Son of a bitch....

 

I’ve gotten 2 alerts for restock but always miss out by the time I get to Amazon

 

I can't believe it either. Especially since I feel that the paint quality on them was pretty poor. They were chipping when straight out of the box at the wing tips, head cones, and the corners of the chest (which I expected from experience with Thundercracker and Skywarp). My dirge also has a big paint chip cut in the wing that left a long black line.

 

Going to US$300+

My Ramjet nose cone pointy end tip has a paint off. 

 

I repainted Ramjet and Dirge's cone tips and the chest clip areas. Tamiya's "MATT BLACK" lacquer spray is pretty resilient stuff. Even the chest clip areas haven't scuffed off yet. Their acrylic bottle paints would have scuffed off right away.

For small areas or difficult to mask off, I'll just spray into a medicine cup and then try to do touch ups / small paint jobs asap as the paint dries very quickly.

 

Thanks for the heads up on how to fix those chips, definitely gonna do it later this week.

 

Their "MATT BLACK" is a pretty close match. The tip of Ramjet's conehead here is painted in; that's just glare from the light. The chest tab areas look a lot better with a little bit of touch up paint. 2 coats. No scuffs yet.


As for other paint stuff, to avoid scuffing on the wings during transformation, I typically transform the leg and top half areas separately and then join them together at the end. For reverse, I separate the legs out first and then do the transformation.



Tilting the head back when putting the alt mode cone back on helps as well.

 

The advantage of being a modeller! Hos I envy you! 

 

I just wanna say:

"Thanks Amazon!"..After a wait for nearly 2 months, that is.




Before anyone ask, I'm not from US & these are not stocks received from Amazon US either.

 

As a mint box collector, I love seeing clean boxes like these. Congrats

 

Just to report, got my Prowl/Ironhide, no breaks or missing/duplicated parts(two right arms, etc.) So I'm good. Never be fan of how short the Datsun brothers are (especially how small their car modes are) but with this set I finally have all three characters in versions that look good. They'll just be short-shits in my collection.

Have to get them together for a picture.

Also got an open-knee version, transforms clean. My Bluestreak is closed off with no roof tabs, but he transforms fine without any gapping on the roof. My Smokecsreen has it all, but it stopped locking down on the right side door when everything is put together, and the roof sticks up. So I don't really know if that all makes a difference.

Won't be keeping Ironhide. Though it sounds like more people were after Prowl like me, so I'll see how that moves later.

 

Wtf!!! I thought prowl was only open knees. Didn't realize a closed knee prowl exists

 

Where can I see a picture or video about the opened knees vs closed knees?

 

Will the Prowl/Ironhide figures ever be restocked or are they limited and sold out?

 

What is open and closed knees?

Edit:
Nevermind. Figured it out. Compared ER Prowl to ER Barricade. Prowl for us has 'closed' knees and Barricade has 'open' knees. Does not appear to have any functional difference, though.

 

That means you got a luckily good prowl. Normally the closed knees versions car roof sticks up and doesