I think this is an excellent example of how much potential was simmering in transformable robot design even in the eighties. The sculpts are soft, the aesthetics are funky, and there's almost no care given to articulation, but there was already some really creative problem solving and moments of inspired design that, in some cases, didn't get replicated for decades. Since Hasbro has the Go-Bots license, part of me would love to see what a classics or generations style update to this team could look like - I feel like their own engineers would have a moment of "wait, this Go-Bot was THIS good almost 40 years ago?"
Unfortunately the molds are owned by Bandai and Hasbro licensed Takara, so even though the Gobot IP is owned by Hasbro, the original toys and likenesses are not. Modern transformers Puzzler would be a very different dude.
“Even in the eighties…” You make it sound like the Dark Ages. The eighties was an incredible time that was full of creative and quality toys. I’d live through that decade again in a heartbeat. Easily beats the turds on today’s toy shelves for the price point.
@@cowpuddles4851 I remember the 80s as more an "Ur" age than a golden or dark age. When I first got Leader-1, it blew my 7-year-old mind that I had plastic magic in my hand. I remember watching SDF Macross and Megazone 23, poring over the painted artwork on the boxes of the $1 Converters toys, and wondering why the toys weren't as good as the artist's designs. I'd see hobby magazines where models were built that could still convert and looked closer, but there was only one copy in some dude's basement. I'd build models from Legos and cardboard, drawing designs on graph paper. As much as I loved that era, I also felt like the toy technology wasn't up for the ideas these people were having. Now it breaks my heart that the era is over - I miss mecha being an actual trend instead of a bygone trope that barely pops its head up in anime anymore; I miss the vibe of all those competing transforming toy lines that made it feel like there was an infinite array of unknown possibilities hovering over the horizon - of some new techno-magic to discover forming on a glowing grid of 80's CGI. But I never fell out of it, and I found that every era had its high points-improvements in articulation, proportion, detail, sharpness, and transformation. Sometimes, two steps forward were followed by a step or two back, and the designs would break into a run only to stumble over their feet. After following all that, when I go back to the originals, I feel the same warm glow and a bit of the original disappointment - you could feel the limitations but also be amazed by what they pulled off with those limitations. Heh, sorry - rant! But you did give me a reason to traipse along memory lane for a bit, and I appreciate that! It does seem like a long time ago, and we've come a long way. I'd love to do it over again, but I'm just the crazy SOB who would rather somehow drag that experience kicking and screaming into the 21st century and turn it into something new. But that's me, I was always a bit of a weirdo!
@@jh302 I know Action Toys did some cool updates, and i think there were some models released recently. I think I saw an updated Triple Jim coming that looks awesome. No Puzzler though, but if there's more good Machine Robo stuff out there, I'm all for it!
Still have mine from my childhood and have always loved it, despite being super loose now. For the leg orientation, the original Japanese "Machine Puzzler" box and instructions shows car roofs facing forward so I'd go with that. Incidentally, the Japanese release also came with a set of elastic straps that clipped to the back of the legs (through the slider slots) and ran all the way up to behind the head to keep Puzzler from falling apart when kids played with him.
The way the arm guys flip all the way over to also form the sides of the torso instead of the stard huge combiner shjoulders is really cool, even by modern standards. That giant carpeen, though!
Would've been hilarious to figure out one of them is a leg and the other is a torso, but not have the pelvis or the arms. Zigzag and Tictac are also the two I'd want most just for how they look as toys if I didn't know they were combiners. One is the coolest looking car, the other is the coolest looking robot.
Saved my allowance and bought one of these roughly weekly fora couple months as a kid in the 80s. One of my favorite toys at the time. Great nostalgia!
Go-bots always get a bad rap but in every mode these guys are better than team Menasor in terms of engineering and articulation. No cheating with extra parts either.
Gobots bad reputation is truly underserved: they had pros and cons like Transformers had, maybe even more pros in some areas. I agree that the G1 Stunticons looks like Happy Meal toys compared to the puzzler team.
Gobots had bad marketing but were many were superior to some Transformers. Edit: there were real stinkers in Gobots, but Transformers also had their share.
@@davidm4566 I agree. Despite being composed by toys from different lines (one never meant nor designer to represent sentient robots to begin with), Hasbro managed their brand better than Tonka. IMHO hiring Marvel Comics to create the background and giving a distinctive insignia to each faction were two of the major key factors where Hasbro did better than Tonka.
@@DarkAlex1978 agree, transformers lore, names AND that great art on the packaging brought the Transformers to life in a way that Gobots didn't have. I also throw the brand name into the arena too. Transformers and "More than meets the eye!" are just cooler in every way.
