2014 bodycount

Figures, collectables, customs and collecting.
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Knightdramon
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2014 bodycount

Post by Knightdramon »

aka the make yourself feel slightly better for your lack of cash thread :p

Now that 2014 is gone, I thought it'd be a good idea to talk about what went on with our purchases, our goals [and if accomplished], and what you wish to accomplish into 2015 onwards with your collection.

For me, it was a relatively very light year. Because of financial difficulties earlier on, I cancelled my preorders for G2 Sideswipe and Soundblaster, opting to hold out for the 3 original moulds later on. Except for any backpedaling and on the spur purchases [gifts, one offs etc] it was probably my cheapest year altogether, TF-related.

I've mostly caught up on what I wanted for comics with all the TPBs until the very last MTMTE which came out this month. All that needs "hunting" down is some standalone RID issues and I'm good.

For official releases, thanks to the KO Ratbat and an MP Soundblaster trade from numbat, as well as Magnus, Whirl and Bee in customs but in the country, I'm almost all up to date with what I want.

Despite my initial wish, I stayed away from AOE almost entirely, and the one figure I got I traded almost right away. I also finally managed to snag a Generations Springer, after 1+ year of wanting it, as a birthday present. With Whirl on the way and Sandstorm already in my possession, official "low-end" releases are more or less in check.

I also got a taste for 3rd party offerings, but despite my initial claims, I probably will not follow through. While some of them are truly spectacular in their own right, I feel the price of 50-130 pounds per figure cut away any chances I had of getting a near complete collection.

I wanted to complete Feral Rex and stick by MMC, but sadly I've frozen on my tracks with just Talon and the Black Sixshot, both of which I find myself not very hesitant to sell away should the correct buyer come knocking. While I adore MMC's quality and style, I am afraid that if I go all out it will severely hamper my chances of collecting pretty much anything else due to prices alone. MP22 Magnus cost me 72 pounds retail, with around 28 to ship him with Bumblebee and Whirl EMS, while Black Sixshot cost as much on his own, retail.

This sort of calculation kind of had an effect on me, as no matter how much I like them, I can't and won't commit to such a chunk taken out of my payslip monthly for plastic toys.

With that being said, I put in an order for FT04T Scoria, as that was the colour I wanted all along. With how spread out the dinos are, the higher cost is much easier to swallow, and you know there's a very finite number of 5 coming up altogether.

On other random purchases lining up, I'm still insta-ordering MMC's Nova Prime ever since I first saw the CAD renders in August 2013, and would like to go after Combiner Wars Menasor if funds allow it.

And lastly, for hobby items, I've somewhat rekindled my flame for Macross high end products, but if I'll go through with that remains to be seen.

So all in all, a pretty good 2014, hobby wise, even though I never got to finish or go more than 1/5th of the Feral Rex I wanted. :up:
Few stuff in the UK to trade/sell. Measly sales thread.
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Skyquake87
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Post by Skyquake87 »

I started out 2014 looking to pick up some Micromaster bases and was pleased to luck out on Hothouse and Airwave, along with Greasepit and Ironworks. I really dig the Micromasters and think they are one of the coolest parts of vintage Transformers. I've also added Spaceshot and Blackout and their tank, along with Groundpounder and the Monster Truck Patrol. There's some others I'd like, but the prices on a lot of the Combiner Transports and bases is way out of my price range, so I'm happy with what I've amassed so far and will just keep an eye out for any bargains :)

I tried completing the TV cast for Prime, but ended up selling off all the Beast Hunters and Cyberverse toys I had as I took a look at the line again and just didn't like the drop off in quality after the initial 2012 assortments. The Cyberverse stuff went as I just made a choice between which versions of the characters I liked best (and funded my Micromaster hoard!).

Like everyone else, I have been sucked in by the Masterpiece line. It doesn't overly excite me, but I am pleased to own a version of Tigertrack that's in my price range and I picked up Prowl towards the end of the year for a not unreasonable £30. I can't honestly say I feel the urge to rush out and buy more of these things. Exhaust is the only other one I have some enthusiasm for at present.

Which just leaves Generations - this has probably been my main area of focus this year. Just by virtue of there being some very good toys put out under this banner. Whilst Roadbuster was a little disappointing, I do like Whirl, Douledealer and Scoop. It's Brainstorm and the new Combiner Wars figures that I've picked up that I absolutely adore though. They're pretty simplistic in terms of design and execution, but I love the crisper plastics and paintwork on these toys. Coupled with the excellent sculpts and articulation and Hasbro are finally onto a winner with the line for me.

