The United States Patent & Trademark Office has put up a post celebrating the patent of the Transformers toy line. The post provides a brief history of the patent along with images that include the Optimus Prime patent! Here's the text and images mirrored from the Facebook post:
IP pros, transform and roll out!
On this day in 1985, the USPTO issued a patent for "a reconfigurable toy assembly wherein a toy vehicle is reversibly reconfigured into a toy robotic humanoid and a play space." You know it as a Transformer. Hiroyuki Obara, a designer for Takara Co., Ltd., received U.S. Patent No. 4516948.
The origin of what we know now as TRANSFORMERS is more than meets the eye. It started with Takara's Diaclone toy line, originally launched in Japan in 1980. The toy line included transforming vehicles and robots that were piloted by miniature figures from the "Microman" toy line. Hasbro purchased the rights to produce the toys from Takara, bringing the shapeshifting robots to North American markets.
In 1984, Hasbro re-branded the Diaclone toy line under the name “Transformers,” featuring recognizable characters such as Optimus Prime.
In the following years, Hasbro turned Transformers into a worldwide brand that includes comics, animated series, and action films based on the toys. The company owns trademarks for Transformers covering action figures, movies and shows, video games, and more!
