Fastflash

Fastflash was part of a little known toy line from LJN in 1985 called Switch Force, but also known as Switch Bots. Designed to compete with Transformers, Switch Bots appeared to be designed in the US, and were pretty solid toys all things considered. The designs were good, the materials good, and they even had an interesting combination gimmick. To top it off, there was a friction motor with sparking action!

Fastflash is a Megabot – one of the good guys. He came in a few different colors, and became a limb for the combiner. All of the combiner parts were packaged with the fire truck, Capt. Defender. I love the color scheme of orange and chrome.

In robot mode he’s a Porshe I think, albeit a chibi-fied version.

Robot mode is your simple flip out the legs, pull out the arms and flip down the nose.

Here you can see the friction motor underneath the car. It had a rubber wheel that caused the light bar to light with internal sparks when pushed along the floor. Cool idea!

Switch Bots went nowhere, and are all but forgotten by collectors. I’d say they released maybe 10 different toys, some with color variants. A box set for the Megabot supposedly exists, but I’ve never seen it.