Fit For Natalie

I think I'll get both and do the arm swap like somebody on TFW2005 suggested. The ALL-RED look is just overwealming.

You should try. TFs go for pretty good prices nowadays. Armada is in demand, too, depending on your region.

You know, I sold some TFs I don't like anymore to buy this. That's a good way to both make room for new stuff and money to buy said new stuff. FantoFan posted pics of 'USA Edition' Universe Powerglide, Onslaught and Silverbolt. They are in cartoon-accurate colours.

Its not too bad, though you North Americans are too used to low prices for absolutely everything

This is like the Star Wars Evolution figure packs. I hope they do this for other major characters, but guys like Prime and Megatron may be too expensive if they want to use decent toys, eg: Classics Prime - Voyager Movie Prime - Animated Voyager Prime Classics Megatron - Voyager Movie Megatron - Animated Cybertron Mode Megatron

If you look closely at the toy inside the packaging, all of the grey parts are now molded in yellow, so he has yellow arms, yellow shoulders, a yellow jetpack-trailer and likely yellow insides of his feet.

Legacy of Bumblebee 3-pack Yeah, Classics BB has a deco layout similar to Henkei Bumblebee.

I think David and the other established that the Japanese MP SS wasn't gunship grey, but a weird green. I believe some edges on wings and such aren't rounded off. Hasbro's release was a kind of 'safety' version, with some thin, sharp edges on wings rounded off and the aforementioned tips shortened.

I believe our Japanese and Japanese-reading friends at TFW2005 said that the limit number was for that particular store, but Ganbo (I think) said the preorder will stay open until June 20th, and the limit number is essentiallly unlimited. It sounds like Takara is willing to produce however many are ordered, which, if true, is great.

I'm thinking of using GI Joe ground vehicles as Rebel/Republic armour. Can anybody think of appropriately industrial/futuristic-looking GI Joe vehicles that would fit the bill? So far I've only thought of the Avalanche (for it looks abit like Yutrane-Trackata's tracked tanks) and the ultra-rare Blockbuster (reminds me of the Juggernaught Turbo Tank).

I hope I will be able to get one, though this sounds extra hard. Non-Japanese will have to depend entirely upon Japanese scalpers (unless they have friends in Japan).

The stripe deco pattern on Takara Skywarp is more boring, though. I wish Takara had gone bizzaro and followed Hasbro's example by doing some kind of stripe pattern that wasn't a carbon copy of the previous decos. I dunno, something like Armada Thundercracker would be nice looking, I think. Not really, unless they're particularly mean-spirited ones or ones being ironic for the sake of pissing off people who take the Thundercracker issue way too seriously. For some reason I noticed some people who didn't get the BotCon set (or were dissapointed at the exclusive/expensive status) created an imposed persona of elitism for people attending BotCon that previous didn't really exist before with any other BotCon or convention. From what I can tell of most people going there, like every other year they went there to have fun and pick up some souveniers, not to get nerd cock hard ons over which toys they have.

I'd prefer the Tantive IV Blockade Runner, since an iconic battle scene from the very first Star Wars was featured on it, and would probably be more managable as a toy, and wouldn't look so ridiculously out-of-scale. They can then repaint it as the Ep III Tantive IV for fun scenes where Yoda, Obi-Wan and Jimmy Smits talk and talk and talk. Yeah, yeah, I know the Ep III Tantive IV was a different design. One of the Q&As asked about the feasibility of Hasbro doing the Juggernaut Turbo Tank. Hasbro said that they couldn't risk doing such a large vehicle based upon a cameo in Ep III that lasted a few seconds, so we better hope it appears in the new Clone Wars series.

