The Energon Pub

I got Human Alliance Bumblebee a couple months ago, and have wanted to give him a real right hand ever since. Seeing how others had done it, I was toying with just buying another one, but paying $30 for that spare hand seemed unreasonable. After checking ebay and the BST sections of TF forums I frequent, and finding nothing, I decided to forget about it for the time being.

Then I went to Target last night. There was a HA BB on the shelf, 29.99, and another one on the clearance shelf. The clear plastic dome was missing, and the box itself was pretty battered and torn. Great, I thought, somebody returned it like that and Target actually re-stocked it. I picked it up, and saw that the toy itself was intact, including the Sam figure. I thought someone may have removed the left hand and returned it the rest, but no, the hand was in there behind the driver's seat. Everything was still secured by twist ties and tape; the only unusual thing was that Bee's doors were closed instead of open. I was going to scan it for a price when I saw a small red bar code tag that said "Repackaged $21.01". Wow! $9 off and it hasn't even been removed from the box. I took it and headed for the checkouts, stopping at a scanner along the way to confirm the price. The scanner said something like, "Not in stock", and I was deflated. They weren't going to sell it to me, were they?

I had a couple other grocery items to buy, so I stood in line, and was waved over to the Customer Service desk for faster checkout. The guy, who I had seen wrangling carts on my way in, picked up Bee, and I told him I had scanned it and it did not seem to be in the system. He checked it, said, "Hmm," and looked at the red tag. "They only took $9 off for this?" he said, and punched something into his terminal. "Let me see if I can take a little more off for you." My total, including my other couple things, came to $21. I ended up paying $15 for a complete, new Human Alliance Bumblebee!!

Got home, had dinner, bathed the kids, and went to work converting the left hand into a right one. My original Bee now has two functional hands, the new right one having a correctly-oriented thumb, and three fingers in the correct positions (from long to short). It was a bit of an undertaking, but worth it. He looks great, pics one of these days.

I also want to do a couple other things with the spare Bee:

-swap the spare driver's seat to the other side, for symmetry and the extra weapon, but that'll be trickier. I thought I could pull off the dual-cannon part and install it on the passenger's seat, but the two seats are actually pretty different.
-experiment with his head to give it more range of motion up and down and tilting side to side
-shorten his feet, they're way too long.

Not sure what else I can scavenge off this guy. I must admit, I feel a little bad chopping him up like this. He's still pretty sought-after, I believe, and here I am carving one up like a roast for my own selfish wants. Or is it silly to think this way? He's been out for some time, right?

I was so lucky finding it for that price, I'd like to pay a little of that forward. I don't need the spare Sam figure, so the first person to PM me for him can have him for the cost of shipping, prob. no more than a couple bucks in a padded envelope (possibly more to Canada).

green with envy over here....so hate you congrats!!!