More Transformers - the last 2015 arrivals

Arriving home from work to parcels, is always a great end to the day and it is even better when those parcels contain even more Transformers to add to the collection and display.

The first smaller parcel was from Japan, containing the newest Masterpiece figure - MP-26 Road Rage, a red female repaint of the just released Tracks.

The much larger parcel was from the USA and should have arrived before Christmas, but was ultimately delayed with tracking seeming to suggest that the parcel was MIA in Chicago for over a week. Inside were the first Hasbro releases for the 2016 year, a set of the Wave 1 Legends and a set of the Wave 1 Deluxes.

With two new figures, and two repaints, the Legends line up contains some much needed Decepticon reinforcements to compete with the over filled Autobot lineup. Shockwave finally gets a "CHUG" toy, even if it is only at the Legends scale as basically a gun add-on for the combiner Bruticus, the Decepticon cassettes get upgraded for the 21st century with some weird tablet/vehicle mode triple changer with Buzzsaw and Shrapnel gets a repaint as one of the forgotten deluxe insecticons (though it would have been nice to get all new castings for these). The lone Autobot in the mix is Pipes who is just a simple repaint of Huffer, but it works.

The deluxe lineup gives us the limbs for the combiner Bruticus, but compared to the other combiners gets the short end of the stick and mostly ends up as being bland repaints. Hopefully when TakaraTomy release their version in a few months, they correct some of the shortcomings of the Hasbro version. Brawl is the only brand new casting in the mix, with Swindle being a very heavy retool of Rook from the Protectobots. Vortex becomes a simple repaint of Alpha Bravo while poor poor Blast Off loses his space shuttle mode from G1 and becomes a simple repaint of Firefly from the Aerialbots.

Noticeably absent from the arrival was Onslaught - due to late ordering, single Onslaughts were not available and the wave mate was not at all desired.

Rounding out the box, was the Japanese version of Defensor which was a exclusive in Japan and thus was not available for ordering directly from normal suppliers in Japan. Unlike the Hasbro version, Japan has created a brand new deluxe Groove to complete the Protectobot team.

Roll on 2016!

Big Transformers

Arriving just in time for Christmas 2015, where two new big Transformers to add to the collection, stretching what is already a very tight display even further and forcing more toys into storage.

Hasbro and TakaraTomy released Devastator as this years Titan sized figure, designing 6 roughly voyager sized construction vehicles than combine into Devastator and being completely out of scale with the rest of the Combiner Wars combiners. Due to the size of the figure, there are some noticeable cut backs with the figures being very simple for their size as well as being very light and hollow, missing paint applications and even joints that are generally a given for Transformers toys.

TakaraTomy however came to the rescue (once again) with a slightly better take on Devastator, releasing a version that came with more paint applications, additional weapons, additional joints on the figures and the ability to have the choice of two heads. Of course there is always the downside that it generally takes longer to get a TakaraTomy release (in this case, around 4 months longer than the Hasbro version) and there is a small premium price to pay.

In hand, one can forget all about the simple nature of the big guy - he is just so much fun to combine and recreate those sequences from the G1 cartoon and movie and a much needed booster to ranks of Decepticons.

In a surprise move, Hasbro reissued Trypticon in their G1 Platinum Edition series and earlier in the year I decided that I had to add it to the collection. However after paying, I decided that I really couldn't dedicate any display room to the figure and was not keen on storing him away and so ended up selling the figure before it arrived in hand. Amazon however wasn't going to let me get away with that decision and in the lead up to Christmas cut the price of Trypticon down to $102US and with christmas shopping all done, I decided "what the hell" and ordered with the cheapest and slowest postage available.

Less than a week after ordering and a good two weeks before the delivery due date, Trypticon was in hand and ... boy oh boy! As a child, I was lucky enough to get G1 Metroplex as a christmas present and drooled over Trypticon in the catalogue but was never lucky enough to get Trypticon back in the day (and can't actually remember it being for sale in local stores). Now .. to repurchase Encore Metroplex from eBay so the two titans can once again battle it out.

Transformers for October and November

With my Youtube channel being known for Hot Wheels and other diecast, new Transformers arrivals are sometimes left behind and not filmed or blogged on arrival.

In October, another round of fembots where released in Japan under the Legends line - LG15, Nightbird Shadow (a repaint with a new head from Legends Arcee); LG16, Slipstream (a repaint of Windblade) and LG17 Blackarachnia (a repaint with new parts from Animated Blackarachnia).

November saw the release of another Masterpiece figure in the form of MP-25 Tracks in his Corvette C3 car mode. Incorporates the awesome flying car mode from the original G1 toy and even includes the first official Transformers flight stand to display the car while in flight.

Over the last few months, the "catch-all" line of Transformers Adventures has released a few repaint and new for Japan castings; a larger scale Grimlock based on a heavy remold of the Fall of Cybertron Grimlock and with its release, I really hope it means more larger scale toys are due in the TAV line up since every character being a deluxe or smaller is not working; and a repaint of the 2011 release of Thunderwing called Black Shadow - a release that saw a Hasbro version all the way in 2010.

