The Energon Pub

william-james88 wrote:Transformers Kingdom Road Rage was a redcard exclusive preorder but it is now showing up in stores. It started showing up last week and we got a few sightings of Road Rage from various states like Idaho and Maryland to name a few. You can purchase this in stores without having a Red Card.

I thought this might happen, but I'm still glad I went through all the rigamarole anyway. They never had Runabout available in any of my local stores, so if I hadn't ordered that one online I would have missed it. I missed out on Redwing by not ordering online, but that's not as big a deal to me. What's angering me is that Origins Bumblebee not only isn't showing up in the stores, it's also not available on Target's website.

Glarryg

william-james88 wrote:

TF-fan kev777 wrote:Good to know. The one I got from Target in the mail is a floppy mess. Hopefully I can see enough into the package to see the pins on the legs to see if they are better than the one I got.

Can't you just push in the pins and the legs won't be as floppy?

Yes, but the area around the pin holes already has some stress marks. I'm going to try, but if it makes things worse, it is nice to know I might be able to easily get another.

Glarryg wrote:What's angering me is that Origins Bumblebee not only isn't showing up in the stores, it's also not available on Target's website.

Glarryg

We got TONS of Origin Bumblebees in Minnesota. They arrived in August and you can still find them easily enough in stores, though the numbers have dwindled. While the Kingdom and Studio Series pegs were empty for months this summer, Buzzworthy Bumblebee stuff just kept pouring in.

Wolfman Jake wrote:Buzzworthy Bumblebee stuff just kept pouring in.

Agreed on all counts except for the origins BB himself. While it seems like plenty were made, distribution was way uneven on this one. I saw pics of some Target stores with Dozens of them, and some like my area, I saw it once, and then gone. It doesn't effect me personally, but yeah I'd be a little irked if I was one of the ones that really wanted it, and none came to my area, while others were just warming pegs elsewhere. Its too bad Walmart and Target didn't have a system whereby instead of ordering more product from the warehouse directly, they could shift inventory internally.

*Example* If your store in Omaha NB has 20 Origin BB that are just sitting around not selling, and a store a few cities over on the same trucking route has none, and wants 10 of them, ship them, over, so they will sell, just as an example.

o.supreme wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:Buzzworthy Bumblebee stuff just kept pouring in.

Agreed on all counts except for the origins BB himself. While it seems like plenty were made, distribution was way uneven on this one. I saw pics of some Target stores with Dozens of them, and some like my area, I saw it once, and then gone. It doesn't effect me personally, but yeah I'd be a little irked if I was one of the ones that really wanted it, and none came to my area, while others were just warming pegs elsewhere. Its too bad Walmart and Target didn't have a system whereby instead of ordering more product from the warehouse directly, they could shift inventory internally.

*Example* If your store in Omaha NB has 20 Origin BB that are just sitting around not selling, and a store a few cities over on the same trucking route has none, and wants 10 of them, ship them, over, so they will sell, just as an example.

Obviously, even all the way out here I'm not trying to say 'distribution bad' on Origin Bumblebee, I will say I barely got the two the I got before they all seemed to dry up. I finally got a World's Collide, but that seems like it was due to a restock. I think we'll see Origin Bee come back around at some point, too.

The only Origins Bumblebee I've seen at Target is the one I bought and the only reason it was still there was because the box was completely crushed and probably nobody wanted to take a chance on it being broken. I figured it was my one shot at getting one so I took the chance and thankfully it was fine.

Still haven't been able to find the Worlds Collide set yet despite checking constantly, spurned on by others saying they've been finding heavy restocks lately.

I'm still waiting for my Roadrage to show up. It shipped on Oct 1st and just sat in Oregon until Oct 5th after a long delay by UPS, slowly worked it way across the country until it finally arrived at the local UPS facility on October 9th, somehow got transferred to the USPS during a federal holiday Monday, was supposed to be delivered Tuesday (both Target and UPS say it was, it wasn't), and now USPS is saying it got delayed to Wednesday. *Sigh*

Emerje

o.supreme wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:Buzzworthy Bumblebee stuff just kept pouring in.

*Example* If your store in Omaha NB has 20 Origin BB that are just sitting around not selling, and a store a few cities over on the same trucking route has none, and wants 10 of them, ship them, over, so they will sell, just as an example.

Speaking of, where I used to work we had the option to do store to store transfers for a customer, so if you have the product number of the item you wanted we'd look it up and call the closest one and have it shipped to us. Then contact said customer that it has arrived, of course this was all before the whole ship to home era thus we started to phase out doing it because it required hands on attention.

I don't know how many other retailers might offer this as a "customer service" feature, especially in today's ship to home era but it might be worth a try if you local areas is barren and the option to ship never pops up.

Till-all-R1 wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:Buzzworthy Bumblebee stuff just kept pouring in.

*Example* If your store in Omaha NB has 20 Origin BB that are just sitting around not selling, and a store a few cities over on the same trucking route has none, and wants 10 of them, ship them, over, so they will sell, just as an example.

Speaking of, where I used to work we had the option to do store to store transfers for a customer, so if you have the product number of the item you wanted we'd look it up and call the closest one and have it shipped to us. Then contact said customer that it has arrived, of course this was all before the whole ship to home era thus we started to phase out doing it because it required hands on attention.

I don't know how many other retailers might offer this as a "customer service" feature, especially in today's ship to home era but it might be worth a try if you local areas is barren and the option to ship never pops up.

I don't know bout the US but in Canada Gamestop ships store to store. Toysrus and Walmart do not.