I had the complete set as a kid. I loved how it was all self contained, for a combiner team. I am particularly impressed, for toys this old, with how you have managed to make them all stand straight. After less than a year, it was impossible for most of them to keep standing straight. I played with the Puzzler team a lot.
I'm an 80s kid and this thing held up so much better than Devastator, I did enjoy Devastator but I had to use so much imagination to play with him, he would crumble apart at the slightest collisions. This guy was just so great in comparison.
I was born in 1980, this was my dream toy when I was 6yo but it was so rare ... I remember, the flipping head was thing I prefer about my Gobots toys... thank for bringing back these memeries!
The cool thing about Puzzler is that there is no parts forming. The feet, hands and head od the combined bot are all integral to the smaller figure and fold out when needed!
I've worked many a combiner in my life, I can honestly say I've never once seen a wire used as a set issued piece in any set I've played with.....I need a Puzzler now for that fact alone!
Thanks for the review. Speaking only for the toy, and not for any tie-in fiction, GoBots Puzzler is better than any G1 Transformers combiner. It looks better than most G1 combiners, it requires no extra parts, and the individual robots genuinely look like a cohesive group in robot and car modes. Great stuff.
As a kid of the 80's who had Go-bots and Transformers, I played with the Go-bot's a lot more. Frankly they just made better toys to actually play with then the Transformers. Granted the Transformers cartoon, was a heck of a lot cooler.
great video, thanks for doing it. i used to have the whole set, but gradually lost bits and pieces of each one over the years. i wish i had maintained them!
Wow. "The Puzzler" reference blew my mind. I don't think I would have never thought about the Undergrads ever again. Funnily enough, just a few minutes ago I happened to go to my alma mater for a quick visit. Now I have to try and watch some Undergrads. Lol
I just sometimes think Tonka didn't "get it." Who names a giant combining robot Puzzler? Like, I get it, it's kind of a puzzle to put it together, but a giant robot shouldn't take his name after the fact that a kid might have a hard time putting him together. In other words, Tonka saw these as toys, not characters. It took a cartoon to make them into characters. Hasbro turned their transforming robot toys into characters right from the beginning with codenames, backstories, and motivations, and that made all the difference in their success. That having been said, the GoBots are seriously underrated and great toys, if not memorable characters.
I had Puzzler, and I think it was a good combiner team for its time. The fact that no extra parts are needed to make the combined mode is a definite plus, and it holds together better than Devastator from the Transformers line of that time.
As an 80s kid who loved Go Bots and Transformers, I remember having Rube as a kid, but not any of the others, and I didn't know GoBots had a true combiner. The way they fit together is astonishingly brilliant. Not at all what I expected from a GoBots product.
You are correct. Puzzler was way ahead of its time. A lot of the things the Go-Bots did were ahead of their time. From large toy versions (master piece scale of their time), to Puzzler, to powersuits for the figures that formed (with a giant ship) into a gesalt robot of its own. I am surprised no one has done a third party Puzzler. That would be one of those that could be interesting.
I got Pocket's name, as I think I used to have a pocket book of puzzles and riddles some 30 years ago. Had to look up Zig-Zag, though, and found out that there are such things as Zig-Zag puzzles. Pocket might also refer to things like those interlocking rings or multi-part shapes you have to take apart in certain orders. Definitely can see what they were going for with the names, but yeah some are a bit obscure, a bit dated. These old Gobots are lovely, though. Thanks for the video, it was a fun watch! Pocket has the same head AND car mode as Sunstreaker, just two trendy dudes with big ears and yellow lambo modes.
Wow, amazing engineering! I recall Gobots having some large space shuttle that Transformed into a power suit that 5 or 6 small Gobots could go into, and it was cheaply considered a combiner. Lazy engineering. Although I didn't like the quality of Devastator, as his combined form was fragily held together. Puzzler is indeed a great feat of engineering and design. thank you for this video!
I think you're referring to Grungy and Courageous; same moulds for each side, but each combiner consisted of a shuttle (which became the torso, hands and feet), and four different power suits to form the limbs.
I’d gotten the Puzzlers as a gift pack when they’d released… I had NO idea who or what they were (and I was already a Transformers fan), but it was one of the biggest surprises I’d ever gotten as a kid. These were WAY cool. Cheers! \m/,😊,\m/
Gotta be honest: This set comes together way better than the original Devastator and actually looks cool as well. Shame it's the first time I've ever heard about it.
Im a pretty strict transformers only collector but now I have to hunt this dude down. I oddly love that design and would be adorable being displayed with my other combiners and Titans.
Pretty impressive that unlike Transformers combiners, the head, feet and hands/fists are all included in the individual robots instead of being separate pieces. Nice!
