Top 10 Best Transformers Action Figure Hauls of 2019

Alright Dmax, here’s my list:
#10: Combiner Wars Swindle
#9: Thrilling 30 Jetfire
#8: Titans Return Hardhead
#7: Siege Megatron
#6: Siege Cog
#5: Siege Thundercracker and the Rainmakers
#4: Siege Shockwave
#3: Siege Ultra Magnus
#2: Power of the Primes Predaking
#1: Unite Warriors Superion

‘Til all are one!

Nice list!You can feel this came form a very personal place.

Day 5 of waiting for Transformers Armada masterpiece news.

1) MP Hound
2) BWMP Megatron I didn't keep it but one hell of a figure
3) Ectotron
4) SS38 Bumblebee movie Prime
5) MP44 Optimus Prime
6) MP45 Bumblebee
7) MP Wheeljack + edition
8: MP Silverstreak + edition
9) Siege Jetfire
10) Rung

Great list! "I'M PICKLE BRAINSTORM!" absolutely cracked me up

My top hauls have a lot of G1... 2019 was kinda my year to randomly stumble upon them.

10.) Siege Greenlight. She just tickled me with how crazy awesome Amazon Prime is, and her colors are are awesome.

9.) Prime Darksteel. He finished out my Prime show Predacons, and he's just a big chunky boy compared to Predaking and Skylynx. Just a fun time.

8.) Siege Shockwave. Due to some coupons, gift cards, sales, and a refund, I managed to snag this guy for free. I've fiddled with him quite a bit, and he's set up now as a tentacle armed Ironman with his platform shoes/feet cannons set up as shin boosters. He's just fun and kinda over the top obnoxious.

7.) Studio Series Sideswipe. This is my only Sideswipe this year, as I have a large collection of Sides, and even better he's a corvette! Anyway, I am just amazed by this guy for the fact that despite his wheeled feet, he stands better than some of my guys with regular feet. I also love the ability to switch around with the swords and guns.

6.) Prime Soundwave with Laserbeak. This was a figure that I wanted after I had fallen in love with Soundwave in the show, but by the time I was ready to buy him. Every single store that had been sitting on about three or more of him had sold out, and he was $50+ online. This made me a bit bitter about this guy for awhile. Anyway, I happened to visit my usual haunt, where I picked up my #2 on this list, and they had one on the peg. Sure, Soundwave had been opened for display, but he was resealed onto the card with all of his accessories and paperwork, and he was reasonable. I've now gotten over my bitter feelings about this guy and love how eerily creepy he is.

5.) G1 Tracks. Tracks was my last Transformer purchased in 2019, about a week before X-mas, and I promptly got in trouble from the hubby because of that timeline. I have a bit of a corvette hard on, to quote said hubby, and finding a clean complete Tracks with the box and paperwork was sweet. Tracks was not as cheap as some of my other purchases on this list, but he was definitely below current market value. I like oogling at the classic corvette, and even better Tracks is a C3 or 3rd generation of corvette, which is my second favorite body style.

4.) G1 Thrust. Thrust, like the next entry, was a Decepticon that my older brother had wanted as a kid during the original 80's madhouse. Albeit it was mostly for being a "Harrier VOTL jet," even though he's still technically an F-15... Anyway, he never got one while he was a kid and I stumbled across a complete one. My brother gave me a look when he got to see it, but he did tell me that he didn't want it for his B-day or X-mas. Mine now I guess?

3.) G1 Soundwave. This is the other one that my older brother had wanted as a kid, and had never gotten. The main difference between Soundwave and Thrust was the fact that he, and consequently I, had most of the initial release cassettes. I spent almost the entirety of 2018 piecing the cassettes back together, getting Laserbeak and Buzzsaw, but I didn't have Soundwave. Then at my one convention I can easily get to, and with my hubby's encouragement, I worked out a deal and finally got one. This was all right before the re-release, which was my plan B, despite then having the second Buzzsaw, but it never hit the shelves in my area making finding an actual G1 even beter.

2.) Diaclone/G1 Jazz. So Jazz was the second Diaclone figure I had ever seen, and when I came upon him at one of my haunts for Transformers I was in awe. Even better the owner gave me a B-Day discount, and I sat through a showing of Captain Marvel with Jazz on my lap. Also for those who are wondering, the first Diaclone Transformer I ever saw was Swoop at the 2016 Botcon.

