Some interesting purchases were made in May of 2016. All the TFs that appear below come from different toylines in the TF-verse. And each was acquired from a different source. Let’s take a look.

• Platinum Edition Autobot Intel Ops, Amazon seller, $51.99

• Combiners Wars Wreck-Gar, Walmart, $9.97

• Cyber Battalion Starscream, Toys R Us Shanghai, 99 RMB (about $15.15)

• Masterpiece Ratchet, amiami.com, ¥7500 (about $69.17)

Blaster and Perceptor are two figures I have always wanted back at the height of G1. They made frequent appearances in the show, and they both had enough personality to establish themselves as popular characters in the TF fandom. Both characters also had significant supporting roles in the G1 Movie (and they both lived through the G1 Movie, which is saying something). Growing up, I have only seen the Perceptor toy in pictures. Neither myself nor any of my friends had the figure. As for Blaster, I knew one kid that had the toy, so I have played with it a bit. As an adult collector, I already have two Perceptor re-issues, both a US version and a Japanese version. As for Blaster, I have one re-issue as well, the 2010 SDCC Exclusive version. All of these re-issues I have in mint condition, never opened. And because of that, they are worth quite a bit of money. I’m never going to open them now. And so I bought this Autobot Intel Ops set with the intention of actually opening them and playing with them. However, once I have this set in my hands, I’m thinking I won’t open this either. Seriously, this set looks so awesome in the box! With the front box flap raised up and looking at the entire set of goodies inside, it is quite an impressive sight to behold! Both Blaster and Perceptor are in their robot modes, along with 3 cassettes (Eject, Ramhorn, and Steeljaw) and all their accessories, all sitting perfectly packaged in the box. And what a deal! I got all this goodness for a mere $52 from an Amazon seller. I first saw this set back in Oct of 2015 at Target, but it was being sold at retail so I passed on it. I should have took a pic of this goodness. Maybe for another post.

Combiner Wars Wreck-Gar is a repaint of the Protectobot legend Groove figure. He may have a new head mold, but my memory on this fig is iffy. For the most part, he’s a straight up repaint. He’s quite rare, which is the only reason I got him. I think I only saw him one other time after this purchase. The fig itself is OK, not great. Buy him if you are a fan of Wreck-Gar, but pass otherwise.

Poor Starscream. He’s the lone Decepticon this month. I outlined my purchase of Cyber Battalion Starscream back in this post, so I won’t repeat it here. At the time of purchase, I did not know about this Cyber Battalion line. It appears this line never made it to the States. That’s a shame. I wish I bought the other figs in this line when I got CB Starscream in Shanghai.

Last but not certainly not least, we have Masterpiece Ratchet. This is the 4th Masterpiece figure in as many months. I have opened the box, but to this day I still not have taken the figure out of the box. I only opened the package to make sure all the contents are inside. My buddy Gemini got one where once piece was missing. Take a look at MP Ratchet in the package below.

I’m gonna assume MP Ratchet is every bit as impressive as MP Ironhide. I give the Ironhide the highest possible recommendation, and I expect Ratchet to be just as good. I plan to spend some time with Ratchet real soon, and I will give my final thoughts in a future post. But seriously, I will be real surprised is he’s somehow inferior to Ironhide in any way, shape, or form.

No third party items were acquired this month, but some good ones will be presented next month. So stay tuned. Transform and Roll Out.

It has been more than 3 years since the last edition of Before Carly! So here we go with this long overdue installment of Before Carly 5! On Thanksgiving no less! As always, I will start with what I think was the official description given by Seibertron:

“Spike is quite the ladies man. He eventually married Carly, but she was not the only one to have fun in the backseat of Bumblebee.”

The fictitious name of each girl is made to sound like various characters in the TF universe, and each part of every name is based on real names I’ve seen. See how many TFs you can identify. If a douche like Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) can score with babes like Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), then Spike hooking up with all these cuties below is not so far-fetched.