In the 80s, Pocket made those little travel board games and things like that. Pocket Monopoly, etc. ZigZag is the cigarette wrapper brand, and again, in the 80s, they had small puzzle games on the packaging, like everything else in the 80s. That's my guess as to how those names came to be.
I had to look up some of those names and zigzag was a game back in the 60s. Maybe 70s. It wasn't something still around when Puzzler came out. I have Puzzler and my only complaint is the face...kinda the most important feature to me though.
These six have been right next to me for the past 3 years since i pulled them out of my old 30 yo box. I'm going to actually have to combine them now. Ive never known their names. Thank you
I shared equal play time between GoBots and Transformers, but I never had this set. My GoBot combiner toy was the Power Suit set. Four exosuits for your Gobots that plug into a ship-like core. Also, Puzzler's combination looks a whole lot more stable than Devastator. The chestpiece on the Constructicon gestalt always kept popping off.
That yellow Lamborghini bot’s head sculpt looks very familiar indeed…. Those individual bot modes are not bad considering the time and comparison to the often laughable (let’s be honest) transformations and robot modes for most of the limb bots for the scramble city transformers. That’s why devastator and predaking will always rule that gimmick in g1 IMO. Very impressive the gestalt requires no bits and pieces. Bot ahead of his time! Also, that whole team looks to be in GREAT shape! Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to keep an eye out for these bad bots!
I had this set as a kid. Technically I still do, but the figures are all packed away in different boxes, and some of them might be broken. Still, I've got a lingering soft spot for them, and to this day I think the fold-over arms helping to bulk out the torso is a brilliant design choice that I wish Hasbro would copy. Not that there's much chance of that ever happening in the current era of slavish devotion to animation accuracy.
I had it as a kid, too, but got rid of all my toys when I was a little older. Got this set about 5 years ago and it's on display on the bookshelf on my desk in my office. It's the only action figures on that bookshelf.
What a neat set. Definitely would not have guessed that they were bad guys, haha! This is the first video of yours that I’ve seen, but I enjoyed it a lot, so I’m definitely subscribing. Happy holidays!
Puzzler was legendary🔥🔥🔥...I can still remember their debut episodes... the car salesman and his wife arguing in one of the cars😂 COURAGEOUS and the Power Suits are still the greatest combiner of all time. No debate. Did they make a toy of the Guardians combiner?
I remember getting him back in around 2015-2016. I wasn't alive when he was first made (I'm born in '94) but I wanted to see this combiner that absolutely blew Transformers combiners out of the water. Needless to say, I quite liked him, and liked the extra articulation he had. I wish BanDai would reissue old Machine Robo for this very reason. He makes Devastator (a combiner who I'm not exactly fond of), look like something best buried and never excavated. Would I say he beats my all-time favorite combiners, the Scramble City teams (Menasor, Computron, God Neptune, Validgus, etc.)? Probably not. Bit he's still a load of fun and I wish I still had him.
I always wanted this set, and finally picked it up last year at TFCon. I find it odd that, not counting the power suits, all the Gobots combiners; Puzzler and Monsterous, are Renegades. You'd think Tonka would've wanted to even that out. Make Puzzler Guardians, while the grotesque looking Monsterous would be Renegades. And I agree, for toys designed in the early 80s, they're remarkably well engineered. Its like I've always said, dollar for dollar, most Gobots were better toys than their similarly priced Transformers counterparts.
Stellar review! Jig Saw is my favorite (Pocket probally refers to pocket puzzles, while Crossword is a reference to spelling games often referred to as crosswords! Also you might have confused Jig Saw for Zig Zag most of the time lol)
The reason the cop car (jigsaw) legs go limp is because over the years, people didnt clear the arms first most of the time. The holder price was rubbed off. Thats why you need to transform them right. Its not age, its mistreatment.
I actually always liked the Gobots. Not especially the toys, but the lore. In some ways, I liked it better than Transformers (gasp!) The fact that they are cyborgs makes it make sense that there are females, and other pieces of lore. I wish they made a comic book of them back in the day like Transformers. Also, my best friend back then was poor, so his parents bought him Gobots. We used to pretend that Leader-1 and Optimus Prime had to team up for a mission and that's how our toys got together
Whaaat.. I had the blue and cop car and I never knew they had friends 😂 and Tictac 's coat hanger makes sense now (I had GoBots but wasn't as focused as TF)
Comparing this to the semi recent Combiner Wars teams and how incredibly janky and compromised those combined forms were, or even too the most recent Hasbro combiner teams that literally require a entirely separate robot shell to make work, it's virtually impossible to argue that, from and engineering standpoint, we've really only taken steps backwards since the 80s. It's also probably worth mentioning that the original Power Rangers Megazord didn't require any extra parts either save from a couple guns for it's oddball tank mode. Puzzler is a highpoint.
