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Thread: Transformers Venting thread!

  1. #1341
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    2nd Jun 2011
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    A little fed up with the realities of being a TF collector in the bush and the big retail outlets of Aus

    Target: We have a little Country Target here. Gnaw and his wave are showing up in other Targets yet when I went in to our Target they had two Transformers on the shevles. Two in a whole store! A RID 1-step changer Sideswipe and a Pop! Movie Bumblebee. Yet entire shelves of other genres such as Ninja Turtles and Star Wars

    Kmart: No Kmart within a few hundred K's of here. When on holiday checked out a couple but no cheap G2 Bruticus' and only one of the G1-based kids t-shirts (the Optimus one). So tried to order the G1 Symbol and G1'esque Bbee from their website in kids size 5 for my son for his next birthday. Got an email a few days later saying they were out of stock and would refund me. So ordered those same shirts in size 4 (which he is now) and also in size 3 for a friends kids b'day. Got the message the Bbee ones have been shipped but the symbol ones will take longer. Which means either they will email me again to say they are out of stock in a few days like last time or they will not show up in time for the b'day party.


    Sometimes it sucks living so remotely - I miss hitting up all the big shopping centres looking for random TF stuff on the weekends in Melb

  2. #1342
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    14th May 2008
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    I have a first world problem Trev. Those peg hooks on the TR and RID deluxes are crap. Trying to move and look through a bunch of them and most of them would slip off the peg. Several fell to the floor which i kept picking back up like some kind of slapstck comedy routine. I never knew of this back when my local Target Country had only 2 leader Starscreams for months.
    "I am not a gun. I'm hitting people with a hammer. On Mars."
    The Iron Giant / David Wildgoose

  3. #1343
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    21st Jul 2014
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    Quote Originally Posted by BigTransformerTrev View Post

    Sometimes it sucks living so remotely - I miss hitting up all the big shopping centres looking for random TF stuff on the weekends in Melb
    It is very hit and miss mate. I within 10 kms of a Target, Kmart, BigW, Myer and a TRU in Sydney's southern suburbs. It is very rare that they ever have any decent stock as well. I haven't seen any Wave 3 Legends or Deluxes floating around here yet.

  4. #1344
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raider View Post
    It is very hit and miss mate. I within 10 kms of a Target, Kmart, BigW, Myer and a TRU in Sydney's southern suburbs. It is very rare that they ever have any decent stock as well. I haven't seen any Wave 3 Legends or Deluxes floating around here yet.
    Ditto, I live about 25 minutes drive from the Sydney CBD, there is a couple massive shopping centres within 20 minutes of me, neither targets or the Kmart have had any of the new stock that people keep seeing everywhere.
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  5. #1345
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    5th Feb 2010
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    I don't want to beat a dead horse or harp on but...

    I was going through some old boxes last night preparing a bunch of stuff for sale, and ended up messing around with a couple of deluxes from about 7 years ago, specifically HTFD Tomahawk and HFTD Sidearm Sideswipe.

    The quality of those figures completely destroys anything that is available today at that price point, which is astounding when you bear in mind that while those were generally well received figures they weren't considered seminal or all time classics by any means, unlike more or less most of the TR releases.

    I can't even imagine how excited I'd be (and how much poorer I'd be I suppose) if they were still releasing mainline figures with the engineering and design of Sidearm Sideswipe. I'm fairly sure that figure has more moving parts in its arms than TR Higbrow has all over its entire body.

    I am very very fond of a lot of the TR releases to date. Triggerhappy is one of the best deluxes in a long time, I enjoy Blurr and Wolfwire quite a lot, and while I'm not especially enamoured with Hardhead I can appreciate that its got one of the best play patterns I've seen in a deluxe in ages. That said these more or less above average figures from 7 years ago beat them out in basically every department as far as I'm concerned.
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  6. #1346
    FatalityPitt Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark View Post
    The quality of those figures completely destroys anything that is available today at that price point, which is astounding when you bear in mind that while those were generally well received figures they weren't considered seminal or all time classics by any means, unlike more or less most of the TR releases.
    I had a similar thought process recently when I compared the CW Legends Shockwave against the RiD Beast Hunters Commander Shockwave from 4 years ago.

    Looking at the 2016 Ozformers Poll results, the CW Shockwave won the "Best CW Legends" title. It's a great figure, don't get me wrong; but the main selling points of it (to me) are that it's a faithful(-ish) representation G1 Shockwave - and we all love G1 Shockwave ; and his gun alt-mode can be 'wielded' other transformers.

    However, the BH Shockwave, which is the same scale as CW Shockwave (Legends/Commander/Scout), offers relatively more tangible features - A futuristic tank mode with rolling wheels, and weapon accessory that can launch a projectile.

    If you showed these two Shockwave figures to a non-fan who has no idea who Shockwave is; I think he/she will think the BH Shockwave is the better toy, even though it's older and at a similar price point to the CW Shockwave.

    I think for some modern neo-G1 toys, namely the ones from Generations, the character and nostalgia value are the main selling points.