1.) G1/Diaclone Trailbreaker. I've said it before, but this is my second Diaclone figure. I found him during an exploration with my hubby at a hole in the wall antique store near our house, and I was all over getting Trailbreaker out of the case and into my hands. At the time, and even after I had posted pictures of him on my desk, I didn't realize he was Diaclone G1 repackage until after I had transformed him a few times. It was the little lost TF that kept giving, and now I have all the accessories for him. He just brings a smile to my face, and reminds me that sometimes you need to check every hole in the wall because you never know what you'll find.

Honorable Mention:

Siege Omega Supreme. He's an honorable mention mainly due to my issues in getting one replacement piece due to a QC issue. It took about three weeks, and now he sits very fittingly, at least until the shelf is built, in one of my armchairs. He looms just right in the chair that when my nearly year old retriever boxer mix knows she's been naughty; she actually tucks her head and tail when walking past him in the chair. Omega has just somehow become the third puppy parent by sitting in the chair, and it is hilarious.

Here's mine all are hasbro versions

5: Cyberverse Spark Armor Bumblebee

4: Siege Laserbeak & Ravage

3: Cyberverse Spark Armor Grimlock

2: Siege Deluxe Sideswipe

1: Siege Voyager Optimus Prime

Some very, very cool hauls there, D-Max. I’m shocked that there isn’t a single Beast Wars toy in there.

Snagging Dreadwind and Darkwing is definitely neat. They look awesome. I really need to pull the trigger on MPM Megatron. He looks so big and imposing. Never had any Armada or Cybertron toys, but looking at Jetfire and Red Alert has me thinking that maybe Has/Tak should bring back ridiculously oversized weapons. They’re absurdly huge, but they look like they’d be so much fun.

If I find time later, I might have to think about what all I got this year, and make a list.

Again, excellent hauls!

Bucky wrote:Some very, very cool hauls there, D-Max. I’m shocked that there isn’t a single Beast Wars toy in there.

I regret not putting Longrack on there as an honorable mention, I honestly am surprised looking back that a Beast didn't make it on there! damn.

Nice lists everyone! Geekygal, the amount of G1 is cool in that case for all the stories!

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:Nice lists everyone! Geekygal, the amount of G1 is cool in that case for all the stories!

Thanks!

I didn't put the G1 Dirge I also ran into as an honorable mention, but he's just a nice shade of blue. That and now I feel like I need to get a G1 Ramjet just to finish the set...

I'm a few days too late to this thread, just like last January.

10. Siege Ultra Magnus: The theme of last year's collecting turned out to be 3rt party and KO stuff getting 1-upped, or at least matched by official toys. Every time I handle this fearless leader-class, I get all these flashbacks to City Commander, the Classics Magnus upgrade that really jumpstarted the 3rd party market, so popular that it became the first 3PP to have another company do an upgrade to it. (does that make Wrecker Leader the first 4th party product?) Now, it could be a coincidence, since there are only so many ways to pull off Magnus armor that utilizes the articulation of the inner white Op, but I honestly think the designers studied City Commander to improve on it. Of course, they'll never legally admit to it, but that's exactly the symbiotic relationship HasTak ad 3Ps should have! Let the unofficial companies do whatever they want with designs that the official two are ignoring, since theft hardly seems like the right word for something that's just been sitting in the trash for years/decades (but if HasTak are using it, the occasional exception does need to be smacked down deep into the void, this year's huge example being that not-Unicron); but when HasTak finally does decide to make use a design that's been fleshed out by a 3PP, they can just take what was copying their rightful property all along for an official tune up. Everyone wins!

9. Decibel (+Frenzy) Reissue: I remember how ecstatic I was when KOTOYS announced that CHMS was doing reissues of all 4 pairs of combining cassettes, long suspected of having their molds lost/unusable due to their absence from the Big Mission sets. When I finally got the W cassettes in repros of the Japanese boxes, almost a decade gone by now, it was like getting some forbidden, alien relic of the distant past, and the KOTOYS-destroying crackdown they inspired only amplified the feeling.

