This piece. This damn piece. I first became aware of it and other Diaclones when I saw a picture of Fumihiko Akiyama’s Diaclone collection which was being displayed at a Japanese BotCon event. Not ever throughout all the years that I collected toys has a Transformer or pre-transformer captured my imagination the way this piece did, and it was at the absolute top of my wants list for close to two years. I talked about it endlessly and my drive to find and get one even got me booted off a UK TF online group once…During the time that I was looking for one, there was one available MIB for over $1000, one turned up on eBay and was bought immediately MIB for $450 (which I later discovered turned out to be something of a good deal) and then it was over a year and a half until another surfaced, and that sold on Yahoo Japan for approximately $960. You get the idea, and I wasn’t about to pay close to $1000 for this thing. During that same time, many many more Blue Bluestreaks, Marlboor Wheeljacks, Red Tracks etc surfaced but no Yellow Sideswipe. I came to realise exactly how much the rarity of a Japanese Diaclone No.15 Yellow New Countach LP500S had been underrated. No word of a lie, it is tremendously difficult to find a good specimen…or ANY specimen of this particular Diaclone, Japanese or Italian.

The No.15 New Countach LP500S (Diaclone Sideswipe) was first released in Japan by Takara around August 1983 as a red Lamborghini Countach with product number 461320-0-1500 (significance to be discussed a little later) and a yellow-limbed Diaclone driver/pilot. Having then been retooled as a Police car and released as No. 19 New Countach LP500S Police, the original mould was then re-released in yellow in Japan by Takara around November/December 1983.

It just appears to be exactly the same as the red release, except in yellow (even the driver/pilot was yellow like for the red release, but at least was now colour-coded with the car and so made more sense!). And that’s almost accurate, except for the fact that the toy’s missile launcher now had a yellow tab and more importantly, the product number on the toy’s box had changed from 461320-0-1500 to 159705-0-1500. I will just touch on the significance of this change; it implies that the yellow release came later (probably already obvious since the box has the art for the red one on it) but thanks to the radical change in numbering system, also shows a 200 yen price hike (last four digits of the product number represent the original price in Japanese yen) and places it after the release of the two No.18 Diaclone Wheeljacks No.19 Diaclone Police Sideswipe despite having “No.15” written on the box. The product number difference on the Japanese boxes between the red and yellow release also lets you know when a loose yellow Diaclone Sideswipe has been slipped into a red Diaclone Sideswipe’s box. Some will care, some won’t.

Just beautiful, a fantastic contrast to the common red Sideswipe we grew up with. The missiles and handgun are the same as they were for the earlier red release. The launcher, as with most Japanese TFs/PreTFs, is very potent and fires the missiles a fair distance. You might notice that the black triangular stickers on the doors are a little lopsided. Almost all the Diaclone yellow Sideswipes I’ve seen have sported misaligned factory door labels, some even had misapplied roof stickers. The driver/pilot has excellent magnetic feet and can be attached to things at funny angles, plus he fits nicely into the driver’s seat of the vehicle.

In this pic you can see the stickersheet, instructions and catalog. The stickersheet and instructions are exactly the same as the ones that came with the earlier red release. The catalog has some lovely art inside and even some prototype-style representations of things such as Diaclone Insecticons. Also visible on the box flap should be the little card that could be filled out in order to enter a prize draw for a campaign car, exclusive Diaclone board game or the like.

This is the money shot really; this mould just looks excellent in yellow. Even real life Countaches look good in yellow whereas most cars besides Ferraris usually don’t. The Sideswipe mould we’ve all been familiar with thanks to Transformers is going to look good in any colour, but the yellow on this piece contrasts beautifully with the black and white and sets it apart totally from its red counterpart, creating its own special mystique. It really is gorgeous. With this mould you might sometimes find that the door tops and roof do not align perfectly and one door top may slip underneath the roof. This is not exclusively an issue with the Diaclone version however, even TFs share this issue.

This figure’s transformation is not too simple either. The whole chest and head section requires a cool rotational transformation (similar to that of Hot Rod’s) and it’s satisfying both ways. The transformation also doesn’t seem to be designed in a way that affects stickers by rubbing plastic or diecast sections against where they are placed. The feet however are quite susceptible to chrome wear due to the nature of their required transformation. I think this figure looks great when decked out with all his weaponry, and also the matching colours of the figure and the driver make it tremendously displayable in either mode, or even packaged. One problem however is that if you are not careful, the pegs on the launcher can snap when it is being attached to the figure’s shoulder.

