So, what toys did you buy or get this week?

[Ran]

After I opened the ParaViper and Shipwreck, I realized they are on tri-lingual cards.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I got the new Marvel Legends 2-packs today.

Deadpool and Warpath
BlackWidow and Winter Soldier
Hulk and Valkyrie

[anarky]

After I opened the ParaViper and Shipwreck, I realized they are on tri-lingual cards.

Ah--the Cobra Commanders (for some reason, just CC, and in large numbers) I've seen at Ross have been tri-lingual. None of the ones at Marshall's have been.

Ran, no joke, if they ever get dirt cheap (I know you probably won't pull the trigger at $3), the movie Cobra Commander and Doctor Lewis are two of the nicest figures made in Joe history. I don't care how stupid the movie was. I picked up several of each on clearance and sorta kitbashed a less garish, more real-world version of the Toxo-Viper.

I even got two of the impossible-to-find (supposedly) Pursuit of Cobra CC (the movie figure done in metallic red and silver) to use as some sort of honor guard. The sculpt is that good.

[anarky]

Transformers Huffer. I wouldn't have gotten him if Target hadn't had their Power Core Combiners on sale. He's close enough to the original design that he'll serve as a nice update to the original, but the Target Master feature is a bit out of place on him. He's got some movie-esque design elements, but is mostly G1-ish. Like I said, close enough to serve as an update since it's unlikely there will be a Generations/Universe/Classic Huffer proper.

The figure's okay--I would feel really ripped off if I'd paid the full $10 for him. The feature where all the Power Core Combiners can be mixed and matched might be cool if I were 8, but all I care about is adding some obnoxious jerk to bitch to my other Autobots all the time and generally piss them off. (My best friend and I were apparently the only two kids on Earth who actually liked Huffer back in 1984.)

[Ran]

Was original Huffer the blue semi or was that someone else? I'm pretty sure I had a blue matchbox car sized transformer rig, but not sure what his name was.

[anarky]

That was Pipes. The first wave of Minicars was Gears and Windcharger (a sports car and pickup with the cheesy-ass Gobots "flip the back of the car and you're done!" transformation), Bumblebee and Cliffjumper (almost identical--each was even available in both red and yellow, though they never advertised this), Brawn (a green SUV from a time when SUVs weren't family cars), and Huffer (an orange semi who turns into a mostly purple robot). It looks like a mysterious seventh one was called Bumper in a later comic, a third mold based on the Cliffjumper/Bumblebee transformation. Apparently this, as well as the Cliffjumper and Bumblebee variants, were due to using Takara overstock and slapping Autobot insignias on them.

Wave 2 was Beachcomber (a dune buggy) and four non-car characters (Warpath the tank, Powerglide the plane, Seaspray the hovercraft, and Cosmos the flying saucer and winner of "most useless disguise mode ever").

And then came Wave 3, which featured Wheelie from the movie and some "sort of" repaints and resculpts of the Wave 1: Outback (Brawn in brown with new arms and a new face, and a cannon on his back), Swerve (a red Gears with a new face), Hubcap (yellow Cliffjumper, minus the spoiler, and an orange face), Swerve (white Windcharger with a new face), and Pipes (a major overhaul of Huffer in blue, essentially transforming in reverse).

God, I'm a dork, because I just had to double-check the names of Swerve and Tailgate, and got curious about why I had a red Bumblebee and yellow Cliffjumper and that's how I found out about Bumper. Wave 3 was boring as hell except for Wheelie (because he was in the movie), Outback (because he had a gun, which was removable for no apparent reason), and Pipes (simply because the figure kicked ass).

[Ran]

Ok, I must have had Pipes, Windcharger, & yellow Cliffjumper. I think Windcharger was originally my brothers, but I ended up with it somehow. And speaking of shitty Go-Bots, I had the matchbox car sized Leader 1 and Turbo.

Cosmos...yeah, he didn't make sense, even back then.

[vynsane]

during the first week of 'bricktober' event at TRU, they had all LEGO on sale for 10% off and select sets for 30% off. i bought two 5985 Space Police Central LEGO sets (MSRP $80, $84.99 at TRU) at 30% off for $59.49 (and a Prison Carriage Rescue for my daughter). with a $10 off $50 coupon bringing the SPC's down to $54.87 each and the 10% off the Carriage Rescue set plus another $0.76 discount (since they spread the discount from the coupon across all purchases), the total was $128.53.

i finally got around to parting out one of the 5985's on bricklink yesterday, the tally of the pieces being $121 and change. so basically I'll be getting a Space Police Central and Prison Carriage Rescue for, like, $7.

[Ran]

Got a Cobra Infantry and Crimson Guard from Marshalls. They had a couple Desert Vipers, which I don't think I've seen before, and City Strike Snake Eyes. No Kamakara.

We also went to TRU. They had a free lego car building thing for the kids. Nothing fancy, not even a complete set...but it was free.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I was going to come in here and brag that I got Wave 15 of the DCUC from Kmart today. But apparently Kmart didn't tell itself to order their own exclusive figures for the big sale they announced in their own gaddam ad because noone at the two Kmarts I went to had a clue.

Either that or Mattel announced a big sale of exclusive figures at Kmart in honor of DCs 75th anniversary and forgot to inform Kmart.

[anarky]

K-Mart's so fucked up, nothing surprises me about them anymore. About all I ever see there or at Sears are cool t-shirts on clearance because no one thinks to look there for cool t-shirts.

I'm fond of telling how the GIJoe DVD sets started at $22 ($2 more than everyone else), and were slowly marked up a couple of dollars at a time until, a year later, they were $35. Then they went on "clearance" for $26. About the time Ross was inundated with them for $12.99.

Or how all their GIJoe: ROC vehicles are on clearance now, and they have a permanent-looking sign that all clearance items are 25% off the lowest marked prices, and they're still $5 more than they cost anywhere else.

I have no clue how that store has survived when KB and Circuit City died.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Heh. I walked down their 'clearance' aisle and laughed at how high the 'markdown' prices are.

[anarky]

I think they got the exclusive Jodo Kast figure this year because the folks at Hasbro said to themselves, "Hmm. We've got to come up with some exclusive for K-Mart. I don't think they'll be happy with the usual 'four existing figures in very slightly different color schemes' crap we normally throw together for them. What's something that a Star Wars collector would have to be clinically retarded to want enough to pay K-Mart prices for? I've got it! There are some dumbasses complaining that the Jodo Kast figure from 2008 wasn't good enough, never minding the character is so goddamned stupid that they're lucky to have gotten even that piece of shit. We can recolor a Boba Fett figure and release a new Jodo Kast. And, since he's an exclusive, morons won't even complain about paying $10 for him!"

Oh, and I found Red Alert today. Three of him, and nary a Soundwave. I'm guessing a lot of people are just getting Soundwave because there's no prior Classics version of him at all.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Speaking of RedAlert, I noticed a Brawn figure from the RotF series (whatever the latest incarnation is called) and they also had a figure called Lockdown. What I didn't realize was that Lockdown character is the main villain in that Drift LS I just finished.
Brawn didn't look enough like Brawn for me to buy him.

[anarky]

There was a Legends Brawn a few years ago. It should be easier to find on the secondary market than that fucking Wheelie/Cosmos/Warpath wave they released six of and refuse to re-release.

Really. Would you ever think I'd be pissed that I can't get a goddamned Wheelie?