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.