E's journal thingy

Night(s) of the living (cheap) robots

This was one of the best weekends for Transformers shopping that I can remember.

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We had gone up to Erie to celebrate Colin's first birthday with various family (some of mine, some of Chelle's). Many aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. were able to make the event as well as one grandparent.

While in Erie we decided to check the Target store there. (Yes they only have one. We have what... 6?) I had been waiting for the Target exclusive, Nemesis Prime (Big Convoy recolor) for several months, but had had no luck finding it in Pittsburgh. Found it there! Woohoo! Moreover, Target was having an all around sale on Transformers so I got it for just $17 instead of $20. Awesome!

The next day we stopped by one of the area's Wal-Mart stores. Apparently to compete with Target's aforementioned sale, Wal-Mart had also put some limited Transformers on sale. $6.78 for the normally ~$10 figures (Target's were $6.88 I believe) and ~$5 for the normally ~$7 ones. I picked up... well, a bunch. The one that sparked me getting a bunch was Downshift, who qualifies for my "G1 homage policy" which I'll have to describe at length soon. Ended up getting Arcee, Tow-Line, Slugslinger, and Snow Cat too.

Unfortunately none of the area's Wal-Mart stores had a clearanced 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime at reasonable clearance. We'll have to check those again in a bit. But that's better than Pittsburgh's stores not having him at all.

Oh yeah, we stopped in Grove City on the way up. The Kay-Bee "outlet" store there really just has the normal selection that other Kay-Bee's have, usually. Found some of the same knockoff sets that I have seen at Big Lots, only a buck more. Pondered getting an odd set which had three Stunticons and two Technobots, but passed (I think I have all the individual ones already). If it were a full Technobot set I would have gotten it. I wonder what drives bootleggers to mix and match like that? But anyway I found and bought an interresting set of 6 air vehicles that combine (five jets, one helicopter). Wonder if this is a slightly up-scaled knockoff of one of the Japanese micromaster combiner sets. I'll have to take some photos soon.

Posted on Sunday, October 24, 2004, at 10:57 PM