From unique repaints to merely moving stock.

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Remember the days of long long ago when some store exclusives really were different?

Sam's Club had the awesome yellow RID Prime and darker painted RID Magnus.

K-Mart even had some minor variations in their Armada Super Prime/Jetfire pack. And they had the awesome SWAT redeco of Energon Rodimus and Prowl.

CostCo did the had the strangely painted uriney Armada Prime and Overload as well as some differntly colored Armada Starscream

But the writing was on the wall for the demise of anything different or special when CostCo released a 2-pack of RID Prime and RID Magnus that was no different than the original releases.

This became cemented with the release of the Costco Exclusive Cybertron Optimus Prime and Wing Saber which was just the same general release figures as a 2-pack, which is sad because Takara did this a thousand times better.

From the looks of it, our domestic releases are pretty much going to be repackaging existing toys in multi-packs or with smaller bots.

CostCo's track record is now cemented with the announcement of a leader class movie Prime with a few Legends figures.

Obviously the US market and the Japanese market are totally different.

We seem to get repackaged stuff that isn't moving as solo figures and they release true variations of figures.

Kinda sucks for us.

I mean, as a collector, I'm not going to just buy multi-packs of the same exact figures I got as singles. Those days are done.

Hasbro obviously isn't aiming at the collector for these releases but at the mass market of somebody that is not me.

I really wish Hasbro would release something repainted or different again.

5 Comments

Only nice thing I can say about the multipacks is if you don't have either of the characters before now you can get them usually for a deal. Movie Blackout and Scorpinok were like that for me but if I had them separately then no way I'd pay for it again in a package.

I think Target came out on top this year with cool store exclusives for classics and the movie.

I forgot about Magnus and Skywarp. Yes. They were good, even though I know a lot of people hate white repaints of Prime.

The classics Prime mold is one I don't mind seeing repainted since it was a good figure. Wouldnt' mind seeing the played out notion of Nemesis Prime done on it.

FUCK YOU COSTCO PRIME/OVERLOAD RULES FOREVER. (seriously, that is by far my favorite store exclusive set ever, with the Energon SWAT Team and Cryotek right behind because dude, new characters in a store exclusive. Awesome!)

I dunno what the goings on are at Hasbro right now, but for a while they had a dedicated Store Exclusives guy (for a while, this was Andrew Frankel, who used to be active in the fandom) who came up with the names and rough color guides and bios for exclusives. I would imagine that this position has been changed somehow, or at least has had some of its mojo removed.

-hx, Swiper gave us stuff like Cryotek and the Axer/Sideways 2-pack.

Cyrotek is a very cool repaint.

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This page contains a single entry by Nala published on August 4, 2007 9:21 AM.

Can he swing... from a web? No he can't... he's a pig. was the previous entry in this blog.

Repaint Shit I'd Buy! is the next entry in this blog.

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