Yeah, but see, most companies that deal in mass production toys normally do not want to do exclusives unless they don't really have a choice or are directly requested to do so. This is why most exclusive toys are repaints or minor retools/kitbashes of existing toys, and it is a internet toy collector-created myth that companies do exclusives to explicitly make life harder for collectors. Hey, they like money, and if they could, they would sell everything everywhere. For products that are expensive to develop and manufacture, they want to be able to sell them to as many retail outlets as they can convince to stock them, to recoup their costs and make a profit. The more units they make, the cheaper each unit costs, and the cheaper the recommended retail price will be. This is why convention toys cost so much - there's only 4,000-5,000 odd units as opposed to hundreds of thousands in a normal retail run.

They want the movie to be remotely successful outside of North America, so they had to make them some kind of international fighting force so that international audiences can get into it (rather than be potentially patronised with a 'America saves the world from themselves' type of film). Really, GI Joe is an oddity in Hasbro's major toy franchises in that because of its subject matter and patriotic jingoism, it has been largely unsucessful outside of North America in recent times. That's not good business from a movie-making perspective, unfortunately.

I think the reason Hasbro avoids collectory stuff is because generally other manufacturers provide that product, and whenever Hasbro attempts to do one of their own (see Unleashed, or that Vader statue of theirs), its compared unfavourably despite being more affordable. Of course, its also not their area of expertise. I assume that's why they sold off the SW 12-inch license to Sideshow - let somebody else who can give those sorts of product the time it deserves while Hasbro concentrates on what they're good at.

And I care about kids having fun with toys, because I believe in toys being fun. We're not up to the point where Japan is now where they are simply running out of young people to sell things to due to their rapidly aging population. So far Hasbro does a good balance.

But how many of these high-priced items are sold? Hundreds? The low thousands? Hasbro deals with hundreds of thousands toys in an average run across a broad range of products across the world. While Star Wars has a historically stronger collector market than most of Hasbro's other toy franchises, an off-movie year still generally has a lower production run (and sales expectations) than what they would do during a year where there is some major mass media that helps flog the toys to the masses. A large, expensive toy will move more quickly when it does not have to depend mostly upon collectors buying them up. Oh, and I think a ridiculously large, accurately-scaled Millennium Falcon would be impractical, too expensive and less fun to play with if a child can't reasonably pick it up to fly around their room.

Enlarged and rehashed? It's a completely different design and a completely different tooling. They only way they're the same is that they're toys of the Millennium Falcon and both toys share the same Kenner designer. Hasbro is not a collectables company selling to a small niche of customers who can afford several hundred dollar items with relative ease. They are a multi-billion dollar company selling affordable, mass-produced products at brick & mortar retail outlets. In other words, they don't target 'that fat guy wearing the t-shirt that says "Jedis do it Force-fully"', but everybody they can get their bloody hands on. No way will the Walmarts, Targets, Toys R Uses, Kmarts of the world will bother stocking a gigantic toy that costs around $500, at least not in quantity that justifies the expense of the endeavour in the first place. They'd love to make gigantic, expensive things so long as there is the reasonable expectation that A. Retailers will put significant support behind the product, which is where Hasbro make their money directly, and B. the average consumer, *not* the collector alone, will buy the product, thus ensuring the retailer will continue to reorder the product. They're releasing their two biggest SW toys this year because 2008 is Clone Wars, and is a big kids-push year. Get kids and their parents excited aobut Star Wars again and you'll see AT-TEs and Falcons steadily moving off shelves faster than they would during the years where there is no Star Wars mass-market media.

Its really quite out of scale, but since it barely appeared in the ROTS, best way for Hasbro to make it without spending too much dosh on something most people don't even remember seeing in the movies. Stupid prequels and their vehicle screentime-phobia.

Bought an AT-AP today. Now I await the mighty AT-TE

I recall the Botcon reports saying Shockwave is more of an Armada Megatron homage due to the similar vehicle mode and the big ears.

Doubt it.

Well, Megatron was never polished metal like the prop truck was, so it would be inappropriate to chrome him up anyway. Did they actually retool Leader Megs' head for the premium release?

Why don't you wait for the Japanese Optimus Prime Battle Mode version? More paint and LOTS OF CHROME.