Introduction

 

The Diaclone toyline was introduced by Takara in 1980. Instead of 1:1 scale toys, like Microman, these were around 1:60 and came with 3 cm tall pilots. An anime or manga was never released, but each catalog contains parts of the Diaclone story. The story tells about the Diaclone taskforce, which fights against the Waruder empire, an insect like alien race which is trying to conquer Earth. Most of the Diaclone mecha could disguise themselves as ordinary vehicles like cars and planes. The Waruders used all sorts of transformable and non-transformable mecha as well, like robots that could change into insect like vehicles (pre Insecticons). At one moment the Waruders bring an army dinosaurs from the past by using a sort of time machine. To fight them, the Diaclone force create new mecha, shaped like dinosaurs (pre Dinobots).