Combiner Wars engineering speaking was embarassing. The Aerialbots with the arms just hanging in plain view under the wings in jet modes was painful to watch, more so because even the original G1 toys were able to do better.
I don't agree. The reason Menasor and Superion are designed the way they are is to make them cartoon accurate, as it's clear from looking at their animation models that the cars and jets are attached to the giant robots limbs, not formed by them (despite the animation of them connecting like the toys do. The cartoon fudges things a lot, especially the scale). The upcoming SS86 Devastator has to use extra parts for the same reason.
I just received Jigsaw as a present from my work-wife. Came from his personal stash, along with a random Rock Lord. Fun stuff. Now I need to find the rest!
Always thought it was strange that they were larger than regular Gobots. Almost as if they were imported from a different toy line. In the cartoon where Puzzler appeared, they had him swaying side to side with the sounds of creaking wood. It was ridiculous.
Wow, umm... never knew these existed in the 1980s. The only GoBot "combiners" I remember used four sort of exoskeleton cases into which you'd place one of the standard GoBots (e.g. CyKill, Leader 1, Turbo, Cop-Tor, Fi-Tor, Royal T) and those attached to a central unit which was just some sort of vaguely triangular spacecraft.
I loved this toy. It always annoyed the hell out of me that when finally shown in the cartoon, all that all the robots, and Puzzler, were, were just radio controlled robots, not really Go-Bots at all.
i understand the disappointment (and I share it) but the main problem lies in the Gobots lore: being cyborgs with organic brains, is not possible to have their minds combined into one like the Transformers, who are 100% robots.
I was 16 when this was out and was one of the transforming toy set I bought, I was thinking of buying another of the black car and the Lamborghini to better set up the combind form but I never again found them insides stores after I bought the whole set,but still I think it be fun do that.
Pocket sure does resemble Sunstreaker. Even the "ears".
I mean a ton of transformers came from buying the designs from others so it could be a similar scenario
I so want a Stunticon team with no parts forming and looks great in each mode. That is one of my lifelong dreams for sure lol!
I think this is an excellent example of how much potential was simmering in transformable robot design even in the eighties. The sculpts are soft, the aesthetics are funky, and there's almost no care given to articulation, but there was already some really creative problem solving and moments of inspired design that, in some cases, didn't get replicated for decades. Since Hasbro has the Go-Bots license, part of me would love to see what a classics or generations style update to this team could look like - I feel like their own engineers would have a moment of "wait, this Go-Bot was THIS good almost 40 years ago?"
Unfortunately the molds are owned by Bandai and Hasbro licensed Takara, so even though the Gobot IP is owned by Hasbro, the original toys and likenesses are not. Modern transformers Puzzler would be a very different dude.
“Even in the eighties…” You make it sound like the Dark Ages. The eighties was an incredible time that was full of creative and quality toys. I’d live through that decade again in a heartbeat. Easily beats the turds on today’s toy shelves for the price point.
bandai has been doing machine robo reboots for a while
@@cowpuddles4851 I remember the 80s as more an "Ur" age than a golden or dark age. When I first got Leader-1, it blew my 7-year-old mind that I had plastic magic in my hand. I remember watching SDF Macross and Megazone 23, poring over the painted artwork on the boxes of the $1 Converters toys, and wondering why the toys weren't as good as the artist's designs. I'd see hobby magazines where models were built that could still convert and looked closer, but there was only one copy in some dude's basement. I'd build models from Legos and cardboard, drawing designs on graph paper.
As much as I loved that era, I also felt like the toy technology wasn't up for the ideas these people were having. Now it breaks my heart that the era is over - I miss mecha being an actual trend instead of a bygone trope that barely pops its head up in anime anymore; I miss the vibe of all those competing transforming toy lines that made it feel like there was an infinite array of unknown possibilities hovering over the horizon - of some new techno-magic to discover forming on a glowing grid of 80's CGI.
But I never fell out of it, and I found that every era had its high points-improvements in articulation, proportion, detail, sharpness, and transformation. Sometimes, two steps forward were followed by a step or two back, and the designs would break into a run only to stumble over their feet. After following all that, when I go back to the originals, I feel the same warm glow and a bit of the original disappointment - you could feel the limitations but also be amazed by what they pulled off with those limitations.
Heh, sorry - rant! But you did give me a reason to traipse along memory lane for a bit, and I appreciate that! It does seem like a long time ago, and we've come a long way. I'd love to do it over again, but I'm just the crazy SOB who would rather somehow drag that experience kicking and screaming into the 21st century and turn it into something new. But that's me, I was always a bit of a weirdo!
