Homemade Chinese Transformers are Scrap Metal in Disguise

A scrap metal dealer from Zhejiang Province, China has fulfilled a childhood wish with a series of
Transformers-like characters made from recycled car parts. He claims he built them as an advertisement for his trade, but we suspect that’s just the excuse he gave his family when they asked why he spent weeks making giant replicas of kids’ toys.

Mr. Zhu, who apparently didn’t care adequate about publicity to give
China Car Timesmore than his surname, swiped car and bike parts from his commerce until he could crib together a mufflers-and-rims Optimus Prime. We did notice a slight continuity error: the E32 BMW he used was built well after the first generation Transformers was filmed. While Mr. Zhu might be referencing

Transformers: Generation 2
, we think he just couldn’t find any older Bimmers he could cut up and weld into a fake robot. At least Zhu can stow
Ratbatin the in-dash cassette deck. More pictures of the Autobots and Decepticons after the jump.

While a pile of older-than-
Kupcar parts might seem more Red Green than Red China, one has to remember that scrap metal is serious money in a country where raw

fabric feeds the factory beast. Zhu didn’t only sacrifice day to build his dreams — he additionally sacrificed valuable recyclables. In addition to the 7-series, there’s a Muppet-faced motorcycle and a creepy, gangly
Giacommetti-esquefigure all made from saleable scrap.

Even bigger than scrap metal is the Transformers franchise, the first foreign cartoon broadcast in China. While Transformers were
popular with American kids, Chinese kids didn’t have a choice: no other imported cartoons were broadcast in the late ’80s. Every night at six, Chinese youngsters would rush domestic to watch the cartoon and pester their parents to buy the action figures from Hasbro. That pestering resulted in $661 million worth of toy sales since 1987 according to
China.org.cn, though we suspect a majority of sales are to now-wealthy thirty-somethings who can finally afford to buy the toys they dreamed of as a kid.

Photos courtesy
China Car Times

Original post by Keith Barry

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