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I wasn't collecting during T30, (though I see T30 Arcee is still easy to get and inexpensive on the secondary market). So the first Arcee I had the chance to get was TR. I got it from TRU old website for normal retail price, and gifted it to my daughter. She stands happily with her little robot heroes Arcee figurine. My daughter admittedly has a growing collection thanks to me. She also has TR Nautica and Netflix Chromia. I'm hoping to find ER Arcee eventually, but now that we know she is being reissued in kingdom, there is less a sense of urgency. Oh BTW.... I don't gift all the female TF's to my daughter. I have Victorion and Megatronia proudly among my combiners. Still I remember a lot of negativity simply because TR Arcee was a Blurr retool. Glad to see overall opinions have improved over time.

Rodimus Prime wrote:Yeah T30 is high up on the list, my only problem with it is the black on the figure. Arcee never had any black parts on her so it kinda bothered me that it wasn't accurate. Gray isn't accurate either but it blends a bit better. So from what I gather out of the responses, a $50-range is acceptable for her, but no higher.

Considering she was a 'special edition' 2017 release that I picked up in 2019, I didn't mind her price.

TR Arcee is great as Headmaster Arced, plus you get the exosuit Daniel figure that isn't too scale with the movie, but fits in cars like TR Hot Rod. There are a lot of fun ways to play with and pose them.

The vehicle and alt-modes are too off-model to be a "true" Arced for my money. If I wanted to only have one, I would probably still go with T30 Added or it's Legends repaint. For collectors who primarily keep their TFs in robot mode, the ER one is fine despite its faults.

My original goal when collecting Prime Wars was definitive G1 editions of all of the cartoon characters. Now that we're getting two or three versions of major characters within a 6 year period, I'm coming up with excuses for keeping multiple versions of some while planning to unload others. For example, I definitely want an earth-mode Ultra Magnus, but he'll be my fourth version in roughly that many years.

TR Arcee is great if you know what you want to do with her.

I would say that the T30 mold (however it's decoed) is the more overall accurate Arcee (I mean, it certainly beats the pants off the Earthrise version (I have no idea what people see in that over the T30 one - the transformation is disgustingly unintegrated and the altmode fender curves are hideously shallow). But Titans Return is a fair representation as well, and has the benefit of wrist rotation. The "Titan Master" remake of the Headmaster gimmick is quite fun, and Arcee needed the treatment the most. I wish she was more accessible price-wise

What's up with Misfire being scalped at utterly outrageous prices? Is he the Siege Skywarp of Titans Return? I've been able to find a bunch of Titans Return figures at decent prices, but Misfire is on another level, especially for a deluxe.

Starseeker wrote:What's up with Misfire being scalped at utterly outrageous prices? Is he the Siege Skywarp of Titans Return? I've been able to find a bunch of Titans Return figures at decent prices, but Misfire is on another level, especially for a deluxe.

Misfire, Windblade, and Twintwist barely showed up, and they have been going for outrageous prices ever since their release. Unless you got luck in stores, you weren't paying less than $50 for any of the 3

Starseeker wrote:What's up with Misfire being scalped at utterly outrageous prices? Is he the Siege Skywarp of Titans Return? I've been able to find a bunch of Titans Return figures at decent prices, but Misfire is on another level, especially for a deluxe.

Misfire, along with Windblade and Twintwist were in the extremely hard to get wave 5 that never really got to distribution in the US, making all 3 relatively pricey.

The last two waves of TR deluxes had very limited distribution. They were selling for far above list even before the line had officially concluded. I'm sorry for your situation, I lucked out and found someone selling the whole Targetmaster set at a reasonable price.

Ah I see. Makes sense.

Interesting! I thought it was because of his appearance in the IDW comics at the times as part of the Scavengers. That's why I bought him and Krok. I also thought that was why Krok/Skullcruncher's alligator head was removable since Krok was a Monoformer in the comic.

Yeah, Hasbro and the retailers really goofed up distribution for Titans return during waves 1-4. If I remember I thing waves 1, 3 and 4 also had revision waves. Most retailers were still overflowing with waves 1-4 that hadn't sold yet when wave 5 was due for release. I think a very few Targets might have gotten a single case and that was it for US brick and mortar. I pre-ordered from BBTS right before they sold out their pre-orders and have been grateful ever since.

Yeah, the stores were so positively flooded with Hardheads, Chromedomes, Blurrs, Scourges, Highbrows, Wolfwires, and Skullsmashers that most of the other Deluxes barely stood a chance at ever showing up anywhere.

I got lucky with both Twin Twist and Misfire, got them at nearly regular price on eBay. I ended up selling the Jumpstarters together to another member here, and I still have Misfire and intend to keep him. My 'one-that-got-away' was Breakaway, ironically. I saw him exactly only once at the Walmart I work at. I walked past them (there were 2 of him) at the start of my shift, and I went back to get one at lunch time, but both were gone. Haven't seen him since in any store anywhere. I should have just snagged one when I walked past and just kept him in my locker until lunch. Not sure if he's overpriced online or not. I haven't had the inclination to pick him up since.

It took me 3 months after most people got Wave 3 to find wave 3, and then I saw wave 4 and 5 each exactly once, bought them, and never again saw them. I saw wave 6 more than I saw any figure in waves 3-5 outside of Doublecross combined.

TF-fan kev777 wrote:Yeah, Hasbro and the retailers really goofed up distribution for Titans return during waves 1-4. If I remember I thing waves 1, 3 and 4 also had revision waves. Most retailers were still overflowing with waves 1-4 that hadn't sold yet when wave 5 was due for release. I think a very few Targets might have gotten a single case and that was it for US brick and mortar. I pre-ordered from BBTS right before they sold out their pre-orders and have been grateful ever since.

