Fitz’s Toy Chest #23: Voltron (Lion Force)

Welcome back everybody! Here we are at the drop dead date for March’s Toy Chest and I’ll bet you thought you weren’t getting one!

As promised last month, this time out I’m going to reveal one of the true crown jewels of my collection. 

Voltron (Lion Force)
Company: Matchbox
Acquisition Year: 1985-1986
Acquired via: Purchased For Self/Christmas
Years In Possession: 35

From 1984 to 1987 I was deep DEEP into all things transforming robots (yes even Gobots for a hot minute).

Around that time there was a store in town called Dolgin’s.  This was sort of like a step between a Target and a Macy’s. Not quite as pedestrian as Target, not quite as posh as Macy’s.

Their toy department was “ok” and it wasn’t a store we normally went too very often. There was only one in the area that I remember and it wasn’t very close.

One day we happened to be there and while I wandered the toy aisle I happened to round a corner and there on the end cap was something I never expected.

Die-cast Voltron lions.

My head nearly exploded. I had to have one.

And not just one.

ALL FIVE!

Because not only were these super detailed and screen accurate (in my adolescent opinion) versions of the Lions, they actually COMBINED to form Voltron.

But I had $0, so, it was not to be that day, however I had a solution. It was the same solution I had used to purchase my first Insecticon Transformer.

I got a loan from my grandma.

And I don’t mean a “Hey grandma can I have $20?” kind of loan. No, when my grandma loaned money, contracts and signatures were involved. Like a bank. A wonderful, wrinkly, bank that never said no as long as I signed on the line.

So we drew up an IOU on yellow legal paper for $15 that I agreed to pay back a couple dollars a week and I took my new found wealth straight to Dolgin’s and made a bee line straight to the Voltron display and snatched up the choicest of all their offerings.

The Black Lion.

Easily double the size of all the other lions in the set, the black lion was by far the coolest and most complex.

While the other lions’ legs folded up on the sides of their bodies when forming Voltron, the black lion’s front legs were engineered to tuck away inside its body and seemingly “disappear” like they did in the cartoon!

Also just like the cartoon, when forming the head of Voltron, this black lion’s mouth would open and the face of the robot would flip down into place. Amazing. I loved this feature so much.

And that, at the time, was where I figured my Voltron set would end. I never actually thought I would be able to get the other 4 lions. I never saw them anywhere other than this one store and it wasn’t like I could take a loan every week.

But then, we happened to be back in Dolgin’s probably a year later and what did I find? A shelf full of those lions marked WAY down on clearance. Apparently I was the only kid on planet earth that thought these were cool because Dolgin’s really REALLY wanted to get rid of them now.

Naturally I showed this to my parents and tried to explain what an incredible once in a lifetime deal this was. They weren’t having it. “Maybe for Christmas” was their stock reply.

Well I guess they must’ve tipped off Santa because I had completely forgotten about those lions until the next Christmas when low and behold all 4 of them were under the tree for me!

The strange thing about these was that there really weren’t any transforming instructions included, at least not clearly drawn ones like what I was used to with Transformers. It took my dad and I forever to figure out how to properly fold up the legs on each lion and how to get the yellow and blue lion to securely lock on to the black lion’s feet.

Looking back on it now these things were NOT that complicated so I’m not sure why we had such a frustrating time at first.

The way these all fit together was a pretty ingenious design using hidden clips and springs in the lions’ bodies and was surprisingly close to how the cartoon Voltron body parts were shown to connect.

Apparently when Matchbox imported these toys from Bandai in Japan they had to remove some of the features including spring loaded rockets and smaller accessories to comply with U.S. toy safety laws (the same ones that killed rocket firing Boba Fett).

I didn’t find that out until recently, but it explains all the mysterious pieces on these lions that open up like they’re supposed to reveal hidden armaments but don’t really have any.

One thing they apparently missed on the safety checklist was lead paint. Sometime in the late 80s this Voltron was actually recalled due to a lead paint scare. I remember seeing a story on the news about it and making my mom promise she wouldn’t throw mine out or send it back to the company like they were saying to do. I was terrified that someone would come confiscate my Voltron. A little lead paint is a small price to pay for such a cool toy.

Not too long after I completed my set, I would see a different version of Voltron made by Panosh Place that was sold at Grandpa Pigeon’s (another local “department store” chain, kind of a step between Target and a flea market) which looked similar to the Matchbox/Bandai one except it was really deformed and out of proportion (in my opinion) due to the fact that it was made to accommodate that company’s 3.75″ Voltron action figures. So on the one hand you could have the pilots actually fit INSIDE  these Lions. On the other hand it was completely made of cheap plastic and looked ugly as sin. I always wanted some of the figures but those lions were a hard pass for me.

Well there you have it, one of my very favorite pieces. Sadly I never got the vehicle force version that Matchbox made and it is WAY out of my price range now. The same goes for the Voltron that was based on a canceled third series that would have had 3 humanoid robots that combined into one. It was pretty rare since the cartoon it was based on was never actually released in the states, the company that brought vehicle and lion force Voltrons to the U.S. canceled its plans for a third series. All of these were originally 3 separate unrelated anime from Japan by the way. They were heavily sanitized and cut together for young American audiences by St. Louis based World Entertainment Productions into a totally new storyline just like Harmony Gold would do with its Robotech franchise.

And with that I think it’s about time to wrap up this installment of the Toy Chest. I hope you enjoyed my anecdotes and rambling. Join me back here every month(ish) for more plastic nirvana.

(And yes, I paid my grandma back every cent I ever borrowed from her)