Replying to this post from this thread:
I spent most of my childhood in Malaysia, and I only became interested in Transformers around 1990-91 (I can't remember exactly, I was about 4 or 5).Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime
Also... did Malaysia get the gold-carded/boxed Classic reissues? Cos AFAIK they were exclusive to Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I have zero knowledge about what toys were released in Malaysia but welcome any knew information.
My memory is a bit foggy, but back then, the store shelves in KL were loaded with G1 Headmasters (originally released in 1987), and shortly after; the Powermasters and Jr Headmasters started showing up. Some might think this is probably left-over stock from the late 1980s, but the Headmasters were still being advertised on TV, and the Headmasters anime was aired on RTM TV1.
Even though we had the 1987-88 toys, we didn't get the whole line. I couldn't find any of the Targetmasters in any store (I remember because I wanted Pointblank but could never find him or the other Targetmasters. I also never knew what G1 Hot Rod/Blurr/Scourge looked like until I was an adult).
We didn't get any of the gold-carded/boxed G1 reissues in Malaysia/Singapore. However, after the whole Headmaster crazed died down, some gold-packaged Pretenders showed up. We got Jazz, Bumblebee, Starscream and the carded Pretenders like Octopunch, Bludgeon, Stranglehold, Longtooth, etc; but none of the fancy ones like Thunderwing or Vroom (well, I never saw them).
Of course, alongside the Headmasters/Powermasters/Pretenders, we got some Action Masters and Micromasters (they weren't so popular).
I know, the above sounds like the description of an alternate reality; and it drives me nuts that there's no documentation on the internet about what was available in 1990s Malaysia-Singapore, combined with the knowledge that the first Transformers I ever got officially came out in 1987, even though I got them in the 1990s.
If anyone lived in Malaysia/Singapore in the 1990s and was a Transformers fan back then, please feel free to back me up or correct me.
To remind myself that I didn't get high from inhaling carbon monoxide and hallucinated the whole thing; I have with me the very first Transformers that I ever got (a photo below that I just took for the sake of this post).
The first Transformer(s) my parents bought me were Pounce and Wingspan, then Highbrow several weeks later. Sadly, Wingspan is no longer with me. These were bought from a department store called Jusco (called "Aeon" nowadays) in the early 1990s.
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