big week
I've scored a lot of new swag this week. Firstly, I found the Classics Jetfire at my local Wal-Mart. It was on the top shelf among several Primes and Megatrons and another Jetfire, and I had to ask one of the people working there to get one down. They left the other one up there, clueless that the other one could sell in minutes if they put it with the other Voyager-sized Classics. But, to everyone else, TFs are all the same. I brought him home, and he's the best in the line. I say that even though I don't own Grimlock and Mirage yet. There's just no way they can live up to this dude's awesomeness. And, he's much cheaper and prettier than the G1 Jetfire.
All good to me.
Then my order from BBTS came in. I ordered the first wave of the rereleased Heroes of Cybertron PVCs. I love these things, and apparently, I'm the only one who does. Some see it as "morally wrong" to own Transformers that don't transform, but really, these guys have a charm all their own. Their parts are interchangeable, so if a kid was able to get his hands on these, he could have Megatron and Prime tearing each other to pieces.
This line didn't do too well when it came stateside in 2002. Probably because Hasbro was adamant about marketing them to drugstores like Walgreens. Of course, Walgreens and toys don't go well together. Stores like that get the cases from Hasbro, then these cases are broken up and sent all over the place. Each store would get a quarter or maybe half of a case, and that'd be it for a week or two. It went well at first, but my local Walgreens kept getting the fucking Ultra Magnus and Paradron Medic figures while other stores in Iowa got Prime and Starscream. The line soldiered on at online stores that sold out in minutes, and eventually Hasbro pulled the plug after they ran through most of the G1 characters Takara made.
Fast forward to 2006. Hasbro's eager to get the hype machine going for the movie next summer, and the best way to do that is by giving fans what they want- G1 stuff. Witness the Classics line- it's like G1 Reborn.
Hasbro is offering these at Hot Topic stores, along with a reissued GI Joe Land Adventurer 12"er. Of course, I don't like going to Hot Topic, since I dress normal and listen to music that doesn't suck. Besides, I've been there often lately looking for Cult Classics series 5, and this store doesn't have shit. So I ordered this set of HOC from BBTS and got them before most people knew they were out. They're offering Prime w/rifle, Megatron, Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and Soundwave. A lot of heavy hitters there. Hopefully, wave 2 will feature Starscream, Galvatron, Devestator, Grimlock, and Bumblebee, since those are the rest of the asskickers I never got my hands on. There's also Ironhide, Wheeljack, Perceptor, and a few others that really should be offered again.
I daresay Hasbro should consider selling these at TRU. TRU loves their exclusives, and these would do well at less than $5 each. I got this set of five for $22.99, so it's clear they could sell for $4 and do well.
The second part of this order was a vintage GI Joe- Deep Six v2. I never cared for the first version, with its bulky suit. Version 2 was much better, plus I used to own this one back in the day. I had an affinity for underwater Joes, and this one fit the bill quite well.
He features a removable helmet, a scuba tank and bouy, and a rifle.
This was one of the last Joes to have a somewhat-realistic paint job. I can see the blue suit being that color, and the green area around the torso works for scuba gear. I just still can't figure out the orange helmet and gloves. I know that he looked better to an eight-year-old rather than a 25-year-old. It didn't matter then.
At any rate, this was one of my Joes that had the dreaded Broken O-Ring Syndrome, and the pieces to the figure and the accessories disappeared. I picked up a Funskool version last year for a buck, but it was total shit. So I found this guy at BBTS, complete w/ filecard included, for $9. To get back a small piece of your childhood, that's a bargain.
Speaking of my childhood, the last piece in my order was a TFC Kup reissue. Kup was one of the very few "big-ish" TFs I had in my childhood. (Big-ish refers to TFs that were in boxes, but weren't as big as Sky Lynx or even Optimus Prime.) As a matter of fact, I can probably name them all right here- Soundwave, Smokescreen, Skywarp, and Kup. The rest were cassettes or minibots.
