JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:RodimusRex wrote:I saw ATB Megatron and Starscream once at a Kaybee but I gather their national release was canceled.
The black and purple one? Then you must be from Ohio, as that's where their (test-market) release was.
There's a general sense at the tail end of G2 that everyone (after getting reformatted as cars for the Go-Bots subline) suddenly got reformatted as military vehicles that looked straight out of G.I.Joe.
I have noticed that just now, as some Machine Wars releases have that army design going for them. Really odd.
I actually saw ATB Megs/Starscream to two stores in the 90s. One was Ohio. The other was a Kaybee outlet store in Dalton, Georgia after Beast Wars launched. They tended to get oddities in and had a full display of ATB Megatron/Starscream and a number of the G.I.Joe Manimals. All I can figure is that Hasbro had a warehouse full of these they shipped to obscure Kaybee outlet locations, probably to avoid diluting their brand with produced but canceled products. I figure the idea was you siphon it off at a low price somewhere that's low visibility where people are looking for cheap toys to pacify their kids.
Warwolf warmed the shelf for months.
At the time I had no clue that these were shelves full of unreleased figures. I thought they were weird store exclusives or other toylines Hasbro was repackaging as G.I.Joe since this was around 1997 when they hit. I had no clue at the time they were acting as a clearing house.
My family would go to Dalton once a week and I would stare at that two pack of ATB Megs/Starscream, on the fence about whether to buy it. I never did but it's one of those missed purchases that still kind of stuck with me even during times when I stopped collecting toys. I'm not sure I want to know what they go for now. I think it was $20 and they cleared out the display of them at $15 a piece. There were two left and I stood there staring at it like a gambling addict, resolute not to buy more toys. Finally, I ran down to the bookstore at the other end and spent my money on Star Trek CCG cards instead because my family was waiting on me to finish up shopping and go to dinner. Never saw it again.
But I think I've been slightly obsessed with late G2, especially now that I have internet and saw that some of those figures I saw were rare... and some of the figures I hunted for based on the catalogs were never produced.
I'm onboard for any late run G2 homages Hasbro, Takara, or the Clubs want to produce. It's weird but I think I developed a big connection to stuff like G2, New Adventures He-Man, Ninja Force G.I.Joe... Because it was a time when all these childhood favorites died and it wasn't sure if and when they'd come back. And when they did come back they were rebooted. And even stuff like IDW's G1 comics is pretty heavily reconfigured.
The Japanese continuations I discovered in college and they seem interesting. But General Optimus is really the end of the line for G1 Prime as far as Hasbro goes. Even Masterpiece is nostalgia based. There was no NOSTALGIA with G2. They were doing everything they could to transform and hawk these characters. It was like the opposite of nostalgia. It was this desperate attempt to be relevant, making Autobots who looked like energy drinks and turning Flint and Baroness into ninjas. I don't think anyone would LET YOU do that now.
So with General Prime being about as "far out" as Optimus Prime can get, I'm absolutely on board for an homage.
Especially for the purposes of 
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