Toys: It's the Mecha-Disney Monster!

If it was five lions, then it was the GoLion giant robot from the GoLion, King of the Beasts (Hyakuj?? Goraion) anime series, produced by Toei Animation, 52 weekly episodes from March 4, 1981 to February 24, 1982; Americanized into Voltron: Defender of the Universe by World Events Productions, September 10, 1984 to November 18, 1985. The American version left out several of the original Japanese episodes, such as Episode #20 where Earth is completely destroyed by the villains, but when it became clear that Voltron was a hit, World Events added the originally completely separate Dairugger-XV anime TV series (Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV; Dairugger-XV, The Armored Fleet – there were fifteen transforming vehicles, five each for ground, sea, and air who combined into the Dairugger-XV giant robot; by pure coincidence there are fifteen players called ruggers on a rugby team) series, and commissioned Toei to make lots of new GoLion episodes, resurrecting the Good Guys who had been killed (recuperating offstage in the American version). Anyhow, the five lion robots who combined into the giant GoLion (which means Five Lions in Japanese) were Black Lion, Red Lion, Blue Lion, Yellow Lion, and Green Lion.

Back in the mid-1980s when the C/FO was proselytizing for anime, we would ask the American Voltron fans, “Wanna see what they aren’t showing you?”, and show them the Japanese GoLion episodes with Good Guys being unmistakably killed, and #20 with the Earth being destroyed.

Anyhow, if your childhood giant robot wasn’t GoLion, I don’t know what it was.