@@jh302 I know Action Toys did some cool updates, and i think there were some models released recently. I think I saw an updated Triple Jim coming that looks awesome. No Puzzler though, but if there's more good Machine Robo stuff out there, I'm all for it!
Man I loved these guys as a kid. I'm a TF collector at heart, but back then it never mattered that they were Go-Bots.
Still have mine from my childhood and have always loved it, despite being super loose now.
For the leg orientation, the original Japanese "Machine Puzzler" box and instructions shows car roofs facing forward so I'd go with that. Incidentally, the Japanese release also came with a set of elastic straps that clipped to the back of the legs (through the slider slots) and ran all the way up to behind the head to keep Puzzler from falling apart when kids played with him.
The way the arm guys flip all the way over to also form the sides of the torso instead of the stard huge combiner shjoulders is really cool, even by modern standards. That giant carpeen, though!
Dude I had Zigzag and Tictak as a kid and never knew until now they were part of a combiner!
Would've been hilarious to figure out one of them is a leg and the other is a torso, but not have the pelvis or the arms.
Zigzag and Tictac are also the two I'd want most just for how they look as toys if I didn't know they were combiners. One is the coolest looking car, the other is the coolest looking robot.
Sadly Puzzler was made too soon to name one of the cars Sudoku.
This is probably the best 80s combiner. No parts forming is such a great achievement for the time.
I appreciate that Jigsaw always ensures that Puzzler is happy to see you.
Saved my allowance and bought one of these roughly weekly fora couple months as a kid in the 80s. One of my favorite toys at the time. Great nostalgia!
Go-bots always get a bad rap but in every mode these guys are better than team Menasor in terms of engineering and articulation. No cheating with extra parts either.
Gobots bad reputation is truly underserved: they had pros and cons like Transformers had, maybe even more pros in some areas.
I agree that the G1 Stunticons looks like Happy Meal toys compared to the puzzler team.
Gobots had bad marketing but were many were superior to some Transformers.
Edit: there were real stinkers in Gobots, but Transformers also had their share.
@@davidm4566 I agree.
Despite being composed by toys from different lines (one never meant nor designer to represent sentient robots to begin with), Hasbro managed their brand better than Tonka.
IMHO hiring Marvel Comics to create the background and giving a distinctive insignia to each faction were two of the major key factors where Hasbro did better than Tonka.
@@DarkAlex1978 agree, transformers lore, names AND that great art on the packaging brought the Transformers to life in a way that Gobots didn't have. I also throw the brand name into the arena too. Transformers and "More than meets the eye!" are just cooler in every way.
The deluxe large gobots are nice and have logical transformations
I had the complete set as a kid. I loved how it was all self contained, for a combiner team. I am particularly impressed, for toys this old, with how you have managed to make them all stand straight. After less than a year, it was impossible for most of them to keep standing straight. I played with the Puzzler team a lot.
I'm an 80s kid and this thing held up so much better than Devastator, I did enjoy Devastator but I had to use so much imagination to play with him, he would crumble apart at the slightest collisions. This guy was just so great in comparison.
I was born in 1980, this was my dream toy when I was 6yo but it was so rare ...
I remember, the flipping head was thing I prefer about my Gobots toys...
thank for bringing back these memeries!
The cool thing about Puzzler is that there is no parts forming. The feet, hands and head od the combined bot are all integral to the smaller figure and fold out when needed!
I never paid much attention to Puzzler as a kid. Only now am I seeing a visual similarity, color wise, to the Mighty Orbots/Godmars robots. Wild.
I've worked many a combiner in my life, I can honestly say I've never once seen a wire used as a set issued piece in any set I've played with.....I need a Puzzler now for that fact alone!
Poor kid finally realises why his orange robot car changing toy had unexplained stick in his back and fist in his feet. Thanks!
Thanks for the review. Speaking only for the toy, and not for any tie-in fiction, GoBots Puzzler is better than any G1 Transformers combiner. It looks better than most G1 combiners, it requires no extra parts, and the individual robots genuinely look like a cohesive group in robot and car modes. Great stuff.
I have a Pocket in excellent condition! (Kids in the 80s usually just put GoBots in a draw and forgot about them for 40 years.)
Pocket being a yellow Lamborghini with a face like that was such a rip off of Sunstreaker
Gonna be honest, the name “protectobot” and “combaticon” are cool enough names to fit on a combined bot, unlike ‘puzzler’
As a kid of the 80's who had Go-bots and Transformers, I played with the Go-bot's a lot more. Frankly they just made better toys to actually play with then the Transformers.
Granted the Transformers cartoon, was a heck of a lot cooler.
great video, thanks for doing it. i used to have the whole set, but gradually lost bits and pieces of each one over the years. i wish i had maintained them!
