These aren't really knock offs so much as "random small company cashing in on the transforming robot craze in the 80's".
Working in Ohio for a couple of days, and I stopped by a vintage toy shop. They had these in a case with a bunch of Hot Wheel type cars. I didn't recognize them, but he wasn't charging much to begin with and he cut me a deal if I bought all 6 that he had. Did a little digging back at the hotel and found out that they are Switch Bots from LJN.
There's the leader of the Evil Bots, Captain Destroyer:
And the rest of the Evil Bots
Heavy Hoser:
Nozzle Head:
Stingwing:
Stinkbomber:
And they combine into the Evil Megabot (I'm sadly missing the combiner kibble, so this is incomplete)
Here's some pictures off ebay showing his instructions and what he SHOULD look like if I had all the accessories:
And here's my lone Good Bot, Orange Crunch:
And some pics off ebay showing his original packaging and what the Good MegaBot would look like:
As you can see from the Orange Crunch package, all of these had the same gimmick as the Transformers Sparkbots. They all have friction motors with sparking action that either shot out the front of the vehicles or lit up the lights on the truck bots. None of those really work anymore, sadly. I was able to get a tiny spark or two, but nothing like what I'm sure they did back when they were new.