I was probably the only one that was glad to hear that Kup was being reissued. And it was even the Targetmaster version to boot, which included another little TF that transformed into a rifle! Plus Takara was throwing in Kup's musket that came with the first, non-Targetmaster version of Kup. But there's a catch- Wheelie is also in this set. So, that there made this set "a pile of suck" as the kids say. I couldn't see paying $40 or more for a set that included Wheelie, at least not until I had the others that I wanted from the TFC series (which is getting more expensive every day, I might add.) I was browsing BBTS when I saw they had this set in their vintage department for $33. It was open, and the stickers were applied, but I knew that was the best I was ever going to get for this particular TFC set. I ordered it, and I'm glad I did. I usually don't apply the stickers to my Transformers, since my hands aren't anywhere near steady and them stickers are small. But, whoever applied these did a grade A job, and Kup to me wouldn't be Kup without all his goofy stickers. So, for having another little slice of my childhood in a nice, minty-fresh form, I'm happy.
The last piece probably is the least. I wandered into K-Mart last weekend looking for Grimlock and Mirage, and didn't find them. But I did find the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary Waspinator, so I bought him. I didn't like Beast Wars when it was first around, but I'm glad it was. If it wasn't for Beast Wars, we wouldn't have things like G1 reissues, Alternators/Binaltech, and we certainly wouldn't have the Masterpiece line. BW saved the Transformers from going into oblivion with the guady G2, into what we have now. I do wish that the cartoons and kid's toys didn't suck so much since then, though. Robots in Disguise was great due to the Autobots actually being cars again, but the bad guys were still beasts and called themselves Predacons.
Armada and Energon sucked. The only good thing from either of these lines was Unicron.
Cyberton was much better. I thought most of them were over-engineered and over-desgined, but a few were absolutely fabulous. I have a few of them- Downshift, because he's an old American muscle car that transforms into a guy that looks like Wheeljack. I also have Smokescreen, who looks MUCH better than the pictures on the package make him look. Then I have Brakedown GTS, whose color reminded me of Kup, so I bought him. I'd like to get Galaxy Force Optimus Prime, Quickmix (the first TF that's a cement truck since that piece of Devestator!), and Primus, but it's too close to Christmas now, and the Star Wars Imperial Shuttle is out this weekend, which means a week of ramen noodle meals for me. If I was smart, I'd have Google ads on the site making me some spare change every quarter, but then there would be links to electrical transformers and penis pills, and nobody wants that.
All good to me.
Then my order from BBTS came in. I ordered the first wave of the rereleased Heroes of Cybertron PVCs. I love these things, and apparently, I'm the only one who does. Some see it as "morally wrong" to own Transformers that don't transform, but really, these guys have a charm all their own. Their parts are interchangeable, so if a kid was able to get his hands on these, he could have Megatron and Prime tearing each other to pieces.
This line didn't do too well when it came stateside in 2002. Probably because Hasbro was adamant about marketing them to drugstores like Walgreens. Of course, Walgreens and toys don't go well together. Stores like that get the cases from Hasbro, then these cases are broken up and sent all over the place. Each store would get a quarter or maybe half of a case, and that'd be it for a week or two. It went well at first, but my local Walgreens kept getting the fucking Ultra Magnus and Paradron Medic figures while other stores in Iowa got Prime and Starscream. The line soldiered on at online stores that sold out in minutes, and eventually Hasbro pulled the plug after they ran through most of the G1 characters Takara made.
Fast forward to 2006. Hasbro's eager to get the hype machine going for the movie next summer, and the best way to do that is by giving fans what they want- G1 stuff. Witness the Classics line- it's like G1 Reborn.
Hasbro is offering these at Hot Topic stores, along with a reissued GI Joe Land Adventurer 12"er. Of course, I don't like going to Hot Topic, since I dress normal and listen to music that doesn't suck. Besides, I've been there often lately looking for Cult Classics series 5, and this store doesn't have shit. So I ordered this set of HOC from BBTS and got them before most people knew they were out. They're offering Prime w/rifle, Megatron, Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and Soundwave. A lot of heavy hitters there. Hopefully, wave 2 will feature Starscream, Galvatron, Devestator, Grimlock, and Bumblebee, since those are the rest of the asskickers I never got my hands on. There's also Ironhide, Wheeljack, Perceptor, and a few others that really should be offered again.
