A Toy Tragedy
If you have been collecting a long time you likely know why G1 launchers won’t fire. For the rest of you, this is why your missile launchers refuse to fire even when fired upon! The toy world was turned upside down on December 31, 1978. When 4-year old Robert Jeffrey Warren died after accidentally ingesting a plastic toy missile from a Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper spaceship. His wasn’t the only death via toy part ingestion.
The first 1984 Transformers toys with the Takara Manufacturers markings like the Takara Circle stamp will fire quite well. Later they changed to fire weakly. When 1985 rolled out basically none fired and the text of the manual changed to read “rocket launchers are designed only to hold rockets in place; therefore propulsion will be very weak if at all.”
This Colonial Viper along with a few other toys is why there are choking labels on toys today.