Immortals of Change- The Transformers and GoBots of Crossbows and Catapults

Build- Destroy-Lose Dozens of Tiny Pieces in the Carpet

Picture it: Butler PA, Clearview Mall Kay Bee toys, the eighties. It’s a week after my birthday and I’m looking for a Ken doll in a Miami Vice white outfit to date my Sun Gold Malibu Barbie. Why? Because I was a dumb child who thought Malibu and Miami were the same thing. Also I had a cardboard food box from Rax Roast Beef that looked like a convertible sports car and Barbie was NOT going to be seen driving herself around Miami, California.

Anyway, hidden under sixteen copies of Frogger The Board Game in the back of the store was this huge (relative to tiny me) box with towering city-like robots striding across an sparse alien landscape, hurling translucent disks at each other.

I thought to myself “Could all this awesomeness be contained in one box? Was this a game? A building set? A plastic portal to a distant time where precariously stacked towers of thin plastic try to knock each other over with projectiles destined to be lost under furniture and in heating grates?”

The answer to all of these questions was a resounding YES.

Immortals of Change was a build-and-destroy game by Lakeside Toys and a sequel to their hugely successful Crossbows and Catapults line. Instead of dwarves and goblins engaged in fantasy warfare, these were little red and blue space-robot-mans in a galaxy far, far away. Both games used the same projectiles, plastic shield-shaped round slugs as you attempted to knock over your opponent’s soldiers, markers and structures.

Crossbows and Catapults was a fairly well-build and designed game, with solid pieces and decent little orcs and goblin figures. Immortals of Change was vastly more cheap in its construction and presentation with thin plastic parts, lots of tiny, easily lost joiners and a heavy reliance on friction-fitting the multitude of pieces pieces into place. The figures themselves were tiny red and blue robot men that were assembled from two parts- an upper torso and legs/waist, allowing them a single pivot point to stand or sit. But, as with everything else, the plastic was incredibly cheap and friction fit together…and eventually they’d begin just keeling over or falling apart at the joint.

That said, there was a lot to love about this set. The parts were largely ambiguous, space-age looking shapes. It allowed your imagination to run wild coming up with new ways to assemble them into robots, vehicles, bases or even small cities. The instructions gave you a few ideas, but to this day I find myself discovering some new method of joining the parts, unlocking options I never considered before.

But far and away, the most appealing part of Immortals of Change were the disks. A dozen or so little see-through round, plastic shields that made a satisfying clacking sound when rattling around together. These things were just PRETTY and would never pass safety regulations today due to the fact they look like downright delicious candy.

I have a pretty respectable Immortals of Change collection with three boxes copies of the core Battle Sets and most of the smaller add-ons. I am missing one of the expansion sets- Bruton. But it happens to be the one that includes no new or different bits. So anything you can make with the Bruton set can be made with some combination of the other three boxes.

I just picked up the new Restoration Games version of Crossbows and Catapults, and it got me thinking fondly about its little-known and much less successful cousin.

I’ll post detailed photos and descriptions of the Immortals of Change boxed sets and pieces in the next few posts.