Joustra

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Joustra was a French toy company, a subsidiary of Ceji, that held the license to market Diaclone and Micro Change toys in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. In 1985, Hasbro Bradley introduced the Transformers brand to continental Europe through their subsidiary Milton Bradley (MB), including the countries where Joustra had been the Diaclone licensee. During 1984 and 1985, Joustra continued to sell toys under the Diaclone brand, but by then Takara was mainly focused on producing Transformers-branded toys for the North American market; as a result, some toys with factory-applied Autobot or Decepticon stickers were sold in Joustra Diaclone packaging.

[edit] Connection between Milton Bradley and Joustra

A theory (based on hard evidence) suggests that most, if not all of the second wave of the MB-branded Transformers toys were originally intended for Joustra.

Because Joustra's parent company, Ceji, was in financial trouble in 1985, Hasbro/MB acquired Joustra's existing Diaclone stock and had Joustra put the toys into newly created Transformers packaging, which would then be distributed by MB. This would explain why the second wave of Joustra Diaclone toys (which became wave 2 of the MB-branded Transformers toys) is so rare compared to the first one. It also explains why Optimus Prime was originally absent from the MB line-up, as any toy released by Joustra was off-limits for MB due to Joustra's exclusive contract with Takara until the Joustra/MB deal allowed for those toys to be released as Transformers as well.

The same theory also suggests that several MB toys (in particular, Optimus Prime and Megatron) were explicitly manufactured by another Ceji subsidiary, Revell, as part of the same deal.