TFCC Exclusives Gallery

As an accompaniment to this week's TFSource Blog article on TFCC/TFSS Club exclusives that I own and love, here are the images from that article in much higher resolution for those that appreciate these gorgeous repaints. Not all of them, of course, just Cheetor, Chromedome, Barricade, Circuit and Jackpot.

Human Alliance Autobots (Pre-Completion)

I know what's going to happen. I'm going to buy that Hasbro Asia Human Alliance Barricade and Soundwave 2 pack, and within 4 weeks of that I'll have bought the black and then Flash Freeze Human Alliance Sideswipes for the complete set. So in advance of that, I took a shot of all my pre-completion Human Alliance Transformers from across ROTF and DOTM, minus regular Bumblebee and Barricade as I didn't bring them out of storage for the shoot. I didn't even foresee this shoot until tonight.

New Arrivals - Early December 2014 (Part 2)

Some great deals to be had in December, there always is. One of the best auctions I ever won was in Christmas week from Japan, and a very well-priced Ceji Joustra Battle Convoy on Christmas day. Not quite that order of magnitude to compare to this year, but at least the quality of the figures remains high. The Evolution 2-pack Evasion Mode Optimus Prime above, MP Bumblebee, a massively underrated Diaclone car variant, a 3rd party show exclusive that I can't believe I bought and a Megatron. A real, original, proper man's man Megatron.

Any Excuse...

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has ever tried to think of ways of letting their Transformers collection infiltrate their workplace. I've been trying for years to think of an excuse, and last month I managed to finally find a way of embedding the toys into something I do at work, which was deliver staff and teacher training to further education lecturers.

ROTF Human Alliance Mudflap

It's dawning on me slowly that the Movie Human Alliance line of larger figures could actually be - across the board - a 100% run of successfully excellent figures. Bumblebee, Jazz, Sideswipe (good luck convincing me otherwise, flaws and all), Barricade and Skids from ROTF and Roadbuster from DOTM have all been excellent figures. They've each had shortcomings and difficulties, but on the whole none have left me cold or unwilling to praise them overall. The strongest is still Jazz, and the hardest to justify to others Sideswipe - and even then the latter has one of the most beautiful alt modes ever seen on a Transformer. With all sub-lines of such quality, the demand is high and collectors tend not to sell the toys often. Add to that short-packing or bad distribution of particular releases and you have astronomical aftermarket 2nd hand prices and a lot of incomplete HA collections. Mudflap is a fine example of this. This year I decided to finally plug those gaps, and finally Project Human Alliance Mudflap is complete.

New Arrivals - Mid-September 2014 (Part 1)

After buying every comic-related appearance of Shane McCarthy's brand new IDW Transformers character "Drift" in almost every cover variant available, it was about time I bought the toy! But that's for a different dedicated post, I also came into possession of my seemingly favourite thing in the world, more repaints.

New Arrivals - Mid August 2014 (Part 2)

When I started this blog I did not expect to be posting "Oh look what I just bought" segments every bloody day, and I still don't expect it to continue in that vein. For now though, it's what is dominating my hobby time, especially as I am constantly looking at moulds and toy lines I had ignored up to 2 months ago. Almost every direction my collection is going in right now is a result of toys people have placed in my hand and said "I dare you to hate that". This is the result. 

New Arrivals - Early August 2014

It's been so long since my last post (end of holiday in Iceland, crisis of collecting faith, Auto Assembly) that I'm no longer sure what toys arrived when, but I've got some pictures so it's easy enough to cobble together an update! I've got a post coming where I will show what was available in Iceland in terms of Transformers at retail, then something on Auto Assembly 2014, so between these posts hopefully nothing will fall through the cracks, neither on the blog nor in my actual collection.

DOTM Human Alliance Skids

The Human Alliance series of Transformers Movie toys are widely regarded as the very best to have come out of the Bayverse group of releases, premiering around the time of Revenge Of The Fallen (ROTF). Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Jazz and Barricade are utterly magnificent creations, but none of the others ever got my attention, so were never bought. I think it is also accepted that after the ROTF range, the HA toys went slightly downhill, I know upon seeing Soundwave I lost heart for the line completely. Recently I purchased the above Dark Of The Moon (DOTM) repaint of the Human Alliance Skids. This toy is now a black vehicle with green stripes, seen for a micro-second in DOTM, and the same mould as the all green version released during ROTF. 

ROTF Lockdown

Just yesterday I posted about acquiring the 2010 Revenge of the Fallen Lockdown from a friend, and here's a quick post dedicated to this outstanding figure. Released in the Western world first as a TF Animated character, the bounty hunter received multiple decos in that line including "Blazing Lockdown", "Stealth Lockdown" and an Activators release plus repaint called "Bandit Lockdown". This excellent original creation found his way into the ROTF toy line as a quite extraordinary deluxe as well, one that is starting to demand interesting money. An appearance as a Bot Shots character aside, his biggest role is now in the 2014 summer blockbuster Transformers 4: Age of Extinction as the main villain. It is the Age of Lockdown. In the spirit of Lockdown, if you have the Age of Extinction soundtrack, stick on "Your Creators Want You Back" and (hopefully) enjoy this short non-article.

New Arrivals - Mid July 2014 (Part 2)

Yes, there's more Animated, but there's also considerable variety. A trip to see Paul "The Spacebridge" Hitchens for a family day out would not be complete without a look through his Transformers stock, and with my new ambition to complete Transformers Animated, I knew I'd find some modern specimens in his reserves. I also used the opportunity to pick up things I'd looked at briefly on line, but couldn't resist in the flesh.