But getting Gurafi and Noizu on Hasbro cards brought back memories of seeing my all time favorite toy Slamdance for the first time at a TRU in '88, practically retconning two cassettes that Hasbro should've released stateside right back into my childhood. We had reports of an inexplicable supply-side shortage from Hasbro, which in effect oddly paralleled the one caused by the KO crackdown, but I got two sets from Robotkingdom. And if the detailing on these official W cassettes actually does have more in common with the CHMS ones than the originals (someone around here said that, but I didn't dig into it myself), then everything I said about the symbiosis between 3Ps leading to better official products can apparently apply to certain knock-offs!

8. Siege Redwing: Found a returned on in a physical Target. And yet, the supposed need to buy it online forced me to buy a RedCard, which still gives me that discount at the chain that now has more TF exclusives than any other, so that card was more than worth the trouble.

Nice to see any background character get their first, overdue toy, and I also got Siege Starscream, Thundercracker, and the Rainmakers in 2019, but I have so many mixed feelings about this Tetrajet mold. I'll eventually get the reprolabels upgrade with dorsal peak, but that alt still pales in comparison to the show accuracy of the Impossible Toys Tetra Squads jet modes. The only minor problem with those 3P figs being that the bot modes and transformation were so atrocious, they ended up putting the company out of business. If only there were some way to combine their Tetrajet modes with the Siege robot mode...but we so rarely get everything we want in a single toy, do we.

And he's RedWing, I live near Hockeytown, so he has to represent all that is good about the Siege Tetrajets in my list. My only other complaint is that he didn't get the Classics Seeker treatment before they retired the mold.

7. G1 Slapdash: The last Sunday of the year saw my last local mini-con in Farmington. Maybe the only vintage I bought this year. ADD makes for a sympathetic character trait, and the past two decades each gave us one awesome toy that I consider partial homages to this guy (Energon Cliffjumper and PCC Leadfoot), so when I saw him complete, it seemed worth the $60. Got a lot of weird books I never expected too, including one on the history of animated feature films with an entry on Cleopatra, Queen of Sex, a movie I'd been able to find so little info about online, I was beginning to doubt its existence, so it was a great way to close out the year.

Though unlike D-Max, I'll have to make do with PotP Dreadwing for the time being. I actually like their combined mode, considering the molds they had to work with.

6. Cyberverse Gnaw: Another one I'd had no luck finding until the end of the year. I was skeptical of the simplifications from the TR Sharkticon I so love 2-dozen times over, but this guy's action feature makes all the difference the second you press that fin. Too bad those widdwe baby Sharkticon 3-packs with cajun-pan-blackened Hot Rod for dinner didn't show up until just after New Years.

5. Siege Greenlight with Dazzlestrike: This one just somehow picked up a lot of associations, half of which only make sense in my head. First off, it went from being a Prime exclusive to regular Amazon exclusive just in time to be my birthday present, slightly redeeming my dim opinion of the etailer from the previous year. Shipped it with the season 1 DVD of The Handmaid's Tale to get free shipping, which I still haven't watched, but it'll therefore be the toy I most associate with THT unless it gets a toyline, which only occurred to me because I found these plastic clothespins that look kind of like the bonnets if you stick one on a Vitruvian HACKS blank, but I'd have to improve my sewing skills or butcher a SW imperial guard to get the right cloak...ahem.

And while it's awesome whenever a background character who appeared in one story with no lines or name finally gets the toy they deserve decades later...I keep wanting to call her Beta; did Floro Dery just tweak her model a bit amid the designs for Forever Is A Long Time Coming? Beta has just enough white that Superlink Ariel Paradron type is still a better representation, especially with the bow, so no chance I'd double dip to repurpose. But I still think Beta when I see her, maybe because her Crossbow eventually became Deployer animal sidekick Rav, so Dazzlestrike--well, see next entry for the coolest thing about her.

4. Siege Chromia: Still frustrated that Chromia was needlessly retooled so she can't be combined with her commander Elita-1, but still doesn't look any more like her Search For Alpha Trion van mode than her Generations motorcycle alt? I sure was, until I actually handled this toy. The new details and weapons juuust barely make up for that. While the gunbarrel and grenades may be the tiniest, most loseable weapons any Siege figure has come with (bought a second Chromia just in case), I find myself reconfiguring them more that any others. And no, my constant fiddling with her has nothing to do with the removable groin plate. You can just create a lot of slightly different guns.

