Dave's Bootleg Transformers/Da Garn Rant:

     Venus 7-in-1 (Da Garn Sevenchanger)
     Robotic Transform Cassette (Enlarged Frenzy and Squawktalk)
     Intellective Deform Car (Da Garn Mach Lander)
     Mega Fighter (unknown)

     Thanks to Doug Dlin for help in identifying the Da Garn knockoffs.  I
got these from John Earickson (Animemao@csnsys.com) by email, inquire for
prices and availability.  All of these are made from cheap, fairly brittle
plastic of varying levels of cheapness.  And, no surprise, there's no
companies listed on the packaging...these *are* rip-off outfits, after all.

     Venus 7-in-1: The name and packaging mark this as another product of the
group which put out Uranus 5-in-1, the Fortress Maximus Jr. knockoff.  It's
based on Sevenchanger, from Takara's Legendary Hero Da Garn series (what they
started doing when Transformers finally petered out in Japan), and it really
does have seven forms, none of which is a ray gun.  Crunched down to its most
compact, it's about 6 by 3 by 3 inches (15cm x 8cm x 8cm), and all modes are
at least slightly larger than this (robot mode is 9 inches tall).  It comes
with a sword, two guns with pegs a little too small for any of the holes
they're supposed to fit in (a usual failing of knockoffs) and two wing-like
units which form part of every mode, although often just as decoration.
     Robot Mode: Pretty brick-like, legs can spread apart for reasons unclear
to me (it's not needed in any transformation, and it's not like they're
poseable in any other way).  Forearms are short, being the short axis of the
front treads of the tank mode.  Head just flips up, and in the original had
the glowing eyes feature (according to the instructions).  Mainly black,
white and teal with red and grey accents, the color scheme is okay.
     Tank Mode: Fairly easy transformation, looks more or less like a war
vehicle of some sort with treads, although the rear treads don't quite touch
the table.  The guns which deploy from the robot's shin guards are kinda hard
to get out, but look decent once in position.
     Puma Mode: Another easy transformation (in fact, I'll say right now that
none of the transformations is terribly hard, and you can get by with just
pictures of the modes, the instructions are almost redundant).  Like other
multichangers, it's a case of spindly little lower legs stored in huge upper
legs, and a fold down cat head.  It's recognizable as a great cat, but it's
not a great great cat.
     Griffon Mode (called Eagle Mode in instructions): Now, this is a fairly
impressive mode.  Oh, it still looks like a multichanger, with lots of
garbage hanging off, but it uses the puma's hindlegs as its forelegs and then
uses the wing unts for its hind feet, resulting in rather respectable legs
all around.  The robot's feet form a sort of lion's mane around the eagle
head, and you can even mount the floppy guns on its back (and with some
cleverness, use the sword as a tail).  The wings are a little gimpy, but the
toy makes good use of what storage space it has for wings.
     Jet Mode: LOTS of undercarriage bulk.  This uses the wing units as
wingtips, which points up once more the inexact machining of knockoffs, as
the wingtips may fall off or be difficult to put on depending on whether the
tab was a few microns too big or too small.  Ignoring these and just
extending the griffon's wings all the way gives an okay hypercritical wing
look.
     Submarine Mode (don't laugh): A block with a conning tower, basically.
Fold in the wings, move the wing units to the front as diveplanes, pull in
the tip of the jet nose (leaving a blunt nose) and pull up the conning
tower.  The weakest of the seven modes, and probably added last by the
designers ("Wait, if we move these around and stuck something here, it'd look
like a submarine!").
     Semi Mode: Not bad, although it's mainly a "block with wheels" deal.
The cab pulls out from the body (it contains the jet nose all folded up),
wheels flip down, and you stick the wing units on near the back as
decoration.  Hey, it's no worse than MW Optimus Prime's trailer.


     Cassettes: These are about halfway between the answering machine tape
size of the real TF cassettes and the size of a standard cassette tape.  The
assortment includes fakes of Frenzy, Ravage, Ramhorn, Steeljaw and an eagle
I've never seen before, all in fairly icky bright colors.  They're all
plastic, and have no accessories.  I don't think the eagle is even from the
same design group as the others, as it has its holes too close together
proportionally to be a scaled up minitape.  Both have "5in1" stencilled on
them, suggesting our old friends are behind these too.
     Frenzy suffers quite a bit from this all-cruddy-plastic construction,
especially as his feet tend to pop out easily.  The spring which pops his
head up comes loose easily, and in repairing it I made it so the head won't
come up at all (oops, well, time to take a screwdriver to it again).
     The eagle is much nicer.  The transformation is actually fairly complex,
especially the transformation back to tape, which requires getting various
tabs in just the right places.  The feet transform in a manner similar to
Laserbeak's, but the rest is all new.  And aside from the torso being a bit
wide, it makes a decent eagle.  It has a tendency to tip forwards in eagle
mode, suggesting it was balanced for having a weapon load on its back (or
that it wasn't balanced at all, and the designer just got lucky).
     [Later note: the eagle is Squawktalk, part of a cassette combiner pair.]

     
     Deform Car F-1 Robo: One of the combiner teams shown on the card art
from the knockoff RoadCaesar I got was the Lander Team, which consists of
semi-tractor Big Lander, race car Mach Lander, sports car Turbo Lander and
drill tank Drill Lander.  They merge to form Land Bison.  Well, this F-1 Robo
is a Mach Lander knockoff, which becomes clear when you see that they didn't
even change the stickers!  He has "MACH" on his spoiler, "Bison Earthbravers"
on his sides and Mach a few other places.  It's a pretty decent, if
unposeable robot, and you'd never know it was part of a gestalt just by
looking at it (mind you, this may be a slight remold without some of the
gestalt options).  It's one of the better Formula-1 transforms I've seen,
although you end up with the fists in the driver's seat and there's no place
to store the rifle in car mode unless you pop up one hand and have it hold
the thing. 

     Mega Fighter: One of many cheesy gunrobos out there, this one has two
distinguishing features which may help the mavens out there figure out where
it came from.  One, the trigger is located around where the middle finger
should be on the grip, as the lower torso takes up the normal trigger
location.  And two, the top surface of the gun splits in half to form the two
arms, each of which has a big shield on it as a result.  Oh, and the knees
only bend chicken-wise, which is weird.  The sound is randomized (probably
cheapness on the knockoff's part) and the light is provided by a little
Christmas tree light under an amber panel.  A poor-man's Shockwave.  In robot
mode, the trigger looks more like a vestigal tail, and you have to stick your
finger between the figure's legs to activate the gun.  Er....
     Very floppy as a robot, pretty stable as a gun.  Very quiet noisemaker.

     Dave Van Domelen, needs to sit down tonight and carve all the flash off
these things....