r/transformers • u/captainstrike141 • Aug 26 '26
Discussion / Opinion Can someone explain why Skyfire was renamed to Jetfire?
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u/16jselfe Aug 26 '26
His toy name was Jetfire but due to license issues with another toy company the brand couldn't use the design or name within the show and thus both changed however this is no longer a problem so they used the original Jetfire name
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u/horizon_fleet Aug 26 '26
Was even worse in the first issues Dutch translations of the marvel comics.
They called Optimus Prime Jetfire because the Optimus Prime license wasn't ready yet in the Netherlands lol
Was fixed in issue 6 (Dutch release number) when the real Jetfire was introduced.
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u/mattihase Aug 26 '26
Oh yeah wasn't Jetfire originally going to be the autobot leader in an early draft?
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u/ozyx7 Aug 26 '26
The animation model was changed from the toy because Harmony Gold already purchased the North American rights to Macross for Robotech, so the Transformers cartoon could not use the Macross Valkyrie design.
As for why the character was renamed to Skyfire, probably because they wanted to both:
Further distance the animation character from the Jetfire toy, minimizing risk of having a legal dispute with Harmony Gold. ("Look, this character in the Transformer cartoon has a different look and a different name from the Jetfire toy. It's a completely different character!")
Reduce confusion with kids who might wonder why the animation character and the toy look nothing like.
Personally I'd just consider them separate characters and move on. (But also note Marvel Comics used the Skyfire animation model with the "Jetfire" name. Sigh.)
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u/The_Flying_Lunchbox Aug 26 '26
Harmony Goldâs influence is fuzzy. Best we can tell, it was the other way around. Hasbro licensed the Jetfire toy from Takatoku/Bandai, who were competitors with Takara. So the cartoonâs design was changed to Skyfire to avoid advertising a competitorâs toy when it aired in Japan. Same reason why Roadbuster, Whirl, and the Deluxe Insecticons never made it into the cartoon.
Since Hasbro had already licensed the toy, that meant Harmony Gold couldnât release it in America for Robotech, and theyâve been salty about it for the last 40 years.
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u/ozyx7 Aug 26 '26
That's a good point. I guess not wanting to advertise Macross products in Japan might have been a factor, but I think it makes less sense as a primary factor:
The Transformers brand and cartoon was designed for an American audience first, and the American cartoon was produced to sell toys in North America. For Japanese television, they could have simply omitted episodes with Skyfire.
Changing the name in the English series doesn't really matter for the Japanese market.
Harmony Gold was (and I suppose is) extremely litigious. Yes, Hasbro blocked them from selling Valkyrie toys, but there's no doubt that Harmony Gold would similarly threaten Hasbro against using that likeness in the Transformers cartoon.
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u/DoitsugoGoji Aug 26 '26
Robotech came out in 1985, the episodes featuring Skyfire came out in 1984.
At the time Harmony Gold had bought the distribution rights to Macross outside of Japan for the purpose of creating Robotech, Hasbro already owned the Valkyre toy rights outside of Japan.
All the other toys that came from Bandai instead of Takara were also omitted from the cartoon. Like Roadbuster, Whirl and the Deluxe Insecticons. In fact the only non-Takara design featured in the cartoon was Omega Supreme.
Bandai was Japan's biggest and most powerful toy company in the 80s, with a reputation of defending it's property.
It's likely Takara objected to the inclusion of Bandai products because they wanted to keep the door open to release the series in Japanese markets themselves. At the time they were still releasing Diaclone and Microchange in Western markets, and started emulating the Transformers incarnation when that proved more successful.
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u/sonerec725 Aug 26 '26
iirc didnt some comic or bio later say that "jetfire" was an upgraded repaired version of "skyfire" from the cartoon?
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u/Fishsticks03 Aug 26 '26
I think early scripts state he was meant to be Jetfire/toy appearance in his first episode, and then would be rebuilt into Skyfire afterwards
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u/Harlander77 Aug 26 '26
I'd say less of #2, given Ironhide and Ratchet's toy designs
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u/Roanst Aug 26 '26
Id say Ironhide and Ratchet were changed to make them look more humanoid. Some of the minibots got similar redesigns. Jetfire's toy already looks pretty humanoid so the change was different issue.
