What are your hunting rituals?

When you go out looking for new TFs (or anything else you collect I suppose) do you do anything to improve your luck or even just to streamline the process?

I've found that I typically have better luck if I bring my dog with me in the car and park a ways away from the door. I know the best routes the toys sections of all of the local Wal-Marts (pretty straight forward), Targets (kinda tricky) and TRU (very odd). I have a specific path that I take in the Target stores to avoid walking through long sections of toy area where the whining kids usually are. I also rarely shop on weekends because I hate hearing screaming kids when I'm in the hunting mindset, it just ruins it. I personally take a couple minutes to look at the TF section even if I don't see what I'm looking for right away. Sometimes there's something on the back of a peg or behind some boxes and it never hurts to look a bit (it's how I got my Silverbolt on the first day of sightings in a TF deadzone). I also have favorite routes to and between stores, but those don't usually effect my results.

Does anyone else do similar things?

I usually hit walmarts since i get an employee discount. Target and tru on ocassion. Anytime i work, i look at transformers on my way to my department. Then check a walmart close to my house a couple times a week. Thats bout it.

search ebay and hope no ones but me bid but that never happens.

store search..no way.

My hunting day ritual.

I set the alarm for 8:08 (the release day of the 86 movie).
I get up, shower, and put on my lucky TF boxers.
My standard hunting garb is all black. Sometimes I wear a monocle. sometimes not.
On the way downstairs, I pick a TF at random from my shelves and transform him. I then touch my MISB pre-rubsign Prime on the window over the cab for luck after the ritual dusting.
I hop in my white RX-8 (vanity plate: JAZZ) and begin the search pattern.
1st stop - Walmart. I park at the garden section which has an entrance right by the toys.
2nd stop - the Target no one goes to. I park by the same tree every time. It kinda looks like Unicron bending over Lithone with his arm reached out.
3rd stop - the Target everyone goes to. ugh. yet I found Titanium G1 Magnus there. So I keep going.
4th stop - TRU. Cute cute cute cashiers. Maybe someday I'll bring one home to show my collection....
stop for a snack at Krispy Kreme. The days I do this, I seem to have 35% better luck than others.
Drive across town for stops 5-10. But only if stops 1-4 were fruitless.
Come home. Unbox. Do the ritual New Plastic Crack dance. Pose the new toys carefully on the shelves. Curse my shelves for being too small.

Same here... I preorder most things.

I go to 1 or 2 Targets a week just for other household stuff, so I check out the toy aisles while I'm there.

I gave up on my TRU, because scalpers get there at opening time and snag everything.

I now believe all TRU have ravishing looking women. I mean WTF are you doing working here looks.

My rituals include watching something Transformers and or surfing TFW2005/Seibertron.com the night before to get me psyched up. In the morning I try to get all the thing I have to get done before hand like get the kids things they need done and what not so to have no interruption since I would have to drive 20 miles back.

While driving said treks for plastic crack I have to have music playing but not just any music playing. A mixture of the 80's movie soundtrack, Tony Bacala's amazing remixes,and the 2007 soundtracks. But always has to start with "Nothing's going to stand in our way", because nothing will stand in my way.

Doing all this doesn't help the chances of finding anything but it always makes for a great time. What helps is when I go with the only other collector I know in my area and best bud. We have put "A LOT" of miles on his car and I feel bad cuz my car is a P.O.S. I would even say we have even put 100+ miles on one hunt alone. Maybe tuesday will be another hunt I hope.

awesome thread. Good ideas with the Tony B music and bringing the dog. I'll be doing both, maybe burn the latest WTF@TFW to cd-r too.

All I do is try and save time by using Walmart's garden entrance when weather permits.

Get up early, take the bus down to TRU (its out of the city centre for me), then either get the bus into the city centre and continue the hunt or return home and bask in my new plastic crack's glory.

My Blog! Robot Shakespeare (on hiatus)

I just have a route that I take when I'm out doing a toy-run. Nothing else special.

Originally Posted by @GogDog When life gives you lemons, you KICK IT IN!

I "Run the pegs" whenever I go into a store. Put all the product on the lowest pegs possible until those are full then move up from there (none of that we've got 6 pegs for deluxes and only one or two per peg, I'm cramming them in). Then I put the more popular stuff on the front so the kids can not only reach it easier (being lower), but so they don't have to dig behind 12 Camshafts to get to the one Bumblebee. Also, its just a way nicer way to dig through the pegs and pegs of stuff.

Its partly because it just makes everything more organized for me and other shoppers, and partly because of karma, that way I should be able to find new stuff if I help keep the area clean for everybody else.
DN