E's journal thingy

Operation: Clean-Out

Well, it's started. On Friday I sold one of my boxed Transformers to a guy at work.

Technically I guess it started a few months back when I sold one of the GoBots (the Hot Wheels-sized ones). But that didn't seem as substantial.

Really gotta get around to eBaying those BotCon exclusives...

So-so sale

The normally $10 TF Classics are on sale for $9 this week at Target.

Quick wish list

For anyone looking for gifts for me this holiday season. Yes I do get this request.

Titanium Transformers - 6" - about $15
Thundercracker

Transformers Classics - about $10 - Toys R Us is overcharging at about $13 each
Rodimus
Bumblebee
Astrotrain
Starscream
Grimlock
Mirage

Transformers Classics - about $20
Megatron
Jetfire

Transformers Classics - Target exlcusive - price unknown
Ultra Magnus vs. Skywarp 2-pack

Torn

In a way, I sort of wish Titanium Transformers hadn't come about. There are some great design elements, and I looooove die-cast metal toys. On the other hand, the designers usually failed to address what would be weak points, and put plastic there. So these figures tend to fall apart.

I wish they'd made War Within Prime, Thundercracker, etc., in the Classics line instead so I'd be less torn. The Classics line is awesome.

Unresistable

I'm seriously going to have to pick up a bunch of Transformers Classics sometime soon. I might even have to break my "must be on clearance or sale of some sort" policy and get these, as I'm not sure they will last to get clearanced.

Actually, these might be a good purchase for someone looking to get me holiday gifts... (hint, I don't think I actually want the $20 Optimus Prime)

Frontpaged!

This will seem kind of silly, but I think it's neat to be front-paged on TFormers.com.

Heh heh.

Good stuff

Since I have the week off, I have been doing some shopping. You can usually find some pretty good deals post-holiday.

All Media Play stores are closing. I'm not really surprised. I only ever shopped there for stuff that was marked down. Who actually pays MSRP? The same could be said of Suncoast; I'm sure they are not far behind. Anyway, they actually had a few Transformers. Not that great of prices originally ($22 for a normally $20 figure), but with the store's 40% off you could get these for $13 with change. I might get some if they go down to 60%. Among the items they had were Leobreaker (can't remember the US name), Crumplezone, and Mudflap. I haven't even seen Crumplezone at all lately, though on the only one they had, the plastic in the package was a bit cut. Toy looked fine though. (They also had City of Villains, which I might get if it goes down to 60% off. Though, I am really enjoying not having an MMO right now, but that's another post.)

Target has a number of Transformers on sale for 30% off. The Supreme Starscream at $31.48 was really tempting. But I'm sure it will still be there in another week or two when the price lowers even more.

Toys R Us has the Deluxe-sized Cybertron 2-packs. Nothing I didn't already have though. Ah well.

'Tis the season, again

It's begun! I've been able to purchase eight of the Deluxe-sized Transformers Cybertron figures for "buy one get one free." I was even able to find enough unique packs that I didn't end up with any duplicate figures. Rock on!

Now to find a clearanced Supreme Starscream for $25 or less.... hmm....

Near need to need

Kinda weird. Somehow I seem to have basically caught up on all the current Transformers I really wanted. I like the looks of Cybertron (a lot), but I ain't buying any 'til they're on clearance, and that's going to be a long way off. And the other week I finally got Sharkticon through Ebay, woo. That was the last Energon figure I really wanted.

I still lack Wing Saber, the Cliffjumper/Beachcomber mold, and the Grimlock/Swoop pack. But I don't care enough about any of them to pay more than half price for any of them. Well, plus I've never even seen Cliffjumper/Beachcomber in a store ever. Still actually sort of hoping that mold shows up in the TRU 2-packs.

It's actually sort of boring. And I even just got $20 in TRU "cash" and I have nothing to get with it! No fair!

New Energon out

Today at the Century III Toys R Us, I saw Six Shot, Alpha Quintesson, Swoop/Grimlock, and Wing Saber.

