The Japanese Takara Diaclone No.19 New Countach LP500S Police Car was released in Japan around October 1983 and was a re-mould and re-colour of the red No.15 New Countach LP500S (what was later to become the TF Sideswipe). This police car version was released after the red Diaclone Sideswipe but before the yellow Diaclone Sideswipe. It is sometimes referred to as "Diaclone Police Sideswipe" or even " Diaclone Red Alert" as it is considered by some to be the main template on which the Transformers Red Alert was based. The main difference of course being that Red Alert was a red/white Fire Chief but this Diaclone toy is a black/white police car. This toy was also released in Italy by GiG.

This release came at a time in Japan when Takara had briefly reverted back to using a photograph of the toy on the Diaclone Car Robot box fronts as opposed to using an artistic representation of the figure. The layout of the box is very similar to the box layout for the regular Diaclone Sideswipe (which also used a photograph instead of art). Also, instead of having another small window for the Diaclone driver, there is just a picture of the driver on the box front to show which one comes in the package. This was of course the third police car to be released in the Japanese Diaclone line, the first being the No.3 Countach LP500S Super Tuning Police Type (Police Sunstreaker) and the second being the No.13 Fairlady Z Police (Prowl). The box for the Police Sideswipe has a similar colour scheme to the car itself, so the whole package looks very attractive and well-presented from the front. Here are pics of the box back, top and technical details on the box bottom:

Looking at the box back picture, the representations of the Diaclone Jazz and Diaclone Wheeljack are not identical to the toys themselves, especially the Wheeljack, but this is not something that's unique to this particular Diaclone release. Takara tended to use whatever stock pictures they had lying about at the time on many occasions. The technical picture on the bottom of the box uses actual toy photographs whereas the first Diaclone Car Robots had less detailed pictures. The product number for this piece can be seen in the top right corner of the box top and box bottom. "461321-1-1500" indicates a sale price of 1500 yen originally. The Police Sideswipe was one of the very last Diaclones to use the "4613**-*-****" format of product number as it was soon changed to a "1597**-*-****" format.

A look at the contents shows an identical styrofoam layout for Japanese Police Sideswipe as regular Japanese Diaclone Sideswipe. Also present are the instructions, excellent catalog with some prototype pictures, stickersheet and the competition entry mini-form on the box flap. Let's have a closer look at the flap and stickersheet:

That inner flap is a "Licence". There is space for the owner to attach their photograph and write on their name and date of birth etc as well in the bottom right corner. This particular licence is "Class A". It also includes the three rules of Diaclone (something like "Stand up for what is true and right", "Do it with a peaceful heart and never forget our love for peace" and "Defend the world from the evil Waruder corps"). The idea was that you could either keep the licence or send it off and enter the current campaign prize which would probably be for one of the gold cars like Diaclone gold Jazz or Diaclone gold Bluestreak. Here is the ad for the gold Jazz campaign car (wasn't included with this particular toy but I thought it would make a nice aside) taken from a magazine that shows how to make use of the inner flap licence thing.

It says there were FIFTY gold Diaclone Porsches (the Diaclone predecessor to the reissue Electrum Jazz) to be given away and 200 pass cases to put your licences in as a second prize. Many kind thanks to Himawari for the above scan and the translation/details of such a rare piece of paperwork! He also pointed out that it doesn't mention the offer on the actual licence/flap.

The stickersheet for the Police Countach is very different to that of the regular Diaclone Countach. The shin stickers are a different colour (as with most of the stickers) and they say "D.P" instead of "LP500S". That probably stands for "Diaclone Police". There are also a couple of police badges with "Diaclone" lettering on them to match the factory stickers on the toy.

