Blog #1774: Toy Review: Transformers Artifact of the Week: Transformers Promotional Bottle Cap Set

Toy Review: Transformers Artifact of the Week: Transformers Promotional Bottle Cap Set

If you read my blog about the Transformers Coca-Cola Bottle Caps, it will not surprise you to learn that while trying to find information on them I found more Transformers bottle caps. That’s kind of the way things go. Pictures are below, but first a few notes.

The seller listed this set as a promotional item, and one of twenty sets made. Seemed pretty cheap (less than $40) for something that rare, but who knows. I’m not sure what company produced these. I purchased them from a seller in Ukraine, so I suppose they could have come from anywhere in Europe. They have no markings on them. I only know they came out in 2018, since the Transformers Logo cap has that year on it. I am leaning towards this being an unlicensed item. It’s just seems too bizarre to be licensed, but Europe has produced some pretty bizarre items over the years, so who knows?

This is a bit of an odd set. It has just about every human character from the first Transformers movie including Sam’s teacher, Mr. Hosney. I think his name must have been on a name plate on his desk. I’ve seen the movie more times than I can count and I don’t think I ever bothered commit his name to memory. This is possibly the only item to even include that character. There are no human characters from any of the other movies, which seems a little odd.

What’s even odder is the selection of robot characters. I don’t have the best eye for art, so it is possible I have a few of these wrong, as character models changed slightly movie to movie, but from the 2007 Movie we have Blackout, Bonecrusher, Brawl, Bumblebee, Frenzy, Ironhide, Jazz, Ratchet, Scorponok, and Ultra Magnus. If you’re wondering where Ultra Magnus was in the first movie, so am I. We have a bottle cap with a white version of Optimus Prime’s design from the first three movies. I have no idea why.

From Revenge of the Fallen we have Arcee, Jetfire, Jolt, and Mudflap. Yet we have no Skids, Chromia, or Elita-1. That makes no sense.

From Dark of the Moon we have Megatron, Shockwave, Soundwave, Starscream, and a white Queue/Wheeljack. Lots to unpack here. Megatron clearly has the cloak, so he’s definitely from DOTM version. Starscream has his saw blade, which I think he had in DOTM. I’m not sure what to make of Queue/Wheeljack. It’s clearly Queue’s character model in white. Weird, and it’s about to get weirder.

Optimus Prime is clearly in his Age of Extinction/The Last Knight form, while Barricade is as he appeared in The Last Knight. And if that wasn’t random enough, we finish it out with Bulkhead, Hardshell, and Knock Out from Transformers: Prime.

Now, there are lots of possible reasons for this random assortment. It could be that the set isn’t complete, though I have no reason not to believe the seller who said it was a set. If it is unlicensed, they might have just gone with whatever art was available, though if that were the case you’d think they would have done fewer human characters. It’s all and all a very bizarre, but cool, item.

Arcee