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Description

A tiny history lesson for everyone. Back in the late eighties and early nineties, there were a number of Transformers produced and released in Europe that never saw release in the United States. Among them were a group of Autobots called Turbomasters - their gimmick was that they all had a big missile launcher (or two) and tiny little missiles that fired out of them. Some of those molds were released in the US at later points as part of the Machine Wars and Universe lines, but the launchers were either neutered or altered to accommodate missiles that conformed to US safety standards. For rather obvious reasons, we don't want little kids choking to death on little plastic pieces.

Anyway, one Turbomaster that was mentioned in supplementary materials and planned for the line was a character called Hyperdrive, who was presumably meant to be a big leader character. Aside from a graphic on a sticker for another toy released around that time, however, the character was never acknowledged, and leadership of the Turbomasters went to another Autobot called Thunderclash (who did get a toy and has gotten one since). I bring up Thunderclash here because after Hasbro released the Battle Core Optimus Prime figure for the Combiner Wars line, ToyHax produced a custom sticker sheet that could be used to repurpose that toy into a new version of Thunderclash, while Renderform produced a kit that gave the toy new guns and a new head. I bought the stickers and the kit, but instead of turning the toy into Thunderclash, I turned him into Hyperdrive.

If anyone wants to see his alternate mode, let me know and I'll take photos for that.

Description

A tiny history lesson for everyone. Back in the late eighties and early nineties, there were a number of Transformers produced and released in Europe that never saw release in the United States. Among them were a group of Autobots called Turbomasters - their gimmick was that they all had a big missile launcher (or two) and tiny little missiles that fired out of them. Some of those molds were released in the US at later points as part of the Machine Wars and Universe lines, but the launchers were either neutered or altered to accommodate missiles that conformed to US safety standards. For rather obvious reasons, we don't want little kids choking to death on little plastic pieces.

Anyway, one Turbomaster that was mentioned in supplementary materials and planned for the line was a character called Hyperdrive, who was presumably meant to be a big leader character. Aside from a graphic on a sticker for another toy released around that time, however, the character was never acknowledged, and leadership of the Turbomasters went to another Autobot called Thunderclash (who did get a toy and has gotten one since). I bring up Thunderclash here because after Hasbro released the Battle Core Optimus Prime figure for the Combiner Wars line, ToyHax produced a custom sticker sheet that could be used to repurpose that toy into a new version of Thunderclash, while Renderform produced a kit that gave the toy new guns and a new head. I bought the stickers and the kit, but instead of turning the toy into Thunderclash, I turned him into Hyperdrive.

If anyone wants to see his alternate mode, let me know and I'll take photos for that.