The sharp and striking look of this figure starts to become evident in this main insert picture. When clean and un-yellowed, this piece has a very crisp and mint look to it. Conversely, when it is slightly worn, this piece can look pretty badly weathered. As you can see, only half the car has the black section running along the bottom because the rest of the black sections are on the stickersheet. The launcher has a white tab (seeing as how the body of the figure is white), the weapons are red and the driver has black limbs whereas the regular Diaclone Sideswipes have yellow-limbed drivers. This is one of the few Diaclone cars whose driver has a matching colour scheme, and thankfully so! One other interesting thing to point out, you may have noticed that there is space in the styro for the sirens on this police car. This feature was NOT added for this release. Even the original non-sirened regular red Diaclone Sideswipe which was released a month or so earlier had space for sirens. That implies that Takara planned to do a police version at about the same time the very first New Countach LP500S mould was being designed, hence the generic styro with siren space for all Diaclone Sideswipe releases.

Now the main event, the toy itself. It is absolutely gorgeous in this condition as are most toys of the Sideswipe mould. Black and white will always contrast beautifully and the police car colour schemes have always been eye-catching and desireable. This is no exception as the mould looks excellent in police colours just as Sunstreaker did. I had first seen this Diaclone in a picture of Fumihiko Akiyama's Japanese BotCon Diaclone display and was sold on it immediately. The sirens are attached to the roof through two circular pegs. If you didn't know about this Diaclone release and always wondered why Sideswipe had two holes in his roof covered up by a black sticker, now you know!

Some may say that this release is not particularly imaginative and that it can look rather plain even with the stickers applied. Another issue is how much displayability is reduced if there is colour, paint or stickerwear. As with some other Diaclones, there can be factory sticker issues with this piece as well, especially corner peeling. Despite these issues, I pursued this piece relentlessly and was delighted with my purchase when it arrived. I found it to be stunning and tremendously displayable in either mode or packaged. Speaking of the other mode...

Having transformed the toy into robot mode, there is a sudden emergence of red all over the figure and that's where all the similarities with Transformers Red Alert really become apparent. He still has a very striking appearance and good colour contrast although posabilty is limited to the arms and the missile launcher angle. Seeing as how it is a Japanese toy, the launcher is potent and rather fun. The diecast rear section adds some nice heft to the figure and gives it a slightly chunky feel. As I said in my earlier Yellow Sideswipe article, the chrome feet are quite susceptible to wear due to the nature of their required transformation. Many thanks to Ben Munn for the second robot pic. Now for a look at the Italian GiG release of this toy:

The GiG version of the Diaclone Police Sideswipe probably saw release in Italy around late 1984 or early 1985. This is one of those strange occasions where the packaged Italian version of a Diaclone is somewhat more difficult to locate than its Japanese counterpart, however as usual, it is not as desirable or sought-after amongst a majority of collectors. However, I was one of those collectors who tried hard to locate a GiG Police Sideswipe and did find it desirable. In fact, the first Police Sideswipe I owned was a loose GiG piece (strange, that's almost exactly how my Yellow Sideswipe story went...). I also had some slight difficulty proving that it WAS Italian, but more on that a little later. From the above pictures you might be able to see a number of differences between the format of the GiG toy's packaging and inserts compared to the Japanese release.

First the obvious differences, the Japanese Diaclone (top) has the Diaclone logo and the Japanese Car Robot logo in the top left hand corner of the box front whereas the Italian Diaclone (bottom) has the red and yellow "Trasformer" and "Auto Robot" logos there instead. As a result, I think the Italian box and package as a whole is a little less attractive since the yellow and red logos clash a bit with the general black/white/grey colour scheme of the figure and its box. Another difference is that the Japanese Diaclone has a pic of the Diaclone driver, but the Italian Diaclone has the GiG logo in that same place instead. The reasons for that are a) the Italian release of Police Sideswipe did not come with a driver and b) they had to put the GiG logo somewhere! Yet another difference is that the Japanese Diaclone is "No.19", but the Police Sideswipe is "N.14" in the Italian ordering system. The Japanese Diaclone says "New Countach LP500S Police Car" in a variety of colours, fonts and sizes. The Italian Diaclone says all that in the same font, same size and all in green. I wouldn't say it looks worse, just a little simpler. Since the Italian box has some of the green lettering on the grey background, it's not as clear as the Japanese box which only uses green lettering where there is a white background. Both releases use a photograph of the toy as opposed to art. It looks like exactly the same photograph, right? Well it's actually not the same...

