I found a new stock of RID Prime at Target, looks like waves 1 and 2 because Ratchet and Arcee were on the pegs along with the rest of them.  I picked up a Soundwave because I thought it looked really cool.  I almost bought Ratchet also, because, while his alt mode is really tiny, his bot mode looked really solid.  Still, passed for now.

I'll have to open Soundwave somtime this week.

I also found the new Bot Shots and Cyberverse Commander Class figures at Walmart.  They had the Bot Shots single and 3-packs, three of the four on the shelf had Bumblebee as the 3rd figure but the other had Acid Storm. 

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I wonder if the supplier of the ads got hacked and is causing goofy **** to pop on sites that don't really have anything to do with the advertisements?

I know about a year ago we got hit at work with some malware that came when people were browsing the local newspaper's website.  After looking at the history and cache on the computers, I was pretty convinced that the advertisements displayed initiated the attacks.  There are so many tricks in use to try and compromise people's computers it's not funny any more. 

On the topic of Ashley and Her Universe, it seems they're doing well.  I see a lot of geek girls posting on various sites about what cool new swag they've just got from her store.  She started with mostly SW but has branched out to Syfy channel stuff now including Battlestar Galactica and Warehouse 13.  Lot of positive feedback on the clothing from what I've seen also.

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After a little more research, I see where the Voyager Prime FE Optimus and Bulkhead are hitting eBay from Canada, and they're not cheap.  I see some Cliffjumper figs also.

I was mostly interested in the Voyager Optimus and Bulk, and the Deluxe I mentioned.  I see BBTS has a pre-order still for a set of 3, Bee, Arcee and Starscream, but I have no idea if Hasbro's still filling those orders.  They do have the FE Deluxe Bee in stock for only $11 though.

On another note, I saw the RID Optimus Prime today at Walmart.  It's not bad, but it's not the First Edtion figure, that one's a thing of beauty.  I'm wishing now I paid more attention to the line, I didn't have any reason to think that things were going so badly.  Otherwise I would have been hitting TRU back in Nov/Dec looking for them.  And now I sort of understand what Hasbro was apologizing about at TF, about having a problem in China and some things not making it to the US.  Looks like the FE stuff got the shaft and now they're moving on to, IMO, lesser designs.

The thing that sucks is that it seems Hasbro is trying to move so far away from previous releases to more simpler designs, we'll probably never see some of these released again even though the tooling exists.

iFett, I've got a PM headed your way.  I may order that Bee figure from BBTS, though, or at least put it in my POL.

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I agree with Jesse on the mail-away programs.  I consider it a free figure and I'm just paying my $7 to cover shipping.  I don't give any monetary value to the UPC codes I had to send in...unless someone wants to pay me for a bunch. 

I really think that the Rocket Boba Fett, that first wave that was damaged, fell victim to some shipping warehouse accident.  To have so many damaged enough to have the bubble come loose from the card and crushed as badly as they were, I picture a huge pallet ready for the PO tipping off a lift onto another pallet and the dock worker just looking at it, saying "fuckit," and shipping it out anyway.

I had two damaged from that offer and out of all the ones I sent for, that was the first offer I've ever participated in where I didn't receive one that I sent for.  I talked to Hasbro support about it and they basically told me to pound sand, it wasn't their problem since they saw that it went out.  Now, personally, even though it's junk mail class, I find that mostly unacceptable as an answer since, when I sell something, I'm on the hook for delivery and can't just write off a lost package as not my fault.  And to make it worse, I felt that the damaged figures shouldn't have been replaced (I didn't ask for replacements) but that lost figures should have been compensated for.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if Hasbro was burned out on offers after this latest one and if the Rocket Fett problems lit the fire.

