immediately spotted some great little details in both stamps that were standing out. “The arrow on your Ceji Cosmos is pointing to a little half-moon-shaped mark in the steel near where the stamp was machined out. There is a very similar-looking half-moon mark on my El Greco.”
To make it even more clear the small details that Daniel spotted show that the word Japan is still a little visible underneath the block. That half-moon mark is the bottom part of the “J” and at the end of the block that last bit of the “N” is still showing. These small details are visible on both stamps and are a great giveaway of them being identical.
Powerglide
The Ceji version is a darker red and has a more off-grey/cream color on the hand parts. The El Greco version is more vibrant red with standard grey parts.
Like with Cosmos, the stamp is giving us some great details. Daniel spotted this:
“Powerglide looks to have some excessive stamp residue, stamp leaking if that makes sense. See at the bottom of the stamp there is a little squiggle or smudge that follows that main oval. I think I see the same thing in your Ceji Powerglide.”
Again a minor detail but very visible once you start noticing it. We have another one!
Seaspray
Let’s continue with Seaspray. He has a darker yellow and blue on the Ceji version. The El Greco again is more vibrant yellow and blue.
Also here Daniel found some matching molding details in the stamp. “This is your Ceji Seaspray. You can see the bottom right of where the stamp was machined off. It's not quite round and almost has a chamfer or straight line at the bottom of the oval. Also at the top edge, you can see where the stamp was machined over, leaving a slight step (like two layers of material). That also matches up with what I'm seeing with my El Greco.”
The details are all on the stamps. That’s another one for the count.
Warpath
The Ceji has a slightly more pinkish-red color. While The El Greco has more of a dark burgundy-red color and darker grey parts.
“Here’s a real-life example of some tooling I have in my office. This mold makes 4 of the same parts. At the top, you can see the numbers 1 and 2 etched into the cavities. They’re backwards so they are correct once molded.”
That’s some great insights into mold-making! Back to the Warpaths. Both versions have the same #2 cavity number under the turret.
Besides the cavity number, we could not find anything in the pictures of Warpath that could be used for a direct comparison with the others. However, after taking more detailed photos for this project, I stumbled upon a very obvious mark on both releases. If you look at the “A” in HASBRO of both stamps, it shows that both versions have the same sort of “R” shape on top of it. After I found that, I instantly sent it over to Daniel. He also acknowledged that it was a great giveaway.
Beachcomber
Last but certainly not least is the dune buggy.
Both Beachcombers Ceji and El Greco have like mentioned in the introduction, the same unique wheel rivets that can only be found on these two releases. The stamp is located on the left arm, the Hasbro part. And on the back of the head, the Takara part of the stamp. The Ceji is a lighter blue color, while the Greco has a darker blue tone.
Here come the cavity numbers into play again. Both Beachcombers have numbers on the inside of their legs. My Ceji Beachcomber has the same numbers as Daniel’s El Greco Beachcomber. A “funky” shaped number 1 on both inner legs. Especially on the left leg, you can see it is molded on top of a previous number in the same way with both releases. As Chris noticed: “The marking does not look as pronounced on my El Greco. So it's possible these molds were cleaned up at some point, but as you can see that same weird shape around the number 1.” These exact details match on both versions of Beachcomber, which is a very obvious sign of them being from the same injection mold.
Who was first?
Now that we can say with a great amount of certainty that most if not all Minibots of both lines reused injection molds, which release came first, and who used the molds afterward?
I am pretty sure that the molds originally came from Ceji and were handed over to El Greco. Multiple things point into that direction.
* First of all Ceji made a lot more uniquely molded Transformers besides these Minibots. Optimus Prime, Megatron, and the three Insecticons to name a few. Some of them even with the words made-in-France added to the stamps. So it could not be more obvious that those are Frenchies.
