When I joined the MP race, most things we virtually sold out.
Right now, I doubt options for say Ironhide, or Tracks exist at normal price range outside KOs. We are lucky KOs do exist but still some is a chore to track them down.

That one too. I mean I find myself getting an excess of Primes and Megatrons from various lines, despite the fact that I have not a single Inferno.

Friend of mine came with that thing a week prior...

I will not lie: I Dont give a rats @ss about movie bots, but after fondling that thing, the thought of buying it did cross my mind....
at least 4 times....

 

I hear that. I kept considering the Unique Toys Blurr because it looked cool, but kept coming back to "Blurr is f***ing annoying", lol

I generally feel the same, but there is something extremely compelling about the Bumblebee Prime. Easy pass for me on this one since I don't have anything else in that scale and have no desire to start. Weird that all the BB Primes are 12" for some weird reason. The first company to put out a 9.5" or so will likely get my cash  

 

Wait, ddoes Wei Jiang still exist?

 

Yup, the green one has the combiner hands, one of the other 2 has the combiner head.

Those are the "Shrine Warriors". Baltmatrix's review has over 10M views now or some crazy amount like that.

The unsold ones are going to YouTube reviewers this time. They'll be getting some monster boxes. I figure these types of KOs have paid for themselves already just for the shock value they have given to visitors so no need to keep them here. I kind of want more of these types of KOs reviewed for posterity as well.  

 

The key to having a goal is working towards it without being stressed, and being able to just let it come to you... eventually. But then you also just end up buying a lot of stuff "because it seemed cool at the time"  

I used to have more of your approach, but things have overflowed since then a bit. Bear in mind that when I started collecting, G1-based lines weren't a thing, so customizing was the only way to achieve a shelf of "classic" characters. For the longest time, I had no G1-style Prime. Now I have a plague of Primes!  

Once upon a time, a cool, large-scale combiner was a pipe dream. Now I've got FOUR Predakings, and FIVE Devastators. How the heck did that even happen??

For me, Transformers has always been about G1 and the ensemble cast. I used to have the TPB edition of Marvel's Transformers Universe sitting next to my desk at all times. For me, all those 84-85 guys are "sentimental favourites"

On the other hand, if I had to make a cut, I'd throw Hot Rod, Arcee and every 86 movie character into a smelting pit just to watch them die. They're not even 'G1' to me... they're just some weird sideline that leaked after REAL Transformers (kind of like Beast Wars, but without the good writing). You think Wheelie and Blurr are annoying? Imagine that taint bleeding onto ALL of those characters  

And yet, somehow I still buy them every now and again if the figure looks neat or is cheap enough... just for the heck of it.

(I'm exaggerating just a little bit about '86 movie charactrs, but I'd happily erase every Bayformers character out of existence. Those I truly despise. But... well, more on that in a second.

Cool, I've never been east of Germany (and going the other direction, Hong Kong and Japan).

I don't have an issue with Social Justice Warrfare in premise, and I'm firmly on that side of the spectrum. But unfortunately there are a lot of people with deranged ideas of what social justice means. Gay rights? 100%! Riding no-hands as a microaggression against differently-abled persons? No, sorry... that person is an idiot. The important thing is not to confuse the crazies with the legitimate activists who are genuinely working towards positive change.

There's definitely a benefit to setting goals... sure, it's sometimes hard to fufill those goals... but on the other hand, it's also a useful limitation. Saying "I only want THESE characters for my shelf" means you pick a scale, pick the figures, buy them, and then you're done.

But I dunno... retail therapy is a thing. Shopping is fun. Getting new stuff is fun. So I guess that's one more reason why my collection keeps growing.  

Probably the best database you can consult is the fandom hive-mind. TFwiki may have a images of all the official toys, but if you want size comparison pictures and a list of the different KO versions that exist, you're better off asking around. A lot of us have these figures and sometimes we'll even snap pictures of them so you can see the comparisons.

The Sirtoys sister site Actionfigure Checklist actually has a TON of pictures, and there are often size comparisons with officials and other KOs to give you an idea of how they stack up.
Transformers KnockOff KO, Action Figure Checklist Photos

Yeah, that's a kicker. Some characters get done to death, and you wait forever to get a proper version of a more obscure fave.

The difficulty in picking up older MP figures is a form of manufactured scarcity by Takara. I had a friend who was preordering MPs directly from Japanese webstores, so the prices were great, and getting them wasn't an issue... but I started late on that, which is why both my Red Alert and Sideswipe are KO.

And then the prices went up, and I just gave up on paying for Takara stuff.

I don't care about the Bay movies (or even the Bumblebee movie, really)... but I don't hate the idea of doing more "realistic" versions of G1 characters. For that reason, I pick up some of the better-looking movie-style designs that come along. I wasn't a fan of the original Bay Optimus, but the Bumblebee version is so familiar, and so classical looking, that I can appreciate him just as a "realistic" version of Optimus.

I'm in exactly the same boat there. The scale thing bugs me too. Lately, there seems to be a fascination with making just REALLY HUGE versions of characters that don't really scale with anything, and so I haven't really been buying them, even though they look cool. But at a smaller, more compatible size? I'd be all over it.

Not really at the moment... but a lot of their recent releases are still out there. Who knows if they'll make a comeback? I kind of hope so.

zmog

 

Pretty soon, especially with Wei Jiang going down, you could open your storeroom as a KO museum!

 

In Ben's review, he did a great comparison of the various oversized BB OPs, but omitted one of them. Here's a photoshopped comparison of the 5 main versions:

_

 

I just took first place in the FTTF game... with a KO... of Great Cannon from the KO Battle Gaia combiner.

KO-NEWS  

 

I recently got an MP-28 and it was perfect, no issues at all. I need to get the targetmaster version now. You should also get a Matrix (copy of MP-10) that will fit in his Matrix chamber, the Takara didn't come with that.

 

My KO MP-28 came with a diecast matrix

 

What about truck modes, because that is the biggest deciding factor for me.

 

Is there a KO of the IF DJD combiner one the works? I would love to have one, but it’s way too expensive.

 

If you check out Ben's review, the Wei Jiang version is compared to one of them, and it shows the Weijiang version becomes smaller than the other versions. Also, the feet rotate inside the legs, so that they don't hang outside, like the 3-0 version.

 

This soft dart transforming cannon/gun reminds me of a Transformer ...



 

 

That is Badass KO stuff right there... get me one?

 

"Nerfatron - is that YOU?!"

 

"Here's a hint!"

 

If someone makes one of those that are OS so that Tarn is at least a deluxe I will literally throw my wallet at the screen.

 

       
you don't know the joy this provided me today...carry on