The Energon Pub

Well, I hope this is the right place to post. Please move or bin if this is not the case.

The title says it all, basically. I will be in Paris tomorrow, as I'm staying with my folks for the week-end, and I found myself thinking, "come on... there are lots of special video games, manga, toy import shops, there should be at least one or two shops in ALLLLL of Paris dedicated to Transformers..."

You must wonder why I'm asking this on a board mainly frequented by Americans, the reason is very simple: if you google "french transformers fan site / forum", you will find NOTHING. Which is a bit disappointing in comparison to, say, the UK or Germany, who have much larger fan followings, despite France having been flooded all the same with gen 1 toys in the 80s.

So my reasoning is this: if there are any french fans who know what's where, they're bound to lurk here, one of the largest TF communities around.

Just in case, I also don't mean the crappy transformers toy selection you can find in the horrible french ToyrUs branches, I was thinking of something more solid which stocks japanese toys, re-editions, customs, the kind of toys you can usually see on ebay or on some VPC website in Hong-Kong etc.

Thanks in advance for any information!

P.S. while I'm at it, since I currently live in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, if anyone would possess information on the same level about shops on the outskirts of Frankfurt or inside city limits, I'd be grateful for the tip. (once again, not toysrus or other mainstream stores, I've already tried those and it's disheartening)

Well, if that wasn't a big, fat waste of time. Going to Paris to look for Transformers, that is. Thank god that wasn't my primary reason for going. There isn't a shop there that would sell the Fansproject stuff, the latest Takara releases, the Masterpieces collection, the latest Alternators/Binaltech line products, etc etc. Consider it fair warning, although I'm probably the only one here that would go to the trouble of going to Paris for TF hunting. You guys would probably too busy visiting the Eiffel Tower of the Champs-Elysées or some other crap like that.

It wasn't ALL bad. There is ONE shop that has a lot to offer for die-hard collectors, the ones still looking for original products from the 80s etc. The place is called Lulu Berlu, and is located just off the Place de la République. Their shop is like a museum, they carry tons of toys from almost all the series that were released in the 80s (TF, MASK, Ulysses 31, Thundercats, Rock Lords, Masters of the Universe, G.I. JOE...). However, you can expect some of the steepest prices on the market for vintage products. (example: Hound Gen 1 new in box, 430€).

Well, the guys from the shop explained some. Basically according to them, the online market killed the smaller shops that existed in Paris, not that there were a lot of them to begin with. At least I won't have any qualms about ordering directly from the web now, unfortunately it's that or nothing.

Now on to my secondary quest: find the European Hasbro Storage facilities, and stalking the managers to see if I can buy directly from them! (erk, like that's gonna happen...)

I spent quite a bit of time in Paris visiting a friend over the last year and I found nothing. It seemed to me the main toy shops in France have a very poor selection (worse than here in England) and they were very expensive as well. I was hoping, being in such a large city, that I'd be able to get stuff that hadn't reached the UK yet. No such luck.

If you're wanting info on shopping in Germany then I'd suggest that asking the question in a thread about Paris is not your best bet! Start a new thread, I don't think anyone would complain.

I get what you mean about the Germany thing, but yeah, I was trying not to spam the forum with my desperate quest
At any rate thanks for your input, you confirmed what I feared. My main concern after that is the part I was explaining earlier about the online market killing off specialist shops. This may not just happen in France but all over the world. Looking at posts from US users for instance, I get the feeling that despite having a generally larger selection, it's just as much a hunt to get all the toys from a given line than anywhere else.

calais was better theres few second hand toy shops and a HUGE toys r us in their massive hyper market.