There’s something I quite like about these above pictures, especially the top one. Remember, this is not a Transformer, it is a Diaclone and the premise behind these Diaclones was that they were non-sentient robots controlled by human drivers/pilots. The above pics turned out in such a way that it appears the robot is towering over the pilot a little more than usual and I like how it taps into the figure’s true nature and identity.

Of course, the yellow Diaclone Sideswipe was not just released in Japan; it was also released in Italy by GiG under the TraSformer Auto Robot line.

Just as in Japan, the Italian yellow release of the Diaclone Sideswipe is much the rarer of the two colours released. Looking at the boxes, there are some clear differences between the two. Instead of the Japanese Diaclone logo in the top left hand corner of the box, the Italian release says “Trasformer” and seeing as how a massive proportion of Italian pre-TFs did NOT come with drivers/pilots, the art that shows the driver is replaced with the “Auto Robot” lettering. Instead of “New Countach LP500S”, the GiG release is designated “Super Countach LP 500S” and is No. 2 in the Italian release order as opposed to No. 15 in the Japanese line. The GiG version would have seen release in 1984. The box art used is identical for both, but the GiG releases of the Diaclone Sideswipe do not have the product number difference that allows you tell one box from the other. As far as accessories are concerned, the Italian version may well have a more powerful launcher but it has the generic orange rubber bombs (boppers) as opposed to the regular mould-specific missiles. The styrofoam insert for the Italian release looks as though someone has physically ripped a section out from just under the car, and that is to accommodate the much larger rubber bombs.

Now this loose Italian yellow Swipe is the first Yellow Sideswipe I ever owned, kindly sold to me by a Canadian collector and all-round great guy. Having looked for almost two years, I finally obtained the number one thing on my list and even this loose worn specimen sparkled as far as I was concerned. I was literally jumping about with joy when it arrived. Having owned it for an extremely short amount of time, I was offered the MIB Japanese one seen at the top of this article by an American collector who was downsizing his stunning Diaclone collection. Then Takara announced the reissue a short while after that! Just like the London Bus analogy, none come for ages, and then three come at once. And it’s the bloody truth!

Going back to the toy, surprisingly, this Italian version was practically identical to the Japanese version even down to the copyright! As a general rule, Japanese original Diaclones have the copyright stamping “TAKARA JAPAN”, no dates, nothing else. That started to change towards the end of the Japanese line, but we won’t worry about that for now as the Japanese Diaclone Yellow Sideswipe is also just stamped “TAKARA JAPAN” on the back of its waist. And as a general rule, Italian GiG Diaclones are Takara stamped but also have dates like “1980, 1984” or some such, plus they are extremely similar if not identical to pre-rub Transformers moulds seeing as how they were released around the same time as TFs. Now, the RED Italian GiG Diaclone Sideswipe follows the rule and has dates on the copyright under the hood, but the Gig yellow Diaclone has an identical stamping to the Japanese release and behind the waist too! It could be that they went back to using the original Japanese mould but more likely in my opinion is the story that they started putting toys from the Japanese line (or factory) straight into GiG boxes. Other Diaclone cars show a similar correlation where the colour variants are concerned, making it somewhat difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of some Diaclone-exclusive colour variants if they are unboxed and incomplete.

It is also very remotely possible (but highly improbable) that a yellow Diaclone Sideswipe was released in Finland, but Finnish Diaclones do not turn up very often and are a particularly recent discovery, so we’ll just have to wait and see on that one.

I always knew that when I finally found a Diaclone Yellow Sideswipe, it would be the pinnacle of my toy collecting, and the MIB Japanese one certainly was. A beautiful display piece and a terrific colour variation on a well-loved mould. It took me two years to track one down and it was truly worth the wait, easily one of the most beautiful and rarest of pre-Transformers and worthy of a place in any collection. I cannot recommend it enough! This was easily the best TF or Pre-TF I ever had the pleasure of coming into contact with. I have now unfortunately parted company with both Diaclones, but I do own the reissue Tigertrack released by Takara in 2003 and I am moooooore than happy with that piece, but there will be much more emphasis on the reissue in part 2 of my Yellow Sideswipe article.

Many thanks to Winson “Mojo8” Liu, Ben Munn and David Barry. They know why.

For now, I’ll leave you with some display shots of the Yellow Diaclone Sideswipes and some of their more recognisable friends…

All the best
Maz