I was also pleased to discover that Beast Wars had a region 2 DVD release in Germany, which features the original English dub. Its only the first season, but its complete and beggars can't be choosers...!

More Than Meets The Eye continues to be the highlight of the comics, RID just doesn't match up to it, unfortunately, and the Dark Cybertron crossover was largely rubbish.

Best of all though was the release of the Legacy artwork book, which collects pretty much all the G1 / G2 toy box artwork and is now one of the highlights of my collection.

Overall, a good year for me and one that's reignited my enthusiasm for the brand. Found it very easy to avoid all the movie toys, which have no interest for me ditto all this Third Party stuff.

Edit: Just remembered! I also picked up a couple of Beast Wars Neo figures I was after - Mach Kick vs Archadis and at Auto Assembly chanced on a slightly playworn Sonokong version of Stampy vs Sling, whom I purchased on a whim but found I rather liked anyway.
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Clay
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Post by Clay »

It was expensive for me, but that's because the stuff I want was finally being made (big, fancy combiner types). I think 2014 included the completion of Fansproject Menasor and MMC Feral Rex, the acquisition of Maketoys Quantron and Green Giant, and 3/5s of Warbot Ron's Bruticus. Will be finishing up Bruticus this spring (I predict as of now, on January 1, that the Onslaught figure will be out no sooner than May), and after that may jump immediately into the not-Abominus. But general lesson learned from 2014 is to just follow one subset at a time.

Oddly enough, in spite of the fact that the brand had a major theatrical release that earned a billion dollars in revenue, surprisingly little of this is reflected in stuff that appealed to me enough to pick up. I got the Takara Rusty Prime because it's awesome, and collected the mass retail versions of the Dinobots because I liked the more colorful options, honestly. Other than that... they just didn't make many figures from it. The movie had a fair few Decepticon/KSI drones that looked neat to me, but they just didn't materialize outside of it. Oh well.
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Clay
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Post by Clay »

Also, it was the year that I got Cliffy's Combinators! They're like Duocons, but not crap.
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

This was the first (and likely to be only) year I can really say I've collected, which tended towards 3P with the exception of some AoE dinos and Generations stuff, and besides some pre-orders stretching into 2015 (FT dinos, Apollyon, Felisaber, CW Aerialbots) there's not tons I have on the radar now -- MMC Impactor being the main one. Cleared out a lot of stuff mid-year as well.

Displaying has gone roughly four ways;

- Lost Lighters
- Wreckers
- Earlier series Autobot MP
- Mainly later era Decepticons MP/Voyager

By later era meaning not-"Headmasters", Bludgeon, Octopunch, Predacons, etc. and by earlier series meaning pre-Headmasters apart from Generations Brainstorm, who's towering over Wheeljack and TFC not-Air Raid.

Plus a smattering of 3P dinos, Infinitor, 25th Unicron, etc.

Other collections are also winding down, with a few MOTUC I'm interested in to round out the Horde, Snakemen and Great Rebellion.
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HeavyArms
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Post by HeavyArms »

I had wanted to get the last few waves of Generations figures, like Blitzwing, Sandstorm, Rhinox, Rattrap, because I just haven't seen anything outside Prime, P: BH and AOE and anything branded as Transformers but not being the figures themselves like Kre-O or the mix 'n' mash stuff.

But other things kept getting in the way like Lego or similar products or other stuff. Although, I do have the five AOE deluxe Dinobots and I do want to get 3-5 of the voyagers of the line. I also, have what looks like, going by the packaging, Takara Masterpiece Grimlock and Prowl on lay-by at my local Toys 'R' Us, I would not be against buying a Wheeljack, Soundwave and Ultra Magnus should they make an appearance or another one in the case of Wheeljack.

I also look forward to trying to grab certain Combiner Wars and 2012-14 Generations toys if possible.
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Warcry
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Post by Warcry »

2014 was an expensive year for me, but not a very busy one. In fact, I think the former happened because of the latter. Since so little of the main line offerings spoke to me (I only bought eight mass retail figures all year long, nine if you count the Rattrap that Clay bought at retail and shipped my way) I had a bit more flex in my entertainment budget this year and that meant I was able to throw some money around at pricier items that I wouldn't have considered a few years ago. The "I could get eight Deluxes for this price!" math sort of falls apart when there haven't been eight Deluxes over the past three years that I've actually been satisfied with ("I could get fifteen Beast Wars toys for this price" is still somewhat convincing though).

