I remember seeing the Transformax at the vacuum store back then, thought it was super cool.
I used to see the little Kenmore badged Sanyo canisters in my Sears catalogs but never knew who made them until I asked on here.
Shortly after that, I wound up finding a Kenmore Let's Clean badged Sanyo canister at Habitat for $5. Has everything with it including the manual.
It's a fun little vacuum to use. But as mentioned above, the dust cassette/compartment is messy to empty, and the filter has to be cleaned often. It doesn't take long for the dust indicator to show red, although it still seems to have good suction at that point.
I don't know anyone really having anything against Sanyo vacuums. I think they are well made. However, Sanyo never seemed to have a big share of the market here in North America. They made at least one upright, but most of their others were the tiny canisters that were more suited to tiny Japanese apartments than American homes, which are often much larger. The attachments tended to be very small and with short hoses. These typically were with the compact vacuums like the Hoover Tempo and Eureka Mighty Mite, and Sanyo didn't seem to make the larger power nozzle type canisters which had the larger market share, and again few uprights.
I did see recently a Sanyo shop type vacuum (dry pick up only) on eBay and thought that was interesting as I had never seen such a vacuum from them.