The top picture gives a closer look at the two Police Sideswipe box front photographs. The Italian photo (bottom) appears to be holding the handgun at a slightly higher angle and on that same handgun arm, if you look at the side window, it has some glare/reflection on it where the Japanese photo (top) does not. Also, if you look at the figure's LEFT arm on the Italian photo, the window section is facing straight down and the chrome arm section is almost facing forwards. The Japanese photo's left chrome arm is parallel to the window section and is at a different angle to the Italian photo. The red Diaclone Sideswipe art has been included to show you that the Italian photo is not just a repaint of the regular Sideswipe photo but in fact a new photograph altogether, or at least a previously unused one. Something both photographs have in common though is that they show the toy with a white missile and red-tabbed launcher when in reality the toy had red missiles and a white-tabbed launcher. I guess when they took the photographs they only had regular red Diaclone Sideswipe missiles and launchers lying around (after all, they got the handgun colour right). Or maybe they originally planned to use the same launcher and missiles, who can say. It could also be some sort of proof that both photographs were taken at almost the same time. Either that or when the second photo was taken, the same mistake was made despite the fact that the toy had already seen release with red missiles etc! The side flaps on the Diaclone Police Sideswipes show the same photographic (and text) differences discussed above:

Speaking of the side flaps, the inner flaps on the two boxes also show differences:

The Japanese inner flap (top) has the competition entry licence whereas the Italian inner flap (bottom) only has the details of the toy line and the distributing company. Now for a look at the inner packaging:

First of all, you can see the space in the Italian styrofoam (bottom) for a driver, but it wasn't included with the GiG release. The other major difference is that while the Japanese release came with a set of sprued red missiles, the Italian release came with those big orange/black rubber bopper missiles for safety reasons. As a result, a section of the Italian styrofoam just below the car's front wheels has been ripped and broken away to accomodate the larger accessories, just like with the regular Diaclone Sideswipes. It gives a really untidy look to the whole thing in my opinion. The ironic thing is that the Italian launcher was much stronger anyway! You might begin to see what I mean about the smallest amount of wear really affecting the look of the figure. The Italian Diaclone pictured above has some sticker wear which really gives it a used look even though the toy was mint and tight. The launchers are practically the same mould, meaning that if you have an incomplete Diaclone Police Sideswipe (whether Italian or Japanese) you cannot use a Red Alert launcher as a substitute. A Red Alert launcher does not have the two curved lines in the circular chrome section at the head of the missile launcher like the Diaclones do.

There are some small differences between the moulding on the two Police Sideswipes as well, the biggest of which can be seen on the central chrome section of the sirens. In the above two pictures, the Japanese Diaclone is on the left with the Italian Diaclone on the right. On the central silver chrome section between the red lights, there are four indented vertical slits in a row. Red Alert and the GiG Italian Police Sideswipe (right) have those slits too, but on the Italian Diaclone and the later TFs, those slits are shorter and don't stretch up to the top of the chrome section, they are much more vertically central. Yet another way of telling the two toys apart lies in the copyright stampings. The Japanese Diaclone says "TAKARA JAPAN" on the back of the waist and has nothing under the hood section:

The Italian Diaclone, however, has two raised plastic blocks on the back of the waist to cover up where it once said "TAKARA JAPAN" on the Japanese mould, and instead the full stamping can be found under the hood:

That about covers the noticeable differences between the two Diaclone releases of the Police Sideswipe. For a while some collectors didn't even accept the possibility that there WAS an Italian release of this toy, despite the fact that it was pictured in a number of GiG catalogs, but then again some other pictured items never saw release. The real proof came when I compared the copyright on my Italian loose Police Sideswipe to someone else's boxed Japanese specimen. See how useful copyrights can be? Then of course a couple boxed GiG Italian ones showed up on eBay and that was that. Of course, Italian collectors will tell you that they knew it all along because they had seen them in their youth.