* As far as I know, El Greco did not manufacture any of the Transformers toys they released. They released two combiner giftsets which have Italian boxes with the Trasformer logo on them. The stamps say made in China. Besides those two, they released these unique Easter set boxes with Gold Classic toys in them. The copyright on those boxes even says 1990 Hasbro U.K. LTD, Made in China. The assortment number is that of the UK Gold Classic releases and they even have UK instruction booklets packaged with them. They are more or less UK Gold Classic releases repacked into this Easter Candle gift pack. So none of those are made in Greece.
* The El Greco Minibots cardbacks have artwork from Decipher the Decepticon glow-in-the-dark posters on the back. That artwork stems from around 1986 and was first packaged with US re-releases (which was also used by the European 1986 line-up catalog, used here as a comparison). The usage of the artwork on the cards is pretty odd to say the least, because none of the released El Greco Minibots are portrayed on there. Instead, it has movie characters on there like Metroplex and Galvatron. The Ceji Minibots were released around 1986 according to the copyright line on the cardbacks. It would be hard to believe that El Greco got the artwork before 1986, and this makes me guess that they had to release the Minibots at least around 1987. Unfortunately, the El Greco cardbacks don’t have any dating or copyright lines on there to be 100% sure. It says: “These are all the Autobots with the hidden power. Collect them all for endless trips to space.” I think with all these details taken into account, it is very safe to say that the molds came originally from Ceji and were later reused by El Greco.
That leaves only one mystery unsolved. We have six Ceji Minibots, but seven(!) El Greco ones. El Greco Brawn is the odd one out. No Ceji equivalent weirdly enough, or is Brawn in Outback colors just never found yet? The weird thing is, if El Greco got the molds from Ceji, why is there no Outback/Brawn released by Ceji? It is hard to explain that they got 6 Minibots from Ceji and one from somewhere else. It is a question I have had for a long time now. Is it a unique one-off mold?
Let’s look at this El Greco in more detail. Brawn like Huffer/Pipes, has no stamp to be found on him. Not on the back of the car where US Brawn or any other regular release would have them. Nor on the inside of the arms where they can be found on the exotic Brazilian Estrela releases. No stamp at all, which is odd of course. That makes tracing it back to its original equivalent very difficult.
Another thing that stands out is that it does not have the Micro Change/Mysterians “M” on the hood of the SUV. All other iterations of Brawn/Outback have this on the hood.
Since the Estrela version is the only release that has no stamp on the back too, it would be a candidate for comparison. The Estrela does have stamps on the inside of the arms though. But there’s no sign that the stamps on the inside of the El Greco arms were removed at some point. There is nothing there. Besides that, a lot of molding details are very different between both versions. The most obvious is the previously mentioned molded “M” on the hood, which Estrela’s does have.
So El Greco Brawn is a unique mold with no other Transformer that we can trace it back to. Who knows if there is a Ceji Outback somewhere waiting to be found someday?
And that’s about it for these two very unique and niche Transformers lines.
In conclusion, to wrap things up:
* Both lines came from Europe
* They used mostly the same series Mini-Vehicles
* They have the same matching stamps
* They used the same cavity numbers at certain parts
* They have a lot of identical identifiable molding marks in multiple areas
* Brawn is the unique mold that is not shared between Ceji and El Greco
These are translations from the Greek names used on the El Greco cardback:
Ageliaforos (Messenger) = Beachcomber
Egefalos (Brain) = Brawn
Kiriarhos (Dominator) = Cosmos
Gigantas (Giant) = Huffer
Keravnos (Thunder) = Powerglide
Thalassolikos (Seawolf) = Seaspray
Ahtipitos (Unbeatable) = Warpath
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I want to give a huge, huge thank you to Daniel Smith for his expertise, help, and additions to this article, I could not have done it without him. Also, a thank you to Dimitris Chiotelis for translating the Greek writings on the El Greco cardback and Stefan van der Sman (Killbison) for his Estrela Brawn pictures.
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| One Ceji Powerglide was harmed in the making of this article. |
Thanks for reading,
Kees
Wow what a fantastic description of these greek transformers! thanks for this! Keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your great help and kind words!
ReplyDelete