Typo?

[shmax]

http://www.shmax.com/product_details/2913/peat

Where did we get "Peat" from?

[engledogg]

Ha, that was his accepted name forever, if I'm not mistaken - probably just due to lack of a proper translation all those years. 

I see the wiki now has it as Pete (which I can confirm is correct through Google translate, but of course, you already knew that).  Looking at Google cache, they had "Peat", as did a number of other websites, so at the time of creation, that's what we went with.

So, Pete it is...better than being named after partially-decayed vegetation, I suppose. 

MIKE
engledogg

[Tripredacus]

It says Peat in English right on the toy.

[engledogg]

Holy crap...it sure does.  I even knew that!  Man, mah brain hurts sometimes.

So, while the Japanese on the box translates to "Pete", the name on the toy is obviously (thanks Trips) "Peat".

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

Holy crap...it sure does.  I even knew that!  Man, mah brain hurts sometimes.

So, while the Japanese on the box translates to "Pete", the name on the toy is obviously (thanks Trips) "Peat".

MIKE
engledogg

The plot thickens: the police badge graphic on the packaging says "Policeman Pete". Obviously whoever designed the decal for the toy looked at the katakana, read "peeto", found a dictionary, and the rest is comic history (I knew an Englishman named "Pete" in Kyoto, so I'm an expert on this one). The toy's name is clearly meant to be "Pete", typo's notwithstanding.

That said, I think Engledogg's idea of listing both names is a good one, though I would switch the order to give "Pete" prominence.

[engledogg]

The reason it has Policeman Pete on his shield (that's not part of the packaging) is because it's pretty much an unchanged version of the U.S. 1-2-3 Transformers Policeman Pete, and the accessories were unchanged from the U.S. release.

I'm not sure if they gutted or changed the electronics on this guy, but, as far as I know, the accessories were unchanged.

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

The katakana on the packaging is: ピート

This is the Japanese transliteration (not translation, per se--the katakana are an attempt to directly convert the sound of foreign words into Japanese syllables) of both the proper western name "Pete" ("Peter" is ピーター) and the English noun "Peat". Both are imported words, but only "Peat" would appear in a Japanese dictionary. What happened is that some graphic artist had the materials for this toy dumped on his desk, saw "ピート", didn't know what it meant (why would he?), looked it up in a dictionary and saw "Peat" (or possibly already knew the word "Peat", shrugged, and went with it), made the decal, and skipped away into fandom history.

It's a simple case of mistransliteration (believe me, you see this kind of crap and worse all the time in Japan). The packaging says "Pete" (in katakana), it's the counterpart to the U.S. toy "Pete", and the shield says "Pete". The name is Pete. If you want to be a super literalist about it, then the name should really be "ピート".