I didn't actually get (or even see) any new TFs until mid-March this year, when I picked up Generations Waspinator. Rhinox, Whirl and Cosmos followed in short order. Scoop, Swerve, Shrapnel and Rattrap rounded out the year for that line. And with my cut-back buying, I found that I was much happier with Generations this year than I was in 2010-2013, where I was a lot less choosy with what I spent my cash on.

On the AoE front I was much the same as Knightdramon, abstaining almost entirely. The one toy I did get was Deluxe Scorn, who is quite good. Nothing else was impressive enough to entice me, and aside from the occasional "too good to pass on" toy like Scorn I think I'm done with Movie stuff.

On the Masterpiece side of things, I got G2 Sideswipe in April, Grimlock in July and Prowl in December. I don't see myself getting much more than just Exhaust in 2015, unless Takara surprises us with a fantastic Jazz or Hound in the later half of the year.

I also continued to build my vintage Beast Wars collection, with Bantor, Powerpinch, Retrax, Buzz Saw, Scarem, TMII Spittor, Iguanus, TM Airazor, Stampy, Sling and Transquito all making their way into my hands over the year. And with them coming at an average price of somewhere around $10 per figure, they reminded me why it's so awesome to be a Beast Wars collector.

(I actually didn't realize I'd bought so many, since I got them in bunches.)

I got a few other vintage toys as well, courtesy of fellow Archivers -- Movie Fracture, a replica G1 Frenzy, Snarler's inner robot and Runamuck (who is probably going to wind up being my kid's first Transformer in a few years) from Denyer, Universe Depth Charge from Clay and RiD Dark Scream from a local shop.

I also decided to give the third-party side of things a try, and invested in a Hexatron (who actually arrived in January, but I paid for him in 2014 so IMO he counts).

On the comics side of things, I'm up to date with the MTMTE TPBs but can't be bothered to follow any of the other comics. I briefly considered buying those big, inexpensive IDW reprints of the 80s Marvel comics, but then I realized that I haven't reread any of the Marvel books I do have in probably a decade.

Seeing what's coming up in 2015, I suspect it'll be an even quieter year coming up. I'm not a huge fan of combiners so Combiner Wars doesn't do much for me -- if the early reviews are good I may assemble Superion for fun, though right now the only ones who are "must buys" in my books are Air Raid, Bombshell and Blackjack. I'd also like to grab Brainstorm but I don't even know if he's going to come out here and I don't think I care enough to buy him online. Likewise the upcoming MPs don't exactly blow my socks off, I don't care about the new RiD toys and I think I've plucked a lot of the low-hanging fruit already when it comes to BW.

But hey, who knows? I've been surprised before.
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Tantrum
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Post by Tantrum »

I got quite a few bots with animal alt modes this year. There's the AoE Dinobots, some 2nd hand Beast Wars/Machines toys, and Generations Rhinox, Sky-byte and Shrapnel. The last thing I picked up this year was AoE 1-step Steeljaw.

That's partly due to the number of beats released this year, but also due to already having so many vehicle bots. The vehicles I have bought this year are either alt modes I don't already have, like Gen Scoop, or have something unique to the figure, like AoE Crosshair's coat. It's hard to get excited about another car, especially since cost cutting in size and paint means the car bots I already have are often better than the new ones.

Even the wheels are cheaper. Crosshairs, Hound, and half of Scoop just have plastic wheels snapped on to plastic ankles. Previous lines had pins holding the wheels in place, and seem to roll better.


I've also developed a new pet peeve: ID stamps that are visible in bot mode. Recent figures have something like #A6463 stamped on them. I think it's a quality control thing; if you call Hasbro to complain about a figure, they ask you for this number so they can track who screwed up.

Usually, it's on the inner leg, or somewhere equally inconspicuous, which is fine. But sometimes it's somewhere more prominent, and in a color that contrasts with the paint. The worst I've seen so far is AoE Gen Strafe, who has a number molded, not just stamped, on the underside of the wing.
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