Greenlight Vans and Trucks

Arriving with my order of female Transformers from Japan, are some more Greenlights that were part of a spring clearance sale. While Japan sourced Greenlights are often more expensive than the same product sourced from the USA, a good sale and cheap (often free) postage has landed me some good deals.

Don't have too much to say about these items, have wanted the Beverage Truck for a while and I am a sucker for these Vans.

Enjoy the images.

Transformers Combiner Wars Wave 2 - Part 1

Arriving today from the USA, the much anticipated Wave 2 from the Transformers Generations Combiner Wars series - well, at least some of the wave.

First up, the Voyager Motormaster who forms the torso of the combiner Menasor. This figure is a heavy re tooling of the wave 1 Optimus Prime figure, but I like to think that Motormaster was designed first and Optimus Prime was added into the assortment since it was an easy choice and all Transformers collectors need more Optimus Primes in their collection. Based on the online images seen, I am really excited to get Motormaster as I think his design works really well, though so far I am not really "feeling" the combined mode of Menasor but I hope that spending some time with the figure loose and using the Aerialbots as stand ins will change that.

Following on are two Legends, we have a new Decepticon called Blackjack who again looks really fantastic in online images and goes on to combine with Menasor as the chest plate. Unlike Powerglide though, the packaging doesn't really call out this extra feature aside from the tiny sticker on the side of the packaging. From reports of people who do have both figures, this chest plate mode isn't that fantastic as the car just sorta sits there and falls off with ease. Along for the ride is Huffer, a repaint and re tooling of Legends Optimus Prime from 2014 and it works well.

Wave 2 Deluxes can not get here fast enough so I can complete both Superion and Menasor and have them setup in some kind of battle pose, and then the painful wait for Wave 3 begins along with waiting to see how Japan handles the rest of the Combiner Wars line.

Retro Entertainment Mix F - Part 2

After finding 3 Retro Entertainment cars, I decided to head into the city to check all the other Countdown Supermarkets to see if they had received their stock. Sadly, none had and I decided that I needed to continue to check every day until I found more stock to complete the set. Armed with several photographs including the store tag from my local store, I set of at lunch from work to the closest store and began the task of walking up and down every single aisle checking every random clip strip and bin just in case.

Eventually I made my way to the small toy section and looked over the pegs, at first everything looked as it did on my earlier visit but then I spotted the 1963 Aston Martin DB5 and then the Ford Super De Lux. Grabbing those, I began hunting for any other cars eventually finding an Ecto 1A, 3 Thunder Rollers and 1 Batmobile. At this point I called "my good mate from the capital city" since he was still looking for a set (normally securing one from me) and let him know that I had a couple of cars for him. As I stood their talking, I continued to flip over random items in the rather messy toy section and found another Ecto 1A and Batmobile, allowing me to purchase a full set for "my good mate" and allowing me to complete my second set of openers - the Ecto 1A, Thunder Roller and Batmobile.

Some more close ups

With side tampo's this time 

And the set of five together

Just waiting for the next set of five to arrive so I can leave the best cards sealed and open the rest. Let the ripping commence!

Transformers Fembots

February saw the release in Japan of three more toys under the Legends line - Arcee, Chromia and Windblade who are all female Transformers and were highly anticipated by some collectors for their more accurate G1 decorations compared to the Hasbro Generations releases. 

As I said last month, having a known release date for Transformers in Japan, makes organising the pre orders that I run through a New Zealand Transformer forum very easy. Depending on what I think interest will be, I order a bunch of toys from the Japanese supplier and then adjust closer to release date as orders are confirmed and deposits paid. Early in February, I locked in the adjusted order and several days before release I double checked and saw that I still had my large number of items ordered. I re-adjusted back to what I needed and then checked 12 hours later to find that for whatever reason I still had many items on order and that the changes made earlier in the day had not been saved. Contacting the support line of the web based store was a breeze as they came back and said they could see the adjustments made and could not explain why the system was misbehaving. A quick manual adjustment later and everything was again back on track ...

Until the next day when checking again I saw that I only had one of each on order, when I needed multiples off certain items to cover my pre orders. Again I fired of an email and several hours later received what looked like a bulk email - the store in Japan was not going to receive its full order of items and has decided to reduce all orders to one of each item to ensure every order is filled.

I quickly checked other online stores and made a new order at a slightly higher price to secure the items and then advised those with open pre orders what the trouble was. Friday (release day) came and went without any request from payment for the items from Japan, but thankfully a payment request was received on Saturday but sadly only for one of the three fembots. Knowing how this store works I found another store in Hong Kong that had what I was missing from my own order and purchased what I needed. Settling back, thinking the saga was finally completed I waited for parcels to ship and arrive ... Only it was not over, as on Tuesday I received a payment request from the online store in Japan for the rest of the order. I paid and then sat back and waited for items to arrive and today they did - the order from Japan and the now spare items from Hong Kong

Acree since first appearing in the 1986 Transformers Movie has been in desperate need of a toy and now after 29 years, we finally have a G1 accurate toy.