Surprised the site hasn't posted that Waspinator and Shadow Panther are up on Amazon for pre-order $22.99 with a November release date.Just click other sellers for them. Tigatron was up very shortly but didn't last long

Well, it happened. Amazon cancelled my Tigatron Pre-Order due to lack of availability.

Now I’ll have to find somewhere else to get him from.

I managed to get a Tigatron preorder, due in a couple weeks. I am excited for him.

I did get Road Rage over the weekend. This is my first handling of the mold, and I think it will be the last. She is honestly pretty terrible. robot mode is a sloppy mess, transformation is a lot like Rhinox in that it is a clunky mess. Car mode is insecure, as is flying car mode. This is a case where the MP is better, and the generations figure used the MP as a goby, but it really should not have used it as a goby, and it's a case where the generations figure should have easily been better.

Took Road Rage to work today. I really want her to be good, but she isn't. I think she might only be beat by the Chromia mold in terms of weakest WFC figure

Yes, the Tracks mold in general is one of the weaker deluxe cars in the WFC trilogy.

Chromia suffers from having a mold designed to be a combiner limb, but having the combiner bits taken out, so ends up being a lack luster deluxe, since she still has all the compromises of her combiner enabled brethren err. (Sistren?) without the combining feature for which it was compromised.

I think the Wheeljack / Sunstreaker molds are the better ones with Sideswipe in close second.

Overcracker wrote:Yes, the Tracks mold in general is one of the weaker deluxe cars in the WFC trilogy.

Tracks, Arcee, Rhinox, and Chromia seem to be the weakest molds in WFC (excluding the smaller molds since Hasbro kinda abandoned that idea).

Nuclearxpotato wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Yes, the Tracks mold in general is one of the weaker deluxe cars in the WFC trilogy.

Tracks, Arcee, Rhinox, and Chromia seem to be the weakest molds in WFC (excluding the smaller molds since Hasbro kinda abandoned that idea).

It's funny people's opinions of 'weak' molds. I'm not saying they're 'great' molds, but Chromia has been used as the star in a stop motion animation series (Zeta Squad). It's all in what you're gonna use it for, I guess.

Just an interesting experience I had today. At Target the only Kingdom toy on the shelves was a single Road Rage. Not on my want list but it was good to see. I know we talk about kids vs collectors, who the toys are for and who actually buys them. I believe Hasbro has previously stated that recently the ratio seems to be about 70% comes from parents buying for kids and 30% is collectors.

I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but I do hear from many saying the toy industry would obviously not survive without kids which I tend to agree. However with the exception of holidays, I hardly ever see anyone else buying toys. Today was a rare occurrence though. A kid actually picked up the Road Rage toy and the parent was going to buy it for him. I couldn't help but think that the kid had no idea how fortunate he is. He had no idea it is a store " exclusive". He just saw it and liked it. It was just cool to see something I often hear about, but don't actually witness.

sol magnus wrote:

Nuclearxpotato wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Yes, the Tracks mold in general is one of the weaker deluxe cars in the WFC trilogy.

Tracks, Arcee, Rhinox, and Chromia seem to be the weakest molds in WFC (excluding the smaller molds since Hasbro kinda abandoned that idea).

It's funny people's opinions of 'weak' molds. I'm not saying they're 'great' molds, but Chromia has been used as the star in a stop motion animation series (Zeta Squad). It's all in what you're gonna use it for, I guess.

Now that I think about it, Chromia probably isn't so much weak as she's just average. The origins from PotP probably started her on a bad foot.

sol magnus wrote:

Nuclearxpotato wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Yes, the Tracks mold in general is one of the weaker deluxe cars in the WFC trilogy.

Tracks, Arcee, Rhinox, and Chromia seem to be the weakest molds in WFC (excluding the smaller molds since Hasbro kinda abandoned that idea).

It's funny people's opinions of 'weak' molds. I'm not saying they're 'great' molds, but Chromia has been used as the star in a stop motion animation series (Zeta Squad). It's all in what you're gonna use it for, I guess.

Don’t own Arcee, so can’t really comment on her.

As for Rhinox, I think he could have been better. The transformation is awkward but both Rhino and Robot modes are quite good.

I think the inaccurate head and a really awkward transformation cause people to not like his as much.

sol magnus wrote:It's funny people's opinions of 'weak' molds. I'm not saying they're 'great' molds, but Chromia has been used as the star in a stop motion animation series (Zeta Squad). It's all in what you're gonna use it for, I guess.

To be fair, for those who want to use the character but don't own the Thrilling 30 mold from seven years ago (and who don't want to buy it off BBTS), their present-day options are kinda limited to just the Siege mold.

I feel like writing a site articke called "Hot Take, Kingdom Tracks is better than MP Tracks".

william-james88 wrote:I feel like writing a site articke called "Hot Take, Kingdom Tracks is better than MP Tracks".

william-james88 wrote:I feel like writing a site articke called "Hot Take, Kingdom Tracks is better than MP Tracks".

william-james88 wrote:I feel like writing a site articke called "Hot Take, Kingdom Tracks is better than MP Tracks".

I had MP Roadrage before. I dumped her at my local geek store for store credits without a care. She wasn't really good.

At least the old Generations RTS deluxe Tracks wasn't too bad if I base my Judgement on Wheeljack, his moldmate. I wonder how the G1 original measure up against other G1 autobot cars of the time?

Let me know though. I know what makes MP tracks bad, but what makes Kingdom tracks so bad?

william-james88 wrote:Let me know though. I know what makes MP tracks bad, but what makes Kingdom tracks so bad?

Legs issues as I heard.
Still haven't transform it yet?