  7. #1347
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    4th May 2013
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    BH Shockwave is a tank, while CW Shockwave is a space laser gun... you cant really compare the 2. The only things they have in common is the colour and character name. Their transformation is completely different.

    Yes I agree the quality of the toys has declined over the years

  8. #1348
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    27th Dec 2007
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    You'll find that the better toys were ones where HasTak had more creative freedom in design and engineering. Toys like Tomahawk wasn't based on a pre-created movie model or previously existing toy. He was a whole new character and concept, so HasTak had the freedom to do what they liked, and that's awesome.

    BH Shockwave on the other hand is based on a cartoon model. HasTak had the job of translating the cartoon model into being an action figure for children. Recent CHUGUR toys are nice too, but they too are based on existing G1 characters and toys. And in the case of CW and TR, accommodating their combining and Headmaster gimmicks respectively. But CHUGUR are still aren't as slavishly accurate to G1 as MP and as such they have relatively more creative freedom. Trying to make a gun Megatron with a non-MP budget is tricky, and we end up with the likes of toys like Classics Megatron with two massive shellformery "wings" on his back, or Reveal the Shield Megatron whose robot tummy is visible in pistol mode (although for a Legends Class figure he's actually a smashing toy! ). Combiner Wars Megatron on the other hand decided, "Bugger having a G1 accurate alt mode, let's make him a tank!" And while G2 Megatron was a tank, CW Megatron's transformation and robot form are nothing G2 tank Megs'. Making the decision to give Megatron his own original design worked a treat as it gave HasTak designers far more creative freedom to just work on making a great Megatron toy. And what a menacing end-boss CW Megatron was in Devastation!

    This is why I often believe that Transformers usually work out better when they are designed as toys first and media characters second, not the other way around. With special exceptions like MP & CHUGUR, toy designers shouldn't be worrying about translating animation models into toys, animators should translate toys into animation models. MP and CHUGUR are lines whose core appeal is based on G1 nostalgia - fine. But the other lines don't necessarily have such a strong mandate on this. Lines like Transformers Prime and Robots In Disguise weren't as good as stuff like HFTD because they were needlessly based on animation models. Most of the toys in TFP and RiD2015 haven't struck me as good... mediocre at best. And some of the better toys like Arms Micron Frumble, were those that were only made for the toy line and never appeared in the show (thus they enjoyed more creative liberty). Voyager Class TFP Skyquake and Dreadwing on the other hand are just rubbish.

  9. #1349
    FatalityPitt Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    Most of the toys in TFP and RiD2015 haven't struck me as good... mediocre at best. And some of the better toys like Arms Micron Frumble, were those that were only made for the toy line and never appeared in the show (thus they enjoyed more creative liberty). Voyager Class TFP Skyquake and Dreadwing on the other hand are just rubbish.
    Like many toy lines, TFP had its share of misses, but there were hits.

    Personally, I thought TFP Legion Cliffjumper/Tailgate had impressive articulation and an interesting transformation despite being such a small figure. The Deluxe Vehicon (RiD, NOT First Edition) had excellent engineering, and the Arms Micron War Breakdown figure is still one of my favourite Transformers out of every line. Perhaps I have odd taste...

    I didn't find the Rumble/Frenzy toy very impressive however. But I'm not a fan of Transformers that turn into hatchbacks (don't know why, they're just very uninspiring to me), so my assessment could be biased.

  10. #1350
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    Legion/Legends Class figures have generally been pretty good for their size/price point, I will agree. I agree that the RiD Vehicon was pretty good, although the FE Vehicon doesn't rely as heavily on shellforming and has more solid arms. The RiD Vehicon's arms are prone to collapsing back into door mode during play (but not nearly as badly as Deluxe Airachnid's arms). Breakdown is nice, but not great value for a Voyager considering that he's the size of a Deluxe. And the obscene amount of stickers... gah (or just stickers in general -- so cheap looking in an age of tampographs).

    Quote Originally Posted by FatalityPitt View Post
    I didn't find the Rumble/Frenzy toy very impressive however. But I'm not a fan of Transformers that turn into hatchbacks (don't know why, they're just very uninspiring to me), so my assessment could be biased.
    Okay, so putting your alt mode bias aside, what do you think about that mould on the whole as a Deluxe Transformer action figure? My detailed thoughts can be found here.

    I personally love the fact that they're hatchbacks because they're just such ordinary looking cars that don't stand out! This makes them far better robots in disguise than transforming into an attention-drawing sports car or military vehicle. When you want to blend into modern human society you want to transform into something reasonably mundane. The TARDIS worked by being an unassuming 1960s police box (which makes sense since the TARDIS scanned one in 1963 England where its chameleon circuit broke down (rendering it incapable of rescanning for new disguises) - but the show has since explained that the TARDIS also has a perception filter which psychically makes it unnoticeable). G1 Bumblebee was the Autobot spy because he had the most unassuming alt mode (Bumblejumper even moreso ). Movie Bumblebee sucked at moving about unnoticed except for when he was the old Camaros.

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