1a. Re: Request: Pics of side flaps of a MIB G1 Jazz
    Posted by: "Jeff" trefpig
    Date: Wed Oct 24, 2007 6:01 am ((PDT))

Here's a summary.  A bunch of Jazzes showed up on Ebay in the last 2 
months.  They all have dried broken tape on both sides.  According to 
one of the sellers, several warehouses in Japan closed down a few 
months ago, so they liquidated the contents of the warehouse, which 
contained many old toys, including pre-rub Jazz.  (There were also 
pre-rub Mirages, Gig Sideswipes, and some Japanese TFs, Diaclone 
toys, as well as many other old toys.)

Two things seemed strange to me about these Jazzes:
1) They came in a case of just Jazz, no other Transformers.
2) They had the break in the fade on the box flap on one side.

Those two facts pointed toward these being the licensed Chinese 
release from around 1990.  However, several facts made it clear that 
these were not the Chinese releases:
1) The copyright information on the back is not abbreviated like the 
Chinese Ironhide's copyright info is.
2) The cases are different--Chinese Ironhide is organized 3 x 4--
These Jazzes were organized 2 x 6.
3) The Mirages that also showed up in a case of just one character 
like Jazz had the no-gray-border variation on the box, indicating 
that they were in fact the earliest Mirages.

I talked to Karl Hartman about this, and he agreed with me that these 
are real.  He gave a lot of weight to the fact that these included 
the earliest Mirages.  Also, he said he had seen a case like the 
Jazz's a long time ago, but never knew what was in it.  So he thought 
they were real, and I agreed.  But the thing about the side-flap 
broken fade still worried me.

So I asked around for pictures of the sideflap of peoples' old G1 
Jazzes.  I finally got someone from an ebay auction to tell me if 
theirs had the broken fade, and it did--on one side.  The other side 
didn't have the broken fade.  I checked the the deadstock one-
character-in-a-case Jazzes and they're the same way.

So, a couple conclusions:
1) These Jazzes and Mirages on Ebay are the 1984 releases.
2) Some pre-rub cars did come one character per case (some of the 
earliest ones, apparently).
3) The broken fade is not something unique to the Chinese release.  
Some G1 cars had this.  I don't know how many.  Maybe a small number, 
maybe all.

-Jeff