"Sunstreaker, who's that?" "Oh, that's Pocket, my little brother. Mom made me bring him along"
Wow. "The Puzzler" reference blew my mind. I don't think I would have never thought about the Undergrads ever again. Funnily enough, just a few minutes ago I happened to go to my alma mater for a quick visit.
Now I have to try and watch some Undergrads. Lol
And funny enough, we're talking to each other on our computer screens! 😅
But anyway...
ALPHA ! ALPHA !!!
Wow. This is a nostalgia trip. When I was a kid, I only had Zig Zag. I distinctly remember it. Never had any of the other ones, though.
I've been trying to remember these for almost 40 years thank you so much
You're welcome!
I remember having Crossword as a kid! Don’t remember how I got it, I remember having it!
I just sometimes think Tonka didn't "get it." Who names a giant combining robot Puzzler? Like, I get it, it's kind of a puzzle to put it together, but a giant robot shouldn't take his name after the fact that a kid might have a hard time putting him together. In other words, Tonka saw these as toys, not characters. It took a cartoon to make them into characters. Hasbro turned their transforming robot toys into characters right from the beginning with codenames, backstories, and motivations, and that made all the difference in their success. That having been said, the GoBots are seriously underrated and great toys, if not memorable characters.
I had Puzzler, and I think it was a good combiner team for its time. The fact that no extra parts are needed to make the combined mode is a definite plus, and it holds together better than Devastator from the Transformers line of that time.
One of my most cherished combiners from the 80s
I like the fact that, unlike the Transformer combiners, there are no necessary extra pieces in combination mode.
I love this set I bought it years ago cheaply on eBay because no one cared for go bots I'm still trying to piece together monstrous.
That is one cool looking combiner!
As an 80s kid who loved Go Bots and Transformers, I remember having Rube as a kid, but not any of the others, and I didn't know GoBots had a true combiner. The way they fit together is astonishingly brilliant. Not at all what I expected from a GoBots product.
I think I got this set as a kid at a Goldblatts of all places on Belmont in Chicago.
You are correct. Puzzler was way ahead of its time. A lot of the things the Go-Bots did were ahead of their time. From large toy versions (master piece scale of their time), to Puzzler, to powersuits for the figures that formed (with a giant ship) into a gesalt robot of its own.
I am surprised no one has done a third party Puzzler. That would be one of those that could be interesting.
The correct choice when putting The Puzzler back together is by using a cardboard puzzle piece under the small gap of the blue foot.
OMG YES! I always thought Pocket was a Go-Bot take on Sunstreaker
I got Pocket's name, as I think I used to have a pocket book of puzzles and riddles some 30 years ago. Had to look up Zig-Zag, though, and found out that there are such things as Zig-Zag puzzles. Pocket might also refer to things like those interlocking rings or multi-part shapes you have to take apart in certain orders. Definitely can see what they were going for with the names, but yeah some are a bit obscure, a bit dated.
These old Gobots are lovely, though. Thanks for the video, it was a fun watch! Pocket has the same head AND car mode as Sunstreaker, just two trendy dudes with big ears and yellow lambo modes.
Oh wow, not expecting the Duggler.
I always assembled mine with Jigsaw backwards, and it made the end gestalt robot a lot cleaner.
Holy crap! I have these, my son now plays with them
Wow, amazing engineering!
I recall Gobots having some large space shuttle that Transformed into a power suit that 5 or 6 small Gobots could go into, and it was cheaply considered a combiner. Lazy engineering.
Although I didn't like the quality of Devastator, as his combined form was fragily held together.
Puzzler is indeed a great feat of engineering and design.
thank you for this video!
I think you're referring to Grungy and Courageous; same moulds for each side, but each combiner consisted of a shuttle (which became the torso, hands and feet), and four different power suits to form the limbs.
I’d gotten the Puzzlers as a gift pack when they’d released… I had NO idea who or what they were (and I was already a Transformers fan), but it was one of the biggest surprises I’d ever gotten as a kid. These were WAY cool.
Cheers!
\m/,😊,\m/
Gotta be honest: This set comes together way better than the original Devastator and actually looks cool as well. Shame it's the first time I've ever heard about it.
Thank you for the video. I've had this bot for more than ten years. And the whole time, I've had the arms wrong.
Im a pretty strict transformers only collector but now I have to hunt this dude down. I oddly love that design and would be adorable being displayed with my other combiners and Titans.
Pretty impressive that unlike Transformers combiners, the head, feet and hands/fists are all included in the individual robots instead of being separate pieces. Nice!