Chromia appeared in season two of the original Transformers cartoon (1985) as part of a group of female Transformers. Just like Arcee, we have had to wait 30 years to receive a toy form, and just like Arcee this is more than likely due to comic appearances.

Windblade is the 30th anniversary fan built Transformer - as fans we decided we wanted an Autobot Female VTOL jet, and that is what we received. Featuring heavily in the IDW comics, comics that I am quite a few number of years behind on reading.

Retro Entertainment Mix F

The Retro Entertainment series has been a must collect series for me, and as a result of wanting one for the sealed collection and generally one to open, I order sealed cases from the USA. New Zealand distribution has been average, some cases missed and others only seeing limited distribution in parts of the country. In 2014 I switched over to a case subscription to guarantee I would get at least one case of Retro Entertainment for the collection (which is then spilt with two other collectors).

Sadly the Mix F case was under delivered to the supplier I had my order with and as a result, no case for me. Looking around online, I settled with a pre order at another company I have used in the past - communication with the owner of the store revealed that the order wasn't yet secured and several days after ordering, the first report of Mix F was reported in New Zealand - being found in a couple of Toyworld stores in Auckland. My local Toyworld didn't have any thing on order, so I asked them if they could.

Then reports started appearing of Retro Entertainment Mix F appearing at Countdown stores (a local supermarket chain) - some got Mix E in just before Christmas, but a restock was defiantly not expected. Checking two stores on the way home from work yielded no results, and while the car was in the shop getting a service I checked out the small Countdown I have locally and SUCCESS. Only three cars on the shelf and the Ecto 1A looked a little odd, but I purchased them all

It wasn't until I got home, took some pictures and then looked at other examples that I saw what was wrong with the Ecto 1A, it was missing the side tampo. No way in package to figure out what the other side is like, but it is the first time I have seen any errors on the Retro Entertainment cars.

Thanks to the team of three (DCTV) I have a full set secured, and now just have to track down the Batmobile and the Ecto 1A in order to open them along with the DB5 and the Ford Super Deluxe shown above.

Metal Earth - 1965 Ford Mustang

While annoying the staff at the local Toyworld, I spotted something new on the shelf - a series of items made from folded steel. In the store display, they had a mix of series and types - Star Wars, Star Trek, single sheet and dual sheet. One of the options was a 1965 Ford Mustang, and because their was only one in the display I decided to purchase it and see if I would go back to get some of the others that interested me.

As you can see, the car is printed on two flat sheets of steel and the construction process is as simple as folding and inserting slots into tabs. A process that sounds pretty simple, even for someone like myself who is not the best at "customising things".

A quick scan of the website and the PDF instructions on the website, show that maybe the process isn't going to be a quick and painless as the back of the packaging would imply. However there is only one real way to know, and that is to actually build the item.

Stay tuned to the blog, as I will update when I have completed that process.

RLC Series 13

After a years break, the Hot Wheels Red Line Club is on a roll in 2015.
Arriving today after taking a while to reach my USA shipping address are the next two Series 13 releases - the 64 GMC Panel, and the Haul of Flame.

Just like the Breakaway Bucket late in 2014, these two releases were ready to ship as soon as they were offered via the shop. And just like the Breakaway Bucket, these two castings were on my 'meh' list for the year.

The 64 Panel in the right colour scheme and tampographs can look fantastic, but my interest in this release was limited at best. Interest on the Facebook group however was high enough that I took the gamble and ordered two on sale day in order to bring in my maximum allowed number of three. And, now that I have the casting in hand, I am very glad I did bring in the maximum allowed - 1 is heading to a new home, 1 is staying in my collection and the remainder is currently on hold by a Facebook group member.

The Haul of Flame is an interesting casting, based off the real bus that carts Mattel Employees around HQ. Sadly, the bright orange and blue just didn't work for me in all the promotional images and for the first RLC release in a while "slept in", resisting the temptation to order additional items. In hand though part of me really regrets that decision as it does look a lot nicer in person compared to any promotional images but I have to live with my decision as this release is heading to a new home.

M2 Machines

Unlike Greenlight, there is no New Zealand distributor for M2 Machines die casts so while I was placing an order for some Greenlights I took a look around the M2 side of the online store and decided to add a few to my cart.