Hover the mouse over each girl’s name to see the name of the TF. You win nothing by correctly identifying them all, but you can take pride in the fact you know so many Transformer names.

Enjoy the pics!

Links to previous posts of Before Carly are below:
Before Carly
Before Carly 2
Before Carly 3
Before Carly 4

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Transform and Roll Out!

When people say March, I think March Madness. It is my favorite time of year as far as sports go. The NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship has my full attention once it gets going. Especially when UCLA does well. But even when my alma mater makes a surprisingly early exit (like this year) or fail to make the tournament altogether (like last year), I still follow it closely to see how well my bracket does in the office pool, or whatever other pools I happen to participate.

As for Transformers, there was a madness this March as well. I didn’t think I was going to get this many TFs this month. In fact, I was kind of counting on a TF drought. So it was a total shock when I added up all the March figures when the end of the month was coming. Ever since I started tracking my purchases every month, this was the 3rd most action packed month, behind only February 2012 and October 2012. I was fairly busy this month too, which makes me wonder when I even had the time to hunt for these TFs. But whatever. Feast your optic sensors on the Transformers below.

• Generations Fall of Cybertron Blaster and Steeljaw, Walmart, $22.96

• Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Smokescreen, Walmart, $15.47
• Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Bulkhead, Walmart, $15.47

• Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Starscream, Target, $15.99
• Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Ripclaw, Walmart, $12.97

• Generations Fall of Cybertron Eject and Ramhorn, Target, $9.99
• Generations Fall of Cybertron Rewind and Sunder, Target, $9.99

• Transformers Prime Beast Hunters Trailcutter, Target, $8.99
• Transformers Prime RID Rumble, Ross, $5.99

• Transformers Prime Arms Micron Jet Vehicon General, amiami.com, about $23 shipped

• FansProject Car Crash, bbts.com, $59.99
• FansProject T-Bone, bbts.com, $59.99

• Year of the Snake Fall of Cybertron Omega Supreme, bbts.com, $99.99

As you can see, that’s a lot of TFs! Especially since I wasn’t expecting all that much. 7 figures came out of Fall of Cybertron, 7 figures from TF Prime, and 2 independents from FansProject. That makes a total of 16. Certainly a busy month to say the least.

Problem with buying so many TFs in one month is that you just don’t have time to process all of them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but recently I have become backlogged in opening my Transformers. I’m almost wishing for a TF drought, so I would have the time to properly give each figure the time that it deserves.

As of this writing, I have only opened 4 figures of the 16: Smokescreen, Bulkhead, Car Crash, and T-Bone. I’ll open the rest sooner or later, preferably sooner.

I highly recommend Smokescreen. Bulkhead is ok. Buy him if you got the money to spare, but if you’re on a tight budget then you may want to reconsider.

Car Crash and T-Bone are both smaller than I expected. Early reports of these latest FansProject offerings is that they’re somewhere between scout and deluxe size. They were right. In robot mode they are exactly between these 2 sizes, and in car mode they’re barely bigger than scout. So at $59.99 each, I don’t think they are good value. Also, transformation from robot to car is kind of a pain in the boron compressor. They’re not complex figures, but getting all the tabs to line up to connect takes some effort. They are not figures that I can transform fast for that reason. Still, the figures do look good. They are well articulated and well built. I’ll reserve final thoughts about them after I see the combined Menasor mode.

The only repeat purchase here is RID Rumble. I know I said no more doubles, but I got him purely for the extra pile drivers that I will put on AM Rumble. Besides, he’s so cheap at $5.99. Yes I broke the rule. Sue me.

Year of the Snake FOC Omega Supreme is huge! This is Omega done right! I look forward to some quality time with this piece.

So that’s it for March. There’s a lot more that I wanna talk about, but I think I need to go open these TFs first. Til then, let the March Madness continue. Transform and Roll Out!