But she wouldn't have made my list if not for the the Orthia announcements. Now, announcing an official all-fembot-underground-resistance gestalt should've just made it even more infuriating that Chromia couldn't be a limb, right? And so it did...until that last announcement that Orthia's special power was to be the modern-day avatar for Solus Prime's Macguffin weapon and artifact forging abilities. Again, kind of a shame than neither Greenlight or Lancer comes with a big hammer to represent an updated Forge, yes?

Or did they?

You see, it IS possible to fan mode Chromia into a passable hammer, IF you attach Dazzlestrike to serve as the grip! Tack the grenades onto the head so they jut off like Frankenstein bolts, and you've got a definitive forge of creation! Sorry I still can't find my digital camera, I swear I'll post pics to this thread ASAP.

But not until I also get Lancer. That's why I couldn't count Orthia in this year's list.

3. Siege Crosshairs: Found him at a Target at the very tail end of the year, and couldn't wait to get him home, where Windblade had been keeping Pinpointer warm for him. While Ironhide's vehicle mode isn't perfect for him, opening it up to carry Battlemasters and additional weapons around makes up for it in playability. And I've wanted one with that head sculpt for so long, accurate not only to Marvel continuity, but to the Targetmaster commercial used in the Rebirth intro, where Crosshairs and Pinpointer skid towards the camera with their feet sparking; I have a friend who swears that's the best 6 seconds of TF animation ever, and can't wait to show him how close it can be recreated with Siege energy effects!

2. Siege Refraktor (regular retail version): I'll also get the deluxe gift set eventually, but this guy stirred up something greater than extra accessories: the thrill of the hunt! In June, I found what will surely be the last PotP Wreck Gar I encounter in the wild(-greens), leaving me 5 cards shy of a complete set. But hunting 3 of these guys down without online cheating proved just as much fun. As show-accurate as we could hope for, before combining them, I made sure to assemble them into the cheerleader pyramid they used to face off against...

1. Siege Jetfire: Was this guy seriously not on anyone else's list? I mean, talk about a show/comic design that was decades overdue for an accurate toy, all because each major update insisted on blurring in elements of the original Macross toy. And sure, each one was accurate to a contemporary comic appearance (Titanium to The War Within, Classics to Stormbringer, and Thrilling 30 Leader to later IDW), but it always struck me as strange that while the whole point of Dery's Skyfire redesign was to avoid a lawsuit, no subsequent toys were entirely accurate to it, always falling back on the G1 toy to the point that the boosters on that SDCC Skystriker provoked a (admittedly laughable) legal challenge.

I almost shelled out secondary market prices for FT Phoenix when this official dream come true was announced. And when I surprisingly saw it in Meijer, despite no brick and mortar reports outside WalMart at the time, it was the best belated birthday present imaginable. Our biggest and best Jetfire ever, sure to remain so unless he gets MP treatment.

And thus, an awesome Siege figure that somehow improves on a 3P endeth my list as well.
Here's hoping 2020 indeed proves to be the year of Hasbro-hindsight, where they look back on characters and designs from fiction to give us more figures than ever that they could and should have already done within the past 3 decades. The Quintesson love is such a great start, they've got my hopes up that they'll even do a few Quint designs that dear departed Impossible Toys never got around to, mostly from Dweller In The Depths. I mean, the security guys killed by the transorganics would've been an easy retool of the scientist...

Honorable mentions:

Two groups of figures that just didn't quite fit into a proper list. One because it's a 3rd party gestalt team that's almost an enlarged KO, but apparently just based on the CW Aerialbots, with their alt modes tweaked much closer to the original 5 jets they were based on. Not sure what JuJiang's original MSRP was, but TFSouce had it on sale for $100 Black Friday week, and he's tall enough to clobber PotP Predaking. Had fun opening and combining them during my Christmas Day viewing of Pinocchio And The Emperor Of The Night, a tradition that started just last year, but takes me back to Christmas of '87 when I got my Technobots. (Sadly, I couldn't find my tape of Candy Claus to make the experience complete)