In the 80s, Pocket made those little travel board games and things like that. Pocket Monopoly, etc. ZigZag is the cigarette wrapper brand, and again, in the 80s, they had small puzzle games on the packaging, like everything else in the 80s. That's my guess as to how those names came to be.
I had to look up some of those names and zigzag was a game back in the 60s. Maybe 70s. It wasn't something still around when Puzzler came out.
I have Puzzler and my only complaint is the face...kinda the most important feature to me though.
These six have been right next to me for the past 3 years since i pulled them out of my old 30 yo box. I'm going to actually have to combine them now. Ive never known their names. Thank you
I shared equal play time between GoBots and Transformers, but I never had this set. My GoBot combiner toy was the Power Suit set. Four exosuits for your Gobots that plug into a ship-like core.
Also, Puzzler's combination looks a whole lot more stable than Devastator. The chestpiece on the Constructicon gestalt always kept popping off.
That yellow Lamborghini bot’s head sculpt looks very familiar indeed…. Those individual bot modes are not bad considering the time and comparison to the often laughable (let’s be honest) transformations and robot modes for most of the limb bots for the scramble city transformers. That’s why devastator and predaking will always rule that gimmick in g1 IMO. Very impressive the gestalt requires no bits and pieces. Bot ahead of his time!
Also, that whole team looks to be in GREAT shape! Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to keep an eye out for these bad bots!
zig-zag might be a maze?
I'm purity sure I had these guys growing up.
Can we also appreciate the color coordination? It's pretty simmetrical but not too much.
I had this set as a kid. Technically I still do, but the figures are all packed away in different boxes, and some of them might be broken.
Still, I've got a lingering soft spot for them, and to this day I think the fold-over arms helping to bulk out the torso is a brilliant design choice that I wish Hasbro would copy. Not that there's much chance of that ever happening in the current era of slavish devotion to animation accuracy.
I had it as a kid, too, but got rid of all my toys when I was a little older.
Got this set about 5 years ago and it's on display on the bookshelf on my desk in my office. It's the only action figures on that bookshelf.
I remember getting Zig Zag for my birthday back in 1986.
What a neat set. Definitely would not have guessed that they were bad guys, haha! This is the first video of yours that I’ve seen, but I enjoyed it a lot, so I’m definitely subscribing. Happy holidays!
Thanks, and you too!
I admit when he said Jigsaw. Saw popped right in my head.
Puzzler was legendary🔥🔥🔥...I can still remember their debut episodes... the car salesman and his wife arguing in one of the cars😂
COURAGEOUS and the Power Suits are still the greatest combiner of all time. No debate.
Did they make a toy of the Guardians combiner?
To be fair, Predaking is pretty close to "Just the name for the combiner team" of Predacons.
I remember getting him back in around 2015-2016. I wasn't alive when he was first made (I'm born in '94) but I wanted to see this combiner that absolutely blew Transformers combiners out of the water. Needless to say, I quite liked him, and liked the extra articulation he had. I wish BanDai would reissue old Machine Robo for this very reason.
He makes Devastator (a combiner who I'm not exactly fond of), look like something best buried and never excavated.
Would I say he beats my all-time favorite combiners, the Scramble City teams (Menasor, Computron, God Neptune, Validgus, etc.)? Probably not. Bit he's still a load of fun and I wish I still had him.
I always wanted this set, and finally picked it up last year at TFCon. I find it odd that, not counting the power suits, all the Gobots combiners; Puzzler and Monsterous, are Renegades. You'd think Tonka would've wanted to even that out. Make Puzzler Guardians, while the grotesque looking Monsterous would be Renegades.
And I agree, for toys designed in the early 80s, they're remarkably well engineered. Its like I've always said, dollar for dollar, most Gobots were better toys than their similarly priced Transformers counterparts.
GoBot names were a little on the nose. “A helicopter? Let’s name him CopTerr!”
Stellar review! Jig Saw is my favorite (Pocket probally refers to pocket puzzles, while Crossword is a reference to spelling games often referred to as crosswords! Also you might have confused Jig Saw for Zig Zag most of the time lol)
The yellow Lambo looks like he's wearing a Michael Mayers version of Sunstreaker's head.
The reason the cop car (jigsaw) legs go limp is because over the years, people didnt clear the arms first most of the time. The holder price was rubbed off. Thats why you need to transform them right. Its not age, its mistreatment.
Brave Puzzlers... I am 100% Certain you will die. - Optimus Prime.
"I understood that reference." -Capn Rogers
I had three of them. They were cool.
Those names haha!
Rube - Rubiks Cube
TicTac- Tic Tac Toe
ZigZag - same hah
Crossword - Crosswords
Pocket - not sure which kid's games to refer.
Pocket is probably referring to a pool table pocket.
