At the store I work for I saw that they had clearanced Cybertron Optimus Prime. He's been marked-down to $36. I should have figured something was up when I saw that the Leader class code had been discontinued. Also, because I do dumb things once in a while, I went to the Kmart website. Of course I looked up Transformers. I wasn't terribly surprised by the presence of wave one Universe deluxes, or even BW 10th's Rhinox, but why is Kmart selling the Universe Micromaster Railspike online? I know that Kmart and Sears merged a while back (couldn't avoid that news anywhere) and I thought I had heard that Sears was selling Kay-bee merchandise some time ago. Does anyone have any clarification on this to ease my confusion?
I think you pretty much covered it. Sears and KB had some sort of deal and when Kmart and Sears merged, the line between all three, as far as toys are concerned ,was basically erased. The online toy selection of all three is virtually identical. Pretty sure I've seen the Universe Constructicons on the Sears Web site; I haven't checked, but I'd wager the Railbots are there too, or will be eventually.
$36 is "marked-down"? That's barely a few dollars off the MSRP. Thanks for reminding me why I never shop at KMart.
Aside from the fact that they probibly only have a few Op's and some Alt Silverstreaks and Energon Basics.
That's KMart for you. I've seen them charge $11.99 for deluxes and then put them on sale for $9.99; in other words bring them down to the normal price and call it a special sale or something like that. Actually, they fit well with Kaybe in that way since Kaybe's dont the same thing.
Hey, they're better than Shopko. They recently marked down Deluxes to $11.99 from like $15 or so. A few weeks ago I picked up Cybertron Optimus and Megatron for $18 each at a Kmart around here. They had them on clearance for $36 and then another 50% off. I got Scourge and Scorpy for $15 too.
Right after Christmas I decided to get Cyb. Prime, but I couldn't find him anywhere except Kmart, for $44.99! I passed on him, but later got him through Amazon with a gift certificate. Kmart is funny that way. They seem to play the "never gonna clearance stuff" until the bitter end. They seem to have some things for so long that by the time they've nearly sold out they've become "rare". The store had Armada stuff at full price long after it had disappeared from other stores and became a haven for some of the toys that you wish you had gotten when they were plentiful and are now so damn happy to find that you'll gladly spend the extra few $$ they charge to get the damn thing. I don't know, maybe I like Kmart.
At the tail end of Energon, the K-mart around here still had a couple Armada Unicrons in beat up boxes for $50 still. Was pretty funny. There was a time when I went to that K-mart and would always find the newer alts before anyone around here, that ended at Hound.
Last year I found an Armada Powerlinx Demolisher @ Kmart for $2. It was right in the middle of Energon too. Coincedently, they only had 1 Energon deluxe at the time. Every once in awhile they'll have something, but most of the time they're old stock, priced above everywhere else. In a related sighting, last week I saw Armada Hot shot and a mini-con set @ a Wal-mart that opened in Oct-05. Where the heck did that come from? Wierd.
I guess I shouldn't trash Kmart, that's where most of my TFs came from as a kid! Whenever we would get a few dollars around Christmas, Easter, or our birthdays, Dad would take us to Kmart to get something. I remember getting Maxx Steele for $4.99 waaaay back in the day, and I seem to recall getting the G1 Insecticons and G1 Blurr there as well. Good times. I love Kmart.
I laughed pretty hard when I read this because the K-Mart by me had a slew of Streaks up until a few (like 2-3) weeks ago when I cleared them out to help some other collectors. They were all the right hand drive ones too. It was funny because Streak who used to be a big shelf warmer has been gone for ages, and low and behold K-Mart had a dusty shelf of beat up boxed Streaks on clearance for $15.99.