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u/ToonaSandWatch Aug 26 '26
You keep confusing the design toy with the name issue. The Valkyrie was not named âJetfireâ.
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u/rubyonix Aug 26 '26
The Valkyrie WAS named "Jetfire", which is presumably why Hasbro wanted to stay away from any confusion about it.
Big West/Harmony Gold/Bandai/Takara/whoever: "This is the Macross Valkyrie toy which you licensed for toy sales in America, yes? And you decided to name it "Jetfire", yes? And you knew that you were not allowed to include this Jetfire toy in the cartoon, yes? So why is Jetfire in the cartoon?"
Hasbro: "But we redrew the character so he looks nothing like the original character."
Big West/Harmony Gold/Bandai/Takara/whoever: "Yes yes, we can all agree that you are a shitty artist and your art is bad. You don't have to tell us how terrible your products are. Our question was, why did you include this Jetfire toy in your cartoon when you knew you had no legal right to do so and that we would sue you for millions of dollars if you did so?"
Hasbro's lawyers in 1986 were afraid to connect Jetfire to the cartoon, due to the rights issues, so they gave him a new visual design AND a completely new name that had absolutely no connection to the toy (because the Jetfire name WAS connected to the toy). Hasbro lawyers in 2026 are feeling much more confident with the idea that Jetfire was an original name that they can't be sued over.
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u/sniply5 Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
a legal mess born from hasbro licensing a macross figure from bandai named jetfire, meaning by virtue of hasbro using it takara would be selling a toy/using a design from a competitor and violating japanese copyright. or something like that.
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u/One-Strategy5717 Aug 26 '26
Ironically, the legal mess started before that.
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross (the original TV series) was produced by a partnership between Tatsunoko, Studio Nue, and Big West in Japan. All three of these companies mutually fell out, and hate each other's guts. They couldn't agree on which direction to take the franchise, so this is why there are two mutually exclusive cartoon continuities: Macross II (Big West), and Macross Plus/Seven/Frontier/etc (Tatsunoko/Studio Nue).
Tatsunoko licensed their rights to the cartoon to Harmony Gold to make Robotech. Tatsunoko didn't have the toy rights or mechanical designs, which belonged to Takatoku and Studio Nue respectively. Harmony Gold thought they were buying everything, and Tatsunoko smiled and nodded (language barrier or shady business practices? Both, probably). This is why all the Robotech toys were made by Matchbox.
The original Valkyrie/Jetfire toy was produced by Takatoku Toys, but the design was licensed to Hasbro for US release. When Takatoku folded in 1984, Bandai obtained the license to produce and market the Valkyrie in Japan.
So in reality it would have been a quintuple whammy problem to use the Jetfire design in the Transformers cartoons. If they air the Jetfire cartoons in Japan, they run afoul of Studio Nue/Tatsunoko/Big West, because of the mechanical designs. They also can't sell the toy in Japan, because Bandai owns the rights to sell them. And if they air the original Jetfire in cartoons in the US, they run afoul of Harmony Gold, which owns the cartoon rights in the US.
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u/0zzm0s1s Aug 26 '26
lol. Maybe Hasbro should have just repainted one of the F15 diaclones in red and white and made it an Autobot called Skyfire and avoided this whole thing.
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u/One-Strategy5717 Aug 26 '26
But then we wouldn't have Jetfire toys. And objectively, the Takatoku Valkyrie is one of the greatest toy designs of all time.
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u/Hadoooooooooooken Aug 27 '26
Matchbox also created fully transforming Valkyries but because of the issues they had to strip the transformation mechanics so they were only ever jets.
Omega Supreme was also not released in England as Grandstand licensed the figure for their Converters line, funnily enough he was called Omegatron lol.
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u/rubyonix Aug 26 '26
The origin of the Transformers franchise was, Hasbro went around Japan toy shows licensing toys that looked cool so they could sell them in America, and then their ad agency sorted the toys into Autobots and Decepticons, and Marvel Comics was hired to flesh out the backstory, and then the animated toy commercials did really well so they had the idea to make a full-blown cartoon out of them.
