ARCO

ARCO, often styled as Arco, was a Hong Kong toy company. In 1982 they produced The Other World, a fantasy toyline that still has a cult following in North America. In 1984 they produced the Ro-Guns, a series of toy robots that included large figures that turned into roleplay items like water pistols, cap guns and so on. The following year ARCO decided to apply for a licence from Tonka for the GoBots brand and as they had money got one, putting out several of the Ro-Guns toys and other robot figures under the line, some even retaining the Ro-Gun branding.

Changes to the figures themselves for the GoBots releases generally extended to slapping on as many paper sticker logos as could fit.

GoBots

Merchandise

• Binoculars
• Cap Pistol
• Cap Rifle
• Cap Rifle & Robo-Scope
• Desk-Bot
• Destroyer
• Water Pistol

Robo Machine

Merchandise

• Binoculars
• Water Rifle

Notes

• Some of the figures were also issued with Robotech branding. Later ARCO were absorbed by Mattel - who later put some of the figures out as the Roguns, complete with character names, in 1992.
• ARCO also produced an aircraft carrier figure, a cannon and a revised "Hot Chamber" cap rifle, though none of these figures seem to have come out as GoBots.
• As ancillary cash-in merchandise produced by a second party the ARCO GoBots were ignored by all official fiction. However, some thirty years later Fun Publications added them to Renegade Rhetoric, even keeping an approximation of their prosaic designations because it's all very funny and meta and clever, probably.