woohoo
At long last, I found someplace which had both desirable conditions of Transformers: Armada on clearance at good prices, and a good supply of said items. The place: the West Mifflin Wal-Mart, the biggest single store on the planet.
Mini-Cons: $4 a pack of three
Super-Cons: Scanned $5 in their system, some marked $3, $5, or $7 depending on which aisle you were looking in
Max-Cons: $11, some having three bonus Mini-Cons attached
Needless to say, E's Armada collection is now pretty healthy :)
Front page note: the image gallery now includes scans of my photos of Botcons 97 and 99, and will soon have my BC 95 images. Hooray!
Only Armada toys I actually still care about at this point are Galvatron, and the three Seeker remakes -- Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp. I don't really expect to find them at this point, but oh well. And I don't have at least one Mini-Con pack, two Super-Cons, and some of the... uh... Gigs-Cons? Overload, Tidal Wave and Jetfire, that price point. Okay, now that I think about it, I'd still like Jetfire, but mostly I'm interested in Galv and the jets. Keep looking.
When this Wal-Mart first put Armada on clearance (at around 30% off), I saw a Thundercracker with the three bonus Mini-Cons. The normal $20 price point was at $14. Wasn't that bad; I really should have gotten the Thundercracker then.
I have to say, so far Energon toys look really cool overall. The sets of two guys that combine with each other in two ways -- that reminds me of Landcross, one of those Japanese sets that I always wanted but never considered worth the exorbant prices the Japanese pieces usually demand. (I should have gotten one of the oversized Landcross knockoff sets, dangit.) They look more consistent than Armada (I mean, Armada Super-Cons for the most part looked just like a random bunch of cars, really primitive in some respects), and I like the translucent weapons. Translucent plastic is nothing new, of course, but I like this application of it more than, say, Generation 2. (You can only see light shining through a guy's head through his eyes so many times before the effect loses its newness.) Now, in the Japanese market, they actually have store-exclusive, differently colored weapons. That's interesting too, but I'm not sure if I care. I guess, at the very least, that lets you set up more of your troops with "John Woo" two-gun action.
The two major shortcomings of Energon as I see it are the horrible color scheme of Scorponok (ruining what's otherwise quite a cool looking figure) and the lameness of Energon Prime. This Prime just looks doofy in either mode. The add-on parts/vehicles remind me of the original Go-Bots, and of course, that's not something any Transformers fan would consider complimentary.
Plus of course I haven't been able to catch any Transformers cartoons in a few years, since they're only on Cartoon Network and we don't have cable or satellite. But from the sounds of it, TF shows haven't been any good since Beast Wars
Mmm, Beast Wars. Let's all have a moment of silence for the remembrance of this fantastic show and toy line.
Now let's all have a moment of grumbling and supressed anger over Beast Machines. You suck, Beast Machines.
Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004, at 05:39 PM