The second group is one that I started accumulating for someone else. Last June's family reunion in Illinois, I gave my 3rd cousins Hana Zuki, Miraculous, Mysticon, and a mix of G.I.Joe, Star Wars, and Marvel toys, the 3.75" figures of which were crammed into that WalMart KO box set of a VAMP chasing a generic copter, with the Baroness swinging out of the latter in order to kick Rey off the former. Much as they appreciated them, it only occurred to me afterwards that they probably all would've rather gotten Transformers, something I hadn't noticed due to my own personal preference. So next June, they're getting as many as cheap as possible so all three of them can have some complex battles. It started with some 10-15 year old KO box sets of Devastator, Superion, and Defensor, the kind you used to find in prefab Easter baskets and Tuesday Morning, but that I have no use for since those exact repro KOs and Combiner Wars came to be. I'll be adding in some PotP scouts, a spare Cyberverse Thundercracker I found at Ollie's for $3.50, and the Spark Armorless Prowl and Shockwave that came with the recent Quintesson. T'was a tip from this site that led me to the luckiest find 2 days before Christmas: One TJMaxx had Warrior Megatron and Windblade, plus Energon Igniters of Muscle Car Shatter and VW Bumblebee, all for $5 each! Also found three Evergreen Starscreams at various 5 Belows, which I intend to dye into the Rainmakers, so their 'Cons have enough Seeker-power to outnumber the Aerialbots, something I never had as a child. And since they've only seen the Bumblebee Movie and don't have cable or internet access, I'll be loaning them my G1 and Joe box sets, so they'll know who most of their new toys represent. Yep, my greatest finds of 2019 may be the ones I can share with my youngest relatives in 2020.

Like D-Max, i was able to find a couple at the TFCON in DC. While my list is extremely short, they are my big ones for 2019. Even though i bought transformers from the regular lines, nothing like finding or hunting down something from older lines.

1: G1 Powermaster Optimus Prime- got him for a great price, updated him with some repro stickers and he is amazing.

2: G1 Hubcap. Again got him for a great price, biggest part is being patient during the hunt.

3: Radar part to G1 Masterforce Overlord. If you have seen parts for Overlord, they are not cheap. While it took longer than it should have, I finally found the last piece, in good condition, ultimately completing him.

4: From the 2007 Movie, I found the “Freeway Brawl” for an insane cheap price. I have most of the sets with only a couple left and it was great getting this one.

SGM

Powermaster prime and completing Overlord sound like a great year! I got Powermaster Prime too, and that figure is a joy

Late posting in this thread, but I do have some good ones.
10. Nemesis Breaker's arms
Finally scored these off of eBay, which means I finally have a complete Nemesis Breaker and can at long last form Dark Claw Mode.
9. SIEGE Springer
Perhaps not super exciting for some, but I was delighted to find him. Aside from not having a transforming rotor sword, he's everything I wanted in a modern toy of Springer and stands nicely with T30 Arcee, Titans Return Hot Rod, Kup, Wheelie, and Blurr, and SIEGE Ultra Magnus.
8. Dark Crumplezone
Scored him for like $30, complete except for the key. A very nice find, and makes my Cybertron collection more complete.
7. Deluxe-class Repugnus
Scored him off eBay for a fairly nice price (like, $26 IIRC). He's a cool and fun figure, I like his swords and how they become wings for his bug monster mode. His transformation is pretty clever too. I really need to get Twinferno/Doublecross and Grotusque now.
6. Lancer
Scored her with an Amazon giftcard I got for Christmas. I could not find Greenlight, but I did find Lancer and so I pounced. Since I also got Novastar with an eBay card, Greenlight is now the only one left to get.
5. Punch/Counterpunch
Scored him off Amazon earlier in the year. Such an amazing update, blows the old Universe Sideswipe retool out of the water.
4. Magnus Prime
Got him off eBay for $40 shipped because I was tired of how long it was taking me to get my custom cab robot done for TR Powermaster Prime and even when I finish that I don't know that I'd travel with it.
3. Godbomber
Having the Super Ginrai version of the PMOP mold made me want Godbomber to go with him, and so when I could I bought Godbomber for $81. Very happy to have him, and the combination stands proudly on my dresser.
2. SIEGE Jetfire/Skyfire
Got this guy as a Christmas present. He's amazing. Cartoon accurate, rightfully huge, fun accessories, beautifully articulated and clever touches in his transformation, sweet play features like the handles...
1. Titans Return Trypticon
Managed to score him off eBay for $80 shipped. He was a later version, so he didn't have the hip problem, and he also has the asymmetrical towers. He is a thing of beauty, very glad to have him. And snagging him for $80 shipped... Yeah, that's a prizewinner.