Rounding out some old arrivals were some new Q-Transformers, little super deformed versions of G1 characters. The often delayed QT-17 Tracks and the Seeker Trio of Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp. Hopefully we soon see Ramjet, Dirge and my favourite seeker Thrust soon.

Hot Wheels D Case

One of my rules for the 2016 mainline was to only collect new models that were of real cars (i.e. no fantasy castings), as over the years I have collected what I like and my once small collection has now grown to be a bit too large and is filling more storage tubs than I would like. As a result, the introduction of the rule to limit what I purchase - this of course was broken almost immediately when the 2016 A case was released and further broken when the B and C cases came out.

This rule however was however fully enforced with the release of the D case into local stores. While there were few 'nice to own' cars in the assortment, I walked away with only one car added to the collection.

Thanks in part to The Lamley Blog for featuring this car on their blog as a new model for the D case assortment. As international cards do not feature the call out that a model is new for the year as the USA cards do, the 2015 Dodge Charger was originally confused as being 'just another repaint' and not a new model.

Maisto Elite Transports

With the arrival of the Christmas Holiday Season, I decided to ask Toyworld if their was still a Maisto distributor in New Zealand as I was looking for a few cars and had seen one large online store in New Zealand with 2015 stock but had been too slow in ordering. A few days passed and I was advised that yes their was and then was shown an email of what was currently shipping - the single cars had nothing new, but the Elite Transporter range had a few cars I was interested in. So I asked Toyworld if they would be willing to do an order - they were - so I wanted for the stock to arrive.

Walking in, I was advise the stock had arrived and sadly was treated to 2013 stock and let the manager know of the error. A few days later another case arrived, this time with 2015 stock but not containing any of the cars that were on the order sheet or any cars I required. Again I let the manager know of the mistake and about a week later, another case arrived at the store - this time finally containing some cars I was interested in (though I am pretty sure not all the cars that were on the order list).

A few dollars lighter, I was out the door and while looking over the purchases at work and then at my list of cars, relised I had made an error in obtaining the Silverado with the Nova (confusing it for something else) but since the store had gone to the effort in getting in a few cars for me, I will keep.

Several days later, I decided to brave the mayhem that was the largest department store we have locally and was surprised to find some more Maisto Elite Transports in store - a different *and better* assortment than Toyworld had received.

I was able to pick up an additional car from the wish list and now wait for more new stock containing one more set, along with the single Maisto Ferraris (although, eBay might be the best place to acquire those)

Hot Wheels Rewards

One of the perks of being a Red Line Club member, is that if you purchase a car during the early access period you get Reward Points (typically 3 points, but sometimes only 2). At the end of the year the club advises of a special edition Rewards Car that you spend your accumulated points on, and also offers older items from the club store.

In early November the club announced the 2014/2015 rewards period and due to the website change, it had its fair share of issues - the PDF wouldn't work for some users (and even Mattel), and the Excel file brought in to fix the PDF was also problematic and eventually plain text emails were requested as the main communication method of advising what was required.

Eventually the box of in stock older items I order arrived at the shipping forwarder facility and arrived with other items as previously reported on via Youtube and this blog and in essence this parcel can also be considered as another Christmas presents to myself, however opened well before "the big day".

The only issue with only having older items to offer along side the made to order rewards car is that I have been purchasing those older cars during the year and/or already received the cars I was after in 2013 when I completed my first year of being an RLC member. Thus the selection of available cars only had a few items of interest and as a result, I had a few options (a) order way more of the rewards car then I really needed, (b) order cars I already had and try to either sell them or open them or (c) order cars I wouldn't normally consider adding to the collection.

I decided to go with adding cars I wouldn't normally consider adding to the collection, which in this case means adding Hot Wheels own creations (aka, fantasy cars) to the collection.

Sadly there was one issue with the rewards parcel, and I was sent an incorrect item - the Custom Otto in replica 1968 packaging. While a very nice Hot Wheels item, I already had several from a purchase several years ago and due to the size of the packaging did not need any more.

More Greenlight - Self Xmas Present 04

Knowing that I had a couple of parcels headed towards the parcel forwarding company I use in Portland, I decided to have a look around eBay and other online stores in order to play catchup on some items I was after (and other items I had no idea I wanted). Parcels eventually arrived and four parcels became one as I shipped the items onward to New Zealand

All these parcels can also be considered Christmas presents to myself, however I have opened them well before "the big day".

Rather than split the shipment into each parcel as ordered, the shipment will be split based on the brand's received in the entire shipment - presenting the Greenlight portion of the parcel

The big purchase was a large diorama of NYPD cars, ordered to get the two castings missing from the collection - Ford Fusion (known as the Ford Mondeo in New Zealand) and the Ford Taurus (not sold in New Zealand). As with other dioramas purchased from Greenlight, there is a huge amount of wasted space and air in the box so the cars will be freed ASAP.

The Chrysler 200 was another car identified as missing from the collection after a search of the Greenlight casting database and while the Chrysler Dealership diorama had the "better" version of the casting, it was also way harder to obtain and also contained additional vehicles not required.
The rest of the cars in the parcel had been on the wish list for the while and had missed a few shipment opportunities in favour of other cars but were added into this order.