The Convertors were a line of action figures made by Japanese toy company MARK and localized in North America by New York-based Select in the 1980s. Often compared to the more famous Gobots and Transformers, the Convertors were a line of toys which came out at about the same time and also featured transforming robots.

History

The Convertors licensed some of their toy designs from Bandai just as was done for the Transformers, meaning some of the toys looked very similar. The molds for Convertors were later knocked off by other toy companies. Convertors toys were featured in a display in the 1985 J. C. Penney Christmas catalog.

Fiction

The Convertors toys featured the conflict between heroic and evil factions, in this case the heroic Defenders (and their Avarian allies) and the evil Maladroids (and their Insectors allies). In the original Japanese the Avarians and Insectors were billed as rival factions Bird Robo vs Zectron (バードロボ対ゼクトロン).

Toys

Various toys were released in different size classes and price points for the Convertors line.

Avarians

Defenders

Insectors

Maladroids

New Spies

On display

One of the hotels in Walt Disney World is called Disney's Pop Century Resort, which has different buildings from different decades of the latter half of the 1900s. In the lobby are a series of shadow boxes with memorabilia from each decade. In one from the 1980s are various items including a Convertors Sunyak robot.