Just like Greenlight, M2 seems to focus just on American castings and only has a limited number that they repaint and modify ever so slightly to get a new release. This method of releasing cars does somewhat limit what I purchase from M2 as I have no need to get 10-15-20 of the same car in a different colour. The benefit of M2 however is that they come in a fantastic display case which is what I currently use as my display cases, rotating through my loose cars each month to make sure each car that I have open gets its time to shine on display.

Most of the purchases focused on the Auto Trucks range, a segment that isn't really well represented in other brands that I have easy access to purchase. I did end up purchasing a set of trucks in order to get one I really wanted, but in hand the other trucks are just as fantastic as the one I wanted to purchase so it worked out well.

Rounding out the trucks was a single Dodge Charger - as you all know by now, I just love myself Dodge Chargers and Challengers for some unknown reason.

Greenlights from the USA

Finding out that New Zealand had a new distributor of Greenlight and that the local Toyworld store would carry all Greenlight products going forward was great, until the distributors website showed no new releases. With many new lines coming out in the USA, I decided that I had to go back to the USA in order to fill some of my recent wish lists just in case the distributor had decided to not order or otherwise not obtain the selected castings I was after.

First up, four releases from Hollywood Series 8

Then, a couple of Country Road castings

Some GL Muscle, specifically to feed my need for Chargers and Challengers

And finally, an older Road Racers 2 pack

All in all, a nice haul to add some very nice cars and castings into the collection.

Eventually all of these cars will be opened and added to the many Greenlight cars I have, and then hopefully they will find their way into the display case rotation. 

Hot Wheels Cool Classics

After starting in 2013 as the replacement for 'The Hot Ones', Cool Classics carried on into 2014 and then hit trouble ending the year without 10 of scheduled releases. As this was not the first time that a Hot Wheels line has been cancelled without releasing everything, it came as a bit of a surprise to all that Cool Classics would actually continue in 2015 by releasing the final 10 cars to complete the 30 cars from 2014.

On seeing the first images of the "K Mix" online, I knew that I would have to get a couple of the cars but didn't quite know how. Asking around, there didn't seem to be enough interest from local collectors to assist with the left overs from a sealed case purchase and shipping just a few cars from the USA would end up being a very expensive exercise. Thankfully, one of the New Zealand Hot Wheels Facebook group members advised me that he was going to do an order and asked me if I wanted some cars - I let him know my wish list and waited.

I didn't have to wait long, less than a week later I had a message saying they had arrived and before I could get payment into his bank account, they were sitting outside my front door.

Just love the "racing" tampographs on three of the four cars, along with all of them being very nice castings. Enjoy the rest of the close up images.

New Toy

Back in 2013, I decided that my next computer would be an Intel NUC, a very small form factor PC. While slower than the "tower" I had, and requiring a lot of external connections to be able to function as I needed a system to function, it worked very well and removed the major issues I faced in a regular tower system - noise and the ever present dust.

One part of the system that had always annoyed me was that the only Hard Drive the system could handle was a mSATA SSD, which carried a price premium over regular SSDs. Due to my own financial limitations at the time of purchase I opted for a rather small 120GB mSATA SSD, while teaming up with a regular 2TB Hard Drive running though a USB 3.0 docking station. As a result of some issue with Windows I have never been able to figure out, the Hard Drive would power down after 5 minutes causing a considerable time delay when needing to access files. The small nature of the mSATA meant that it was not a viable option for storing most thing for fast access when needed.

Today (actually a few days ago), that changed as I treated myself to a new toy, a 500GB mSATA SSD purchased from Amazon that arrived after only 4.5 days in transit. I also took the time to install Windows 10 Technical Preview as my primary operating system in order to see how it looks and feels and so far all is good.

Damaged Hot Wheels

Just before Christmas 2014, one of the New Zealand Hot Wheels group members (via Facebook), offered up some water damaged cars for cheap sale. At the time the post went live, I was fast asleep but caught up the next morning and then took my time deciding if I actually wanted or needed anything from the left overs. I settled on 4 items and then visited the persons other sale list with some older Treasure Hunts and asked for a few items from that list.

I asked if it was possible for the cars to be sent with the 2005-2006 cars I had purchased from another member (see my previous blog entry), but a week into the new year I received a bill with postage and so paid it and waited. The parcel finally arrived in the last few days of January, but as nothing in the parcel was super important to have in my collection "right now", the wait allowed other things that were more important to have some focus.

Overall, the damage on the items wasn't that bad though I wouldn't have spent any more than I did on each item. Each of these will be ripped open and added to the collection, even though not all of them feature paint applications for the headlights and taillights,

The two older Treasure Hunts are good to add to the collection, and come from a time when Treasure Hunts were actually harder to find and had special features to define them from the regular cars. However the castings/models are not overly exciting which is probably why I only paid a small sum for each.