Those revision waves were probably Hasbro's single biggest distribution mistake of all time. They flooded stores with the same figures over and over, retailers didn't seem to really understand what they were ordering, and scarce characters that should have been either in revision waves or wave 6 got passed over. My local Walmarts never got wave 4 or 5, I saw a single Topspin out of all of wave 4 at Target one time and passed on him because Walmart was about a dollar cheaper at he time (big oops on my part), never saw Clobber in stores (recently got one for around $15) because the local stores passed on regular wave 2 and jumped to revision wave 2 which didn't include Clobber and he was never rereleased in any other waves (yet Nightbeat got THREE release, none of which sold well), and I was only able to get Ramhorn because he was sold at 5 Below. And this wasn't even a physical retail problem alone, online retailers hardly got Deluxe wave 4 and very few could get wave 5. Somehow Hasbro just never stocked enough of these to go around. I ended up buying a lot of Takara Tomy Legends figures those years. Still would like to get a TR Windblade for my Windblade collection, but I'm not paying $100 for her! I did pay scalper $50 for Misfire on Amazon at the time, but I used gift cards to get his price down to a slightly less obscene $30.

Emerje

I saw waves 1-3 pretty much on schedule, and in good quantities. Wave 4 I saw less of, but still at all the big 3 of the time (TRU. Walmart, Target), then there was revision wave 3 (after wave 4), and NEVER saw wave 5...., then another revision wave (whichever one cluttered the shelved with Krok) then wave 6 (with Slugslinger) I think I saw 2 times at Walmart Only, and that was it.

I feel really frustrated because I actually saw Wave 5 deluxes in multiple Targets in my area, and wanted them, but passed at the time. Partly because of looking for Weirdwolf, whom I was eventually able to find at his retail price on eBay, but even moreso because I was holding onto my money in the hopes of Sky Shadow or Overlord showing up.

And they never did. The Targets in my area wound up never getting the later TR Leaders in because at every single one, there was a glut of Turbo Changer Dragonstorm overflowing into the Generations Leader space on the shelves.

I don't think my Walmarts ever stocked leaders back when CW & TR were out. I got SkyShadow early on HTS as they had some sort of sale on him. Overlord I saw once in store, at a Walmart far from where I lived. i got it, and never saw it again. Oddly enough there were 3, but one of them was a Skyshadow that someone had returned in the Overlord packaging (pic buried in this thread somewhere).

But didn't Overlord go on sale heavily discounted at many online retailers? I paid full price ($40), but I remember seeing him for as little as $25 on many sites.

I saw Sixshot and Powermaster Optimus Prime in decent quantity, and plenty of Blaster and Soundwave. But after Blaster and Soundwave (Who had been lingering) were cleared out, I never saw another Leader on the shelves for the rest of TR (except for a Soundwave at a Mall-Wart I ducked into for the air conditioning, and a Combiner Wars Skywarp who shelfwarmed into Power of the Primes).

I did ultimately get Overlord off eBay for $40 (incl. shipping) back in 2018, but I never saw him in a store even once during Titans Return itself.

I suspect TR Overlord became so inexpensive online because of the large quantities available of the Takara Legends version (which the cult-of-Takara fans were all ga-ga for) becoming available a relatively short time after the Hasbro one did.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:I suspect TR Overlord became so inexpensive online because of the large quantities available of the Takara Legends version (which the cult-of-Takara fans were all ga-ga for) becoming available a relatively short time after the Hasbro one did.

The main explanation is simpler than that: Overlord was shipped to discount retail. I got mine at Ollie's for $20, and I suspect that at least some of those eventually got flipped on eBay.

AcademyofDrX wrote:

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:I suspect TR Overlord became so inexpensive online because of the large quantities available of the Takara Legends version (which the cult-of-Takara fans were all ga-ga for) becoming available a relatively short time after the Hasbro one did.

The main explanation is simpler than that: Overlord was shipped to discount retail. I got mine at Ollie's for $20, and I suspect that at least some of those eventually got flipped on eBay.

That's what I remember. Thank you. Yeah, as much as I preferred the TT decos prior to brand unification, I still wasn't willing to spend almost double. I only some toys that were truly unique like God Bomber. I eventually ended up getting Legends Twintwist and Topspin only because of their ability to combine with the Big Powered set. I got them way cheaper than I should have though

I was in the habit of flipping the deluxes as soon as I got the Takara Legends versions at a discount. If I had known then what I know now I would've probably done the same thing since space was an issue.

Did Hasbro ever publish Tech Specs for the separately-sold Titan Masters?

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Did Hasbro ever publish Tech Specs for the separately-sold Titan Masters?

Just for the first 2 waves in the form of promotional flyers. Here are the ones I have, with the names in order of Strength, Speed, Intelligence, Fireblast:

Crashbash: 4, 2, 2, 3
Nightbeat: 2, 3, 4, 3
Loudmouth: ???
Terri-Bull: 4, 2, 3, 3
Apeface: 5, 4, 4, 3
Brawn: 5, 2, 2, 2
Clobber: 5, 1, 3, 4

So could this Astrotrain be considered a leader class figure according to today's classification? Or the fact that the Galvatrons come with a few extra items (and maybe better engineering?) still make the difference even though there's only a few years' time between the release of these figures?

If this Astrotrain were released today, would it be sold at leader price point?