Thought about getting them and scalping them on Ebay, then remembered that's against my basic outlook, so left them on the shelf.

The store had just one of each figure, so I speculated that was the makeup of one case.

Deep discount

While out shopping today, I didn't find anything that I particularly "needed," but Toys R Us had an Energon (recolor) Unicron for $15. Couldn't pass that up.

Tis the season..

... to find some awesome deals, apparently.

TRU and Wal-Mart both have some 2-packs of various Energon figures. At TRU they have (large) Optimus and Megatron together for $45 (not bad for two $40 toys). Also they have the basics, bundled two together for $9 (not 50% off exactly, but decent). Wal-Mart has 2-packs of the $20 figures for $20 (so, half off). Much of each of the above were purchased. There were also reports online of Wal-Mart having 2-packs of the $30 figures but I didn't see any of these packs.

Finally got a chance to stop by the relatively new Big Lots at Century III Mall also. Big Lots is a lot of fun in general, but what was fantastic to see was all the neat knockoffs they had. They had the LioConvoy knockoff I was looking for many months ago! ... okay, it's pretty low quality, but still. I never got my own real LioConvoy. In the same knockoff line as the LioConvoy, they had a slightly oversized Transmetal Rattrap (ehh), two colors of the raccoon-clock thingy from Beast Wars in Japan, and what I think was a scaled down knockoff of the hugeous Primal from Beast Machines. Thought about getting the latter, but it was pretty cheesy, and I didn't really like the BM show.

Oh yeah, and Big Lots even had knockoffs of Machine Robo Rescue! (For those not in the know, that's the recent Japanese remake of Go-Bots.) Thought about getting some of those, hee hee.

Half Unicrons

Unicrons are half off at TRU stores -- $25 or so.

Awesome deal for anyone not already having this awesome toy. I already have one, but I'm thinking of getting one of the recolors. Though I was apprehensive about it at first, the dark Unicron really grew on me and I would not mind having it.

Night(s) of the living (cheap) robots

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

Alternators

Am I the only one that thinks Alternators almost all look the same in robot mode, and said robot mode isn't actually that great?

I love it when pure guesswork comes together

I've been watching the toy clearance aisle at the local Wal-Mart to hopefully find the Sunstorm TF Universe figure. I don't care about Sunstorm itself (I already have Thrust, and the mold is nothing special), but I wanted the mini-cons that came with it (recolors of the Street Action team, the only ones I didn't have). I'd seen this pack before clearanced at $15, which was too high for clearance (heck, that's about what the pack should have been originally). Managed to find one in the toy clearance aisle today, still priced at $15, but I figured what the heck. Scanned up at $5. Zing!

Awesome find

So glad at this point that we have a Sam's Club membership. I'd realized too late that there were certain Armada figures I really, really wanted -- namely Galvatron and the three seeker jets colored/named after the originals. A while back I managed to find Thundercracker and was glad for it.

Now Sam's Club has a 2-pack of "Prowl" and "Starscream" under the Energon banner. Starscream is a recolored Armada Starscream, one of the ones I wanted, so I was in great luck. Prowl is not Energon Prowl as I'd expected, but rather is Armada Red Alert. So now I actually have two Armada Red Alerts in different colors. Anyone want to buy a Powerlinx Red Alert (orange colored)?

The price for the 2-pack at Sam's was an incredible $22.36 or something along those lines, quite a value for two figures originally costing $20 each.

:(

For some reason which I can't quite decipher, reading Ben Yee's writeup of BotCon 2004 and browsing his gallery of photos from it is making me incredibly depressed.

It sort of relates back to my What have we lost entry. I don't get it. Why does thinking of my toy collection make me depressed?

It might be partly the nostalgia, partly the having lost touch with some friends who are involved with the hobby. I mean, heck, Swiper works for Hasbro and Malin's now an official PR rep for OTFCC or something like that. Am I sad because I never quite shot for my hopes and dreams? I don't know that I really even had any specific hopes and dreams that I could have shot for.

