Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Pic of the Day 189

Dirge, Transformers Universe Classics 2.0, 2009-ish, by Hasbro.

For more pictures, visit the Universe Dirge page on my collecting wiki

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Monday, May 30, 2011

Pic of the Day 188

Thundercracker, Transformers Generations, 2011, by Hasbro.

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Sunday, May 29, 2011

What I Got This Week (and the two weeks previous)

Haven't done a big recent acquisitions post like this for a while. Time to get back into the habit. So, what new toys have I acquired over the last two or three weeks?

Baby girl number three. Annalisa joins her two older sisters, Katie and Elayna, as the three cutest girls on earth. Or probably anywhere.

Possibly the best Prime ever made, Cybertron Optimus Prime (Leader Class). The figure is huge, looks good in standard mode, and the trailer transforms to form a flight back with giant guns. Also, Cybertron Wing Saber (Ok, technically it's the Japanese version, Galaxy Force Wing Bomber) has neat swords that store as the wing flaps in his jet mode, and he can also combine with Cybertron Prime as a flight pack.

I've been wanting to get Cybertron Prime for a while, and I think the trade I made worked out well, though I didn't get as smashing a deal as I initially thought I was (compared to eBay prices), but I wouldn't have realized Wing Bomber combined with Prime had I not made this trade now. Also included in the trade was two different sets of mini-cons that combine to form a sword, a Japanese version of Star Saber, I think it's kinda rare, and also the Dark Saber set.

The majority of these items came in a single big box from Big Bad Toy Store's pile of loot feature. But starting with two that aren't from BBTS, I found Thundercracker and Warpath here locally, from the most recent Generations wave (and the last wave for a while). Haven't found Wheeljack yet, but I may have secured one through a trade. I picked up the new Legends Starscream (unfortunately, BBTS was sold out of the Optimus and Megatron). 3 Japanese candy model kits - they're quite simple and fun to put together. This is wave three, consisting of Starscream, Ginrai (a Japanese version of Optimus Prime) and God Bomber (an armor/trailer for Ginrai). I also have a few from the earlier waves: Ultra Magnus, Classics Jetfire, and Wing Saber.

Next in the pic is an exclusive Henkei figure (Henkei being the Japanese version of TF Classics): Strafe. Strafe is a repaint of one of the best Classics molds, Cyclonus. The one was originally only available through a Japanese credit card offer of some kind, but BBTS had a bunch, and recently put them on clearance for half their eBay value, so I picked up one, since it is one of my favorite robot-modes of the Classics line, and it's a nice deco. I'm now only missing two repaints of the mold, Henkei Cyclonus and Shattered Glass Cyclonus, both of which I intend to pick up someday, Henkei sooner than SG, since that's also an exclusive and costs a bit.

Going faster, I picked up all of TF RID Rail Racer, the three train combiner. Don't like him as much as I thought I would. The train modes look fine, but the bot-modes look strange, and the combined mode is okay, but not great. I'll probably end up sellign those three. I got the ladder and one missile launcher from the TFC Gear of War set (upgrade set for a few Classics figures, like Inferno and Red Alert/Sideswipe/Sunstreaker). Inferno looks great with the ladder.

I also got three third party Transformer-esque figures: Warcry and Flameblast by FansProject, who has to be the best third part company out there. These two figures are awesome, even if they are repaints of figures I already have, they're distinct, much more interesting visually, and just a lot of fun to play with. Perfect Effect is not far behind FansProject in the quality and overall greatness of their third party releases, and the Scouting Force FX Set (PE-11) is pretty awesome. The box is tiny, but the figures are actually a little bigger than their previously releases (of which I only have the Ultimate Form box set consisting of Sun, Night, Ejector and Rewindor), loaded down with weapons and accessories, all of which have storage locations in the camera mode. Unfortunately, that little PE-11 box cost more than any two (or three, or even four in some cases) figures in the above picture, but I think it was worth the price.

Finally, I picked up the new World of Warcraft Human Paladin figure, to go with my other two recent Warcraft figures (neither of which have pictures yet), the Blizzard exclusive Pandaren Brewmaster, and Forsaken Queen Sylvannus Windrunner. And MOTUC Pathor, so Skeletor can ride into battle against He-Man and Battle Cat. I'm not a big collector of MOTUC, but the figures are nice, there are a few I am interested, partly because I had some when I was a kid, and partly because they're neat looking.

And to quickly finish off this overlong post, I picked up a few Harry Potter figures, since I'm a huge fan of the books and films: I grabbed Snape from the 7th movie line when it first came out last year, and recently found Lucious Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Prof. Dumbledoor at TRU on clearance from the 5th movie line.

Oh, one more thing, I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of them yet (it's far too easy to get behind on that), but I picked up the RID Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus figures, which are large TFs, which also combine with each other to form Omega Prime. They're pretty cool figures, glad I was finally able to get a hold of them.

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