leakin' lubricant wrote:sol magnus wrote:leakin' lubricant wrote:At those prices, I'd rather wait for Takara one! Why is it the the Hasbro versions demand such high prices? I know the Takara ones get higher in price after the initial run but not to the degree of the Hasbro stuff.
In general, the Hasbro stuff doesn't get re-released. The only straight re-releases from
Hasbro so far are MP-01 and MP-08. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Makes sense, for someone playing catch up like my it's a no brainer, Takara every time.
While everyone collects differently and has different objectives, I think it goes deeper than that.
In my example...when I got into Masterpiece and actually bought something...which is not exactly the same I decided to collect - was when I found by good fortune the very last Masterpiece Optimus Prime in my market. It had been languishing in the office of the TRU nearest my in-laws, and I just happened to ask if they might have had one, not even expecting there to be one. When it was "current", I search high and low for it and could not find one. I was NOT about to pay the absurd mark-up for that figure in the aftermarket, and even the Takara version was at that time out of my price range. It was quite the find.
However, once I got that one MP-13 Soundwave was out and this time, rather than it simply being a matter of price - I preferred to wait for the US release because it was rumored to have the yellow eyes. I wanted the yellow eyes because, like most of us, I'm weirdly attracted to some characters as they were in toy form as opposed to strictly Sunbow - it didn't hurt that you'd be getting all the cassettes for about 130 US. 40-50 bucks cheaper at that time than JUST Soundwave/Condor. I've never regretted that purchase - especially since they included Ratbat with Soundblaster. Should I ever get a Takara Soundwave, it will be that one. I even passed on an MP-13 I found in a local recently - the guy wanted 200 for it. I paid 120 for mine with price matching. These things are expensive and I am still playing catch-up to some degree so I pick and choose based on factors such as expense, whether I prefer the more toy-centric Hasbro deco or the Sunbow deco (which is a 50/50 proposition).
While all this was going on the Hasbro Thundercracker supply was drying up and I stupidly let the last one I saw on the shelf pass because I was being "responsible" and didn't want to drop 80 bucks on a toy - fast forwarding, I ended up paying 110 + shipping when I grabbed one last summer - a very, very painful lesson. I did the same thing with Grimlock and Rodimus TRU releases for different reasons. Rodimus was inferior (clearly) to the Takara one and Grimlock is in this weird phase where they were working out the scale thing - and Grimlock is kind of a blah character for me. I did end up getting the re-release, though.
Anyway, when it comes to the cars the price doesn't seem to move - so that depended on how fast they would be released in the US and who it was. Prowl, being one of the top 5 characters period for me - was a Takara release because I'm just not willing to wait for Prowl. I've ended up getting all Takara cars, but that is mainly due to them not releasing them in a timely fashion here - to date Prowl is the only release. However, if Hasbro was going to bring them out in the next year relative to their release I would have waited for about half of them.
When it came time to buy Bluestreak, I ended up opting for Silverstreak because I just prefer the "one I had as a toy".
Ultra Magnus falls into the exact same category as Prowl, but worse. I got the Takara version...but I'm such a Magnus mark I might still get the US version for the toy deco.
All I'm saying is I work the Takara/Hasbro system as much as it makes sense.
That reference I made early about an 80 dollar figure...I was referring to him (although he is a bit higher than that now).
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