Semi-Mental BotCon checklist

I keep meaning to make a note of this information somewhere for my own edification, and this is as good a place as any. Better, even. So, here we go.

1994 -- Ft. Wayne, IN. Did not go.
1995 -- Dayton, OH. Attended. Most fun I had at a BotCon.
1996 -- Chicago, IL. Attended, just one day though.
1997 -- Rochester, NY. Attended. Best effort from organizers.
1998 -- Someplace, CA. Who cares.
1999 -- St. Paul, MN. Attended. Will never drive that far again in so short a time.
2000 -- Ft. Wayne, IN. Wanted to go, but was offered to be sent to San Jose, CA for work, and opted for that.
2001 -- Durham, NC. Attended.
2002 -- Ft. Wayne, IN. Could not find anyone to go with, did not go.
2003 -- Chicago, IL. Didn't really care. Not BotCon anymore. Ah, well.

Still got the collector's spirit I do -- hard to get rid of it completely. The good Wal-Mart prices on Armada toys have me scrambling to get them all at a discount, and Energon looks even better.

More photos

My photos for BotCon '95 are now up also. I think that's all the BotCon photos I have; if I took any at 2001, I don't know where they ended up.

The trend for BotCons for me seemed to be that I got into the dealer room aspects less and less -- also hardly stepped into the video rooms at all after a while. Felt like I'd seen it all. As far as purchases went, in the later 'Cons that I went to, most all I bought were interesting stuff that either wasn't actually Transformers, or that was knockoffs. I don't know quite why, but robot toy knockoffs have some sort of special appeal for me. Part of that is probably because I like different color versions of things I am already familiar with, and knockoffs usually are different colors. This affection for color variance isn't just in toys. In playing Street Fighter II, for example, I was quite happy when they came out with the "Championship Edition" because I could then play as different color versions of the same characters. (Though Capcom went a bit nuts by the time of Super Street Fighter II, which had seven or eight variations for each character -- yikes!)

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!

The hunt be on

TF: Aramada toys have finally gone on clearance in this area. Yay! So far I have only seen good clearance prices at Target stores. The bad news though... is they have hardly any toys! It seems they cleared out hecka fast after going on clearance. I just can't win here. I did at least pick up three or four sets of Mini-Cons that I didn't have already, and one of the $10-size Autobots.

Also found an open box Prime at a Toys R Us for $12.90 (normally $40). It seemed to have all parts so I picked it up. Man, what a lame toy. The base Prime cab unit itself is fine, nothing unique, isn't doing anything other previous primes haven't. The combined "super robot" mode is a piece of crap, though. The legs don't move, and the upper part of the robot body has no back. Actually it's missing about half its chest entirely. Ugh.

Still hoping to find Galvatron (didn't like the Megatron colors at all) and at least one of the redone Seeker jets at the clearance prices...

Energon hits Pgh

Transformers: Energon have been spotted at the West Mifflin super Wal-Mart store. So far I saw the new Prime, Ironhide, and a recolor of Armada Scavenger whose name I can't recall.

Now if TF: Armada would just go on clearance. If anyone sees 'em cheap, let me know. There are a few I want to pick up.

Mini-Con sale

Chelle kind of got me interested in buying Transformers again (and not worrying as much about the space they take up and stuff like that) by getting me Unicron for our anniversary. :)

I'd been sort of three-quarters waiting for a sale on Transformers: Armada stuff before I got any, due to aforementioned space issues and also due to having so many Transformers toys yet to even be opened. And... small Transformers are fun. So I was pleased when I found that Wal-Mart has two-packs of the Mini-Con three-packs (hope that makes sense) for $10. Normally three Mini-Cons cost $7 or so, depending on where you shop. $2 off per pack is pretty good, as I haven't seen any clearance Armada stuff at all. I picked up a total of 12 Mini-Cons. Let the something begin!

Death to Rhino

No, not talking about the Smoochy movie here, though the subject allegory was too keen to pass up.