I daresay Hasbro should consider selling these at TRU. TRU loves their exclusives, and these would do well at less than $5 each. I got this set of five for $22.99, so it's clear they could sell for $4 and do well.
The second part of this order was a vintage GI Joe- Deep Six v2. I never cared for the first version, with its bulky suit. Version 2 was much better, plus I used to own this one back in the day. I had an affinity for underwater Joes, and this one fit the bill quite well.
He features a removable helmet, a scuba tank and bouy, and a rifle.
This was one of the last Joes to have a somewhat-realistic paint job. I can see the blue suit being that color, and the green area around the torso works for scuba gear. I just still can't figure out the orange helmet and gloves. I know that he looked better to an eight-year-old rather than a 25-year-old. It didn't matter then.
At any rate, this was one of my Joes that had the dreaded Broken O-Ring Syndrome, and the pieces to the figure and the accessories disappeared. I picked up a Funskool version last year for a buck, but it was total shit. So I found this guy at BBTS, complete w/ filecard included, for $9. To get back a small piece of your childhood, that's a bargain.
Speaking of my childhood, the last piece in my order was a TFC Kup reissue. Kup was one of the very few "big-ish" TFs I had in my childhood. (Big-ish refers to TFs that were in boxes, but weren't as big as Sky Lynx or even Optimus Prime.) As a matter of fact, I can probably name them all right here- Soundwave, Smokescreen, Skywarp, and Kup. The rest were cassettes or minibots.
I was probably the only one that was glad to hear that Kup was being reissued. And it was even the Targetmaster version to boot, which included another little TF that transformed into a rifle! Plus Takara was throwing in Kup's musket that came with the first, non-Targetmaster version of Kup. But there's a catch- Wheelie is also in this set. So, that there made this set "a pile of suck" as the kids say. I couldn't see paying $40 or more for a set that included Wheelie, at least not until I had the others that I wanted from the TFC series (which is getting more expensive every day, I might add.) I was browsing BBTS when I saw they had this set in their vintage department for $33. It was open, and the stickers were applied, but I knew that was the best I was ever going to get for this particular TFC set. I ordered it, and I'm glad I did. I usually don't apply the stickers to my Transformers, since my hands aren't anywhere near steady and them stickers are small. But, whoever applied these did a grade A job, and Kup to me wouldn't be Kup without all his goofy stickers. So, for having another little slice of my childhood in a nice, minty-fresh form, I'm happy.
The last piece probably is the least. I wandered into K-Mart last weekend looking for Grimlock and Mirage, and didn't find them. But I did find the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary Waspinator, so I bought him. I didn't like Beast Wars when it was first around, but I'm glad it was. If it wasn't for Beast Wars, we wouldn't have things like G1 reissues, Alternators/Binaltech, and we certainly wouldn't have the Masterpiece line. BW saved the Transformers from going into oblivion with the guady G2, into what we have now. I do wish that the cartoons and kid's toys didn't suck so much since then, though. Robots in Disguise was great due to the Autobots actually being cars again, but the bad guys were still beasts and called themselves Predacons.
Armada and Energon sucked. The only good thing from either of these lines was Unicron.
Cyberton was much better. I thought most of them were over-engineered and over-desgined, but a few were absolutely fabulous. I have a few of them- Downshift, because he's an old American muscle car that transforms into a guy that looks like Wheeljack. I also have Smokescreen, who looks MUCH better than the pictures on the package make him look. Then I have Brakedown GTS, whose color reminded me of Kup, so I bought him. I'd like to get Galaxy Force Optimus Prime, Quickmix (the first TF that's a cement truck since that piece of Devestator!), and Primus, but it's too close to Christmas now, and the Star Wars Imperial Shuttle is out this weekend, which means a week of ramen noodle meals for me. If I was smart, I'd have Google ads on the site making me some spare change every quarter, but then there would be links to electrical transformers and penis pills, and nobody wants that.
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