To steer this back on topic, now that we've had a new look at the Toy Fair slide of the upcoming Bespin and Naboo Duel Battle Packs, I really have to wonder what Hasbro's thoughts are on spending tooling budget on 6 under-articulated figures when they had decent sculpts they could have re-used.  It doesn't make any sense to me to build six figure with what looks like basic 5 points of articulation w/ a bonus (maybe) of a ball joint shoulder.  I don't get the strategy behind that, especially the Naboo set when they're releasing that set of three in the Movie Heroes, Vintage Collection and exclusive Discover the Force lines PLUS again in Movie Heroes with the light-up sabers.  It's bizarre.

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I guess Sunday's episode answered that question about whether or not Rick has spoken to Shane about Lori.  Apparently not.

Also, the outcome of Lori's situation was, ultimately, boring as hell.  That whole situation was so obnoxious and uncalled for that it pisses me off at this point.  We really gained nothing from that and it was only a waste of time when they could have spent more on Rick and the Philly crew, where there was some real drama to be had.

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With all the features on the MTT I do think that it's a really fun toy.  The folding rack is pretty cool and seems to work well.  Eventhough not all of the Battle Droids are articulated (16 are static, 4 have articulation) they look pretty good coming out of the vehicle.

Is $140 worth it?  That's up to the individual. I think there's enough toy there to make it worth that price, but I don't know if there's a market there for a $140 toy.  I don't have the money or the space for it, but I do like it well enough that if those two strikes against it were removed, I'd buy one even at full price.

Having a 13-year-old movie open to $23 million in February? That's pretty good, actually.  It'll be interesting to see what kind of staying power it has this coming weekend since it's a holiday and kids should have a 3 day weekend.

I don't think the MTT will kill the Star Wars toy line, but it could kill our chances at a 2014 large vehicle.  The Shuttle may have already done in the 2013 release, but it may be too early to tell on that.

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I was actually happy when Hasbro went to straight re-packs on Battle Packs.  I hated buying BPs for 1 new figure/character, especially when the rest didn't include army builders.  The first Ilum Padme set, for example.  Yes, it came with a new droid sculpt, but it also came with a C-3PO and R2 I had no use for.

I don't mind that the BPs are not for "us," the collectors, and I really can't understand why people got so pissed every time a new BP was announced and there was nothing new in it.  It's like some people wanted to have to spend $20+ on a set just for that one new figure.  Did everyone forget that quick that they used to bitch about the 1 new figure in a 5 pack that they "had to buy" only to be "stuck" with extra stuff they didn't want?

The BP sets make decent gifts, mostly, because they're usually main characters or, in the case of Clone Wars, quite often have some army builder draw to them.  But if it weren't for that, I wouldn't mind seeing Hasbro dump that assortment and diversify the Class I Fleet Vehicle line.  IMO, that's still their best assortment outside of the basic action figures, they're excellent toys and that's something that the SW line lacks sometimes.

Specifically with these two Battle Packs; I don't know what Hasbro's game is.  They have about 4 each (or more) of Obi/Qui/Maul figures available right now at multiple price points using multiple sculpts, mostly old.  I see no reason why they're doing this BP of them rather than carding them, except that it gives them time to make more money from the existing tooling before moving on later in the year. 

The Bespin set doesn't make much more sense to me either because we're getting a new ANH Vader, were shown an ROTJ Vader that'll be in the SDCC set and then retail and then an ESB version in the BP.  We have an excellent VC Bespin Luke that just came out, their second "vintage" stab at him already, and Fett?  I need another attempt at Fett like I need someone to come and kick me in the head.

I've been on the hunt lately to pare my collection down to the definitive version of each main Saga character and I think part of my hate on these packs is that there will be something that will be JUST a little better than what I have already and I'll feel compelled to buy these.  Everytime this happens I buy a little more into the conspiracy theories about Hasbro making figures not quite as good as they can just so they can do another version and make us buy.

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No.  I don't know if they even said anything about it, they just introduced the characters from the pack, flashed a slide and moved on.  And she wasn't in the showroom, only on the slide.  I almost missed it, they were flying through the Marvel section because they were so far behind between starting late and then having the Transformers team take so long.

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