Advertised on Kinsman Packaging and Presumed Not Released
The LCD digital robot ball clock that never was. At least, not for the lines it was advertised for.
This very 80's-centric, simple LCD clock shoehorned into a transforming robot was both advertised for Kinsman and Gobots. While the intended name for Kinsman may never be known, the Gobots release was to be called 'Rollbot' with the product number of 72840. The Gobots version would have been released by Impulse who also released the Gobots watches. However Impulse also released an oversized version of the Gobots watch robot as a clock (for Gobots) and that could be indicative of a decision to do that instead of the ball clock.
For Kinsman, the reason for the decision to advertise yet not release it is unknown. While it appears in the group
assortment photo on the rear of almost all of the Kinsman item packaging, that photo was taken before the items were released. The photo shows prototype versions of many of the figures along with another unreleased robot toy. While only speculation, it's possible the same reason(s) that saw it not released for Gobots could have scuttled the Kinsman release also.
The toy's official release is slightly more interesting in that it was eventually issued by Nelsonic Industries (Long Island City, Queens, New York, USA) who are better known for inventing LCD game watches. They released the robot as the 'Playtime Robot Clock', which confusingly has nothing to do with the company Playtime that released like electronic toys for the Gobots line.
After doing the rounds of Tonka and Dah Yang then finally finding a path to market, it was not long after re-released by numerous companies out of Taiwan in boxes with no identifying business details. That lead to it becoming one of those novelty toys you remember seeing a random kid bring into school, didn't know what it was and possibly never saw again until maybe now.
See Kinsman main index for further details.
The clock is made of finely cast, rigid plastic more suited to an ornament than a toy. Nelsonic versions came with a black plastic, disc base for the ball to rest in when acting as a clock. While that component is featured on the package for the below blue off-brand example below, it's not yet confirmed if it was included.
The clock has no sculpted manufacturer stamping and instead has a gold, Made in Taiwan R.O.C.
The Rollbot example image (end of page) while very similar to the released production version clearly has design differences beyond colour scheme. It's unknown if the production example was presented to Tonka and the image shows changes they'd anticipated making for it to join the Gobots franchise or if in fact this is how the product
was originally pitched and what was released is a cost reduced version of that.
Confirmed colours released are blue, chrome, orange and red, all with a the same black sections shown below.
Chromed version released by Nelsonic
Marketing Example of the Proposed Gobots Rollbot
(see details above)