Robot point


 * Robot Points were a scam in the Generation 1 era.

Their story's a lot like GI Joe Flag Points, only more interesting because it involves robots.

Packaged in most Transformer toy packages from 1985 until the end of Generation 1 in both Hasbro's markets and Japan were small fliers advertising discontinued and exclusive toys and merchandise for purchase by mail-order. Each item had a particular monetary cost plus a certain number of Robot Points, tiny bits of cardstock you were supposed to clip and save from the packaging of each toy bought in stores.

Transformers mail-in offers were handled by Hasbro subsidiary Hasbro Direct, which was also responsible for effectively identical GI Joe and My Little Pony offers. They were effectively meaningless, and the only reason anyone in the West remembers them is that the Omnibots and vaguely prominent cartoon character Reflector were mail-in exclusives.

Takara were for some reason inordinately fond of mail-in exclusives in the Generation 1 era, reserving such vaguely prominent characters as Ratchet, Cosmos, Dirge, Warpath, and Repugnus for them. Strange.