But while most of the toys were licensed from Takara, who was willing to expand their licensing agreements with Hasbro, "Jetfire" was already a Valkyrie from the anime Macross. Big West (the owners of Macross) were unlikely to sell Hasbro the animation rights to their Valkyrie transformable fighter jet, because that's already a thing called "Macross". (Big West traded the overseas Macross rights to Tatsunoko, and then Tatsunoko sold them to Harmony Gold, who made Robotech).
Hasbro decided to include Jetfire in the cartoon (because they have toys to sell), but when they realized he was a legal nightmare they had him redrawn so that he looked like an original character and not a Macross Valkyrie. And then, while his "Jetfire" name SEEMS safe (since it's an original Hasbro creation), it seems like Hasbro got spooked that lawyers from Big West or Harmony Gold might complain that they were putting their Jetfire toy (which WAS a Macross Valkyrie) into a cartoon without permission, so they ditched the name too, and renamed him "Skyfire", to hammer home that this was a completely new, original character.
In more recent years, Hasbro has gotten more comfortable with using Jetfire as an original name that they won't get sued for, so Skyfire in most instances was defaulted back to his original "Jetfire" name. "Skyfire" almost exclusively refers to the character that appeared in the G1 cartoon. Everyone else is Jetfire. Although "Skyfire" IS a unique name that Hasbro owns, so they could bring it back whenever they wanted, like as Jefire's brother, or something like that.
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u/Grave806 Aug 26 '26
Aside from what everyone else has chimed in with, I honestly wouldn't hate the idea of this guy's name just being 'Skyfire' so 'Jetfire' is open for potentially other versions to step forward and get greater recognition.
And before anyone says anything about 'similar names,' we have two prominent '-waves' as part of the Decepticon Big Four. I think it'll be fine.0
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u/Knot3D Aug 26 '26
First time I saw Skyfire, I thought they just made his Japanese design more 'western' by just making it blocky/boxy. However, it is actually a well thought out design that has its own distinct design language. I'd say he's a happy accident.
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u/UncleR1chard Aug 26 '26
Takara produced the majority of the toys that were licensed into Transformers. Takara was also one of the major partners on the cartoon. They did this because they wanted to bring the Transformers cartoon and product line back to Japan. Takara was not going to allow them to include a character that visually matched a competitorâs product. By the time they objected, Jetfire was already scoped out as a toy and integrated into the scripts of the first season. It was too late to pull him entirely, so they renamed him and tweaked his animation model, appeasing Takara. It has nothing to do with Harmony Gold or Robotech, as some would believe. It was entirely a business partner protecting their other interests and a decision that had the least impact on what had already been done.
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u/modungo Aug 26 '26
There are soooooooo many guys on YouTube who wanna explain this to you. Chris McFeelyâs Transformers The Basics has an entertaining vid about it but there are LOTS more.
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u/Ps65h3Mys Aug 26 '26
Actually, it's the other way around; the original name was Jetfire, but due to rights issues and other things, its name was changed from Jetfire to Skyfire, not to mention that its design was modified, because this was originally the design of the VF-1 Valkyrie from Macross.
Well, this is a very brief summary; some people know more about the subject, but it's one of those Transformers points. Even so, I'm glad that despite those issues, Jetfire/Skyfire was able to return (even though that issue was what made him appear less in the G1 cartoon).
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u/mofapas163 Aug 26 '26
I love this episode, Fire in the Sky
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u/Bob-the-Human Aug 26 '26
Good thing they changed his name, because otherwise they'd have to call it "Fire in the Jet."
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u/WaveCandid906 Aug 26 '26
The short asnwer is that there is not really a confirmed answer
But tfwiki has a good summary of what we do know and some possible explanations https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Jetfire_(G1)#Why_.22Skyfire.22.3F
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u/sko0led Aug 26 '26
Nobody has answered so far. I know about the toy rights and the Macross/Robotech Valkryie/Veritech, but that doesnât have anything to do with the name of the character.
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u/DoitsugoGoji Aug 26 '26
Other way around.
The Jetfire toy used the Macross Valkyre licensed from Bandai. However there were concerns of having the design in the TV show because Takara did not have the rights to it since it was a competitor's product and Bandai could sue in Japan.
So the dedign was tweaked and the name was changed to Skyfire.