I should mention, I caved in and bought the Thundercracker/Skywarp 2-pack of Ebay, because I didn't want to risk losing out altogether because of this ridiculous distribution crap. And then I'll probably need to do the same crap all over again for Ramjet and Dirge...

The 'takara' option is always a possibility too, but in my experience they've been just as unreliable (if not more so), especially around release dates.