I actually always liked the Gobots. Not especially the toys, but the lore. In some ways, I liked it better than Transformers (gasp!) The fact that they are cyborgs makes it make sense that there are females, and other pieces of lore. I wish they made a comic book of them back in the day like Transformers. Also, my best friend back then was poor, so his parents bought him Gobots. We used to pretend that Leader-1 and Optimus Prime had to team up for a mission and that's how our toys got together
Whaaat.. I had the blue and cop car and I never knew they had friends 😂 and Tictac 's coat hanger makes sense now (I had GoBots but wasn't as focused as TF)
Renegades always had epic, giant robots. The Guardians just had an AT-AT with a cone head.
i remember these guys, too bad the cartoon only used them as mindless drones with no individual personalities whatsoever.
There's a couple of straps (black rubber bands *cough*) used to reinforce him and improve his slouch, as illustrated in the instructions.
Comparing this to the semi recent Combiner Wars teams and how incredibly janky and compromised those combined forms were, or even too the most recent Hasbro combiner teams that literally require a entirely separate robot shell to make work, it's virtually impossible to argue that, from and engineering standpoint, we've really only taken steps backwards since the 80s. It's also probably worth mentioning that the original Power Rangers Megazord didn't require any extra parts either save from a couple guns for it's oddball tank mode. Puzzler is a highpoint.
Yep. And Power Rangers Turbo's Rescue Megazord even has robot forms for all five cars.
Combiner Wars engineering speaking was embarassing.
The Aerialbots with the arms just hanging in plain view under the wings in jet modes was painful to watch, more so because even the original G1 toys were able to do better.
I don't agree. The reason Menasor and Superion are designed the way they are is to make them cartoon accurate, as it's clear from looking at their animation models that the cars and jets are attached to the giant robots limbs, not formed by them (despite the animation of them connecting like the toys do. The cartoon fudges things a lot, especially the scale). The upcoming SS86 Devastator has to use extra parts for the same reason.
I just received Jigsaw as a present from my work-wife. Came from his personal stash, along with a random Rock Lord. Fun stuff. Now I need to find the rest!
@Feelingsmasher2000 you're not very bright, are you?
@@Feelingsmasher2000 hasn't been deleted once. What appears to have been deleted has been any sense of irony you may have once possessed.
Yeah, none of those posts were deleted. But they are now! And they're banned from the channel. Sorry you had to deal with that.
@@RobsteinOne hey, man. The internet will internet. Absolutely no mark against you or your channel, whatsoever!
Always thought it was strange that they were larger than regular Gobots. Almost as if they were imported from a different toy line. In the cartoon where Puzzler appeared, they had him swaying side to side with the sounds of creaking wood. It was ridiculous.
He looks happy
Wow, umm... never knew these existed in the 1980s. The only GoBot "combiners" I remember used four sort of exoskeleton cases into which you'd place one of the standard GoBots (e.g. CyKill, Leader 1, Turbo, Cop-Tor, Fi-Tor, Royal T) and those attached to a central unit which was just some sort of vaguely triangular spacecraft.
Power Suits. You have Courageous for the Guardians and Grungy for the Renegades. You could put a figure inside the spacecraft vehicle.
@@DCMarvelMultiverse Those were them! Believe I had Grungy.
Puzzler may need an extra hinge joint on jigsaw
My grandparents got Rap for me for Christmas
Pretty sure I have TicTak and Zigzag in my basement.
I love him Not Sunstreaker is my fave and Zig Zag
I'm pretty sure Tic-tac is from Tic-Tac-Toe
Puzzler sounds like a Batman villain
I loved this toy. It always annoyed the hell out of me that when finally shown in the cartoon, all that all the robots, and Puzzler, were, were just radio controlled robots, not really Go-Bots at all.
i understand the disappointment (and I share it) but the main problem lies in the Gobots lore: being cyborgs with organic brains, is not possible to have their minds combined into one like the Transformers, who are 100% robots.
@@DarkAlex1978 I mean, the series could have had the five of them come from Gobotron, instead of the Renegades just building them.
I mean, to be fair back in Energon the Constructicons formed Constructicon Maximus.
wish i got ahold of these, also wish i kept my power suits
Powersuits are pretty cheap. The only pricey bit is the main ship with all the extra bits.
I was 16 when this was out and was one of the transforming toy set I bought, I was thinking of buying another of the black car and the Lamborghini to better set up the combind form but I never again found them insides stores after I bought the whole set,but still I think it be fun do that.
They should make a Go Bots movie
this is very cool. u just got a sub
I never knew gobots had a combiner
17:35 GERWALK/AT-AT MODE
22:52 Every good tool needs a shed.
Puzzler sounds like batman villain