What follows are some fun pictures of a Transformers Red Alert placed in the Diaclone packaging and a pictoral comparison of the (Mexican) TF Red Alert and the Japanese Diaclone Police Sideswipe:

They are, admittedly, not all that different and different collectors will have their own views on which is the better looking of the two. I think they look quite good next to each other and I think they both deserve a place in the TF/pre-TF universe, neither of them being any less relevant or interesting than the other. Hasbro may have thought differently though because when they came to release a TF version of the Police Sideswipe, they made him a Fire Chief. Possibly because with the existence of Prowl, they didn't want to rinse the police car theme too much. In the end, BOTH have found their way into the Transformers universe because in 2003, Takara and E-Hobby continued their series of Diaclone-themed reissue exclusives by reissuing the Police Sideswipe as the 2003 New Year Special "91 Clampdown" alongside a Black Sideswipe reissue.

Many thanks to Curt from TFSource for the top picture. You can see that for the collector's card art, Takara have repainted the original Transformers Red Alert box art into the Police Sideswipe colours, so it's come full circle in a way. There are some moulding differences between the original and the reissue (see Yellow Sideswipe articles for details) and instead of "Diaclone", Clampdown's police badge stickers say "Cybertron". Having owned all the above toys, I felt there was something missing as far as Clampdown was concerned. It was still a very pretty, striking and eye-catching toy but I think this figure works much better as a Diaclone than an Autobot Transformer. Saying that though, a nice un-yellowed un-worn Diaclone Police Sideswipe is very difficult to find, especially with good stickers, so Clampdown is a good alternative for most collectors. There is a certain prestige and history attached to Diaclones though that can never really be replicated through reissues, but not everyone cares about that.

Here are some pictures showing the Diaclone Police Sideswipe with the Diaclone Police Sunstreaker. Notice the police stickers on the much earlier Sunstreaker have Japanese lettering as opposed to "Police". And yes, the Police Sunstreaker's box front is heavily sunfaded! It should be red, not gold, but I think gold works better than red would have done for the following pics. Honest!

Two absolutely gorgeous toys which are a real pain to find in excellent condition, but EASILY worth the search and the money they will cost you...most of the time. These are definitely among the absolute favourites of all the toys I used to own. The moulds are some of the best and most loved throughout the fandom, and they both look killer in both modes, especially as vehicles.

For the longest time, the Police Sideswipe was a Diaclone-exclusive colour scheme and was one of the least known about of the Diaclone specials by the fandom as a whole. Despite the reissue, I don't think its value has been much affected. It's still rare and it's still Red Alert's big brother. It is no less special than it ever was, least of all to me. One of the pieces I truly miss from my pre-TF collecting days. Presentation and accessory-wise, I would recommend the Japanese Diaclone Police Sideswipe release over the Italian one due to the slightly nicer packaging, the original missiles and the funky-magnetic-attach-me-horizontally-to-your-refrigerator Diaclone driver. The Italian release will cost you less but it is tremendously hard to find in excellent shape, harder than the Japanese release.

The police cars will always be popular and are an excellent subgroup of TFs, although completing such a collection could be very tricky indeed as the Diaclone Prowl is probably tougher to find than either of the Police Countaches! Here are pictures of all the G1 TF/pre-TF police cars I managed to find during my collecting. Left to right in the first 2 pics we have: Italian GiG Diaclone Police Sideswipe, kitbashed Police Jazz, TF Prowl, Mexican black TF Prowl, Japanese Diaclone Police Sunstreaker and of course, the Japanese Diaclone Police Sideswipe. Enjoy!

All the best
Maz