I loved the hunt when I started collecting about 12 years ago. If I wanted to buy a set of RID Commandos, I could go into Walmart and get them all in one fell swoop. Before 2009, I only remember ever having trouble finding Armada Megatron and one of the members of the Rail Racer team. That was it. It was fun to go to the store. Now I just sort of check the toy aisle when I'm getting other things like groceries.

 

yeah it's terrible at retail these days. It's not even entirely because of the stores. The fandom is like at a constant fever pitch to just nab everything....

 

it's partly because of the internet... we see others getting things before us and get our expectations up high, expecting everything to come to every store at once.

 

Not entirely true. Anymore, I just hope that I can find maybe 50% of what I want at retail. Seeing everything at all my stores combined, let alone at one single store, is a pipe dream. It's simply not going to happen.

 

You know what really bites too? When you get so used to the hunt that even when you have everything out there you want, you still feel compelled to go looking over there to see if anything new has come out...even when you know for a fact nothing has. You're just so used to checking when you're in that store.

 

By all that you hold holy I miss the old days of actually being able to find the action figure you were looking for.

It used to be fun going on a toy hunt or feeling like it was safe to just wait until figures hit the local store. Now even with the internet you can never feel totally sure you will find what you are looking for.

Kind of funny it started out a fun little hobby to blow off some stress but the hobby has turned into one of the most stressful things I do.

 

Yep most of the time for me it's douchebag employees or dumbass collectors hiding stuff they can't buy at the moment.

 

When I look for Transformers, I look for transformers, There's never been a specific one I was looking for. If I find it interesting, Chances are, I'll buy it. If I don't find anything I really want, Oh well. The way I see it, Its a toy. If I don't find what I'm looking for, chances are I'll find it somewhere along the line.

 

^ I used to be like that. What happened to me?  

I hear the OP, it is a PITA. Some silly little exclusive line at TRU is making me waste time and burn rubber looking for it. The problem is you just never know, sometimes you pay too much too early and sometimes figures that are in theory US retail vanish like dew.

Especially TRU-only figures. Trying to use their website to order is like bottling sadness.

 

Yeah, miss those days. Toy collecting has become "serious business" these days. Not to mention the hoarders/scalpers. When I was a kid, you just walked into toy shops, or the toy section of the mall, you get what you're looking for. Non-TF example, Volt In Box Voltes V, even the separately boxed versions. Same when the TF cartoon went on air in '84, you can even get Diaclone at lower prices and more abundant than Hasbro, hehe.

 

I don't miss wasting my energon....it's up to $4.13 a gallon.

 

Of course. It's really ridiculous how hard it is to find what you're looking for. Now it's just a big sea of yellow.

 

Someone made a good point a while ago - If you collect Star Wars figures and you fail to find one then quite often you get another chance to get it (heck how many time have the re-issued Darth Vader's Tie Fighter as a Crossover toy now - I've lost count "5 time maybe" ?).

But something like say the Prime RID Vehicon does not get repacked (yet) - even though Wheeljack and Soundwave are reintroduced in a later wave.

The problem this causes is sometimes thing end up being to common and other times they sell out before the demand is met - for example less DOTM Voyager Sentinel and more Voyager Megatron might have helped.

And the current problem I see is sometime a side effect of the desire to make cases with less characters in them and more often - it can lead to patchy ness. - I feel more characters less often or simply bigger cases would help - this is not so much a problem when a line is new - but later on when they make cases with only one new toy in it (say red Ironhide Voyager from DOTM or Prime Dreadwing - that I don't think is a good idea.

It means that all those Starscream and Bulkheads may be blocking Ultra Magnus and Thundertron and considering they are also carried over in later cases too then It's not surprising there's a fear that Voyager Skyquake might be impossible to find if he ever comes out at all (outside Asia).


If the cases had run 4 new characters per case the whole time and had less cases over the year or simply doubled the size of the items in the case to 8 instead of 4 (for Voyagers) or 12 instead of 8 (for Deluxes) that might help a bit.

Supposedly some say it's the desire of walmart for new stuff all the time that is causing part of the problems. - but it's silly to allow that way of selling to be the only way - big retailers perhaps should be offered Character cases (as revision cases) then they can order what they want. and it stops the hogging of over produced characters like happened to great distress in America with Tuner Mudflap.

But the problem with him was perhaps as much due to the fact that some of that stock should have gone outside America and as it didn't it actually seemed to lead to a huge overstock that might not have happened if some of it had gone to Europe as well.

But in European terms cases of 2 characters just do not work with the distribution model and they really should not try to do it the same way just because Walmart insist on it in America and Hasbro UK has been subsumed into France does not help much either me thinks.

 

They sure were. I remember finding everything I wanted without much trouble. I was fortunate enough to find that Energon Ultra Magnus though. But that was the one and only time I ever saw it.

Animated wasn't too bad either, until near the end. Never saw Waspinator, Swindle, or EG Bumblebee. Only ever saw Blurr once and bought him. And the very last TFA figs, the TRU exclusives, were pretty much non-existant.

Dude, I seriously hope that was an exaggeration. You could've just given her away here on the forums to someone that does want her. One man's trash...

Or just returned her.

 

I miss how easy it was, but I also kind of enjoy hunting down a figure. Now, I'm fairly new to TF collecting recently so I find more things I wants than I will in a few months when I have everything that is easy to get. But I like going places. I hate being stuffed up at home, so sometimes it's nice just to have an excuse to get out of the house and take a peak around a store or two before or after doing something that could resemble an important or productive activity.

 

Nah, I don't miss it, just today I walked into a true and picked up all the gdo deluxes and scouts.

 

I've bought most of RID at this point, but all i've bought locally, even domestically, for that matter since the launch is a few Cyberverse Legion and Commanders , Weaponizer Prime and Voyager Bulkhead.

It's not so much being able to buy them locally... as having a lack of time to make a decision.

If i don't jump on what little there is locally, it may be gone.

This in turn informs less than entirely selective online purchases....... and it also explains why 'movie years' are something i welcome......there's actally a steady supply of new stock locally.

Any other year, it's like rolling a dice that only has numbers on two sides.

 

No; to be honest, I never actually go into stores with a specific goal. It makes the hunt more fun when I do find something.

That's always been my modus.

 

ive all but given up looking for bots at stores...its to the point i wait for my wife to go out shopping and ask her to look for me, for fear of being dissappointed.. 

 

I used to enjoy the thrill of the hunt back in the Alternator days, but not anymore. If I can find it online, I'll gladly pay that shipping to avoid the drive and time spent. I used to hit a store maybe 3 times a week at the max. Now I go whenever I've got either a confirmed sighting or after I make a phone call to have them hold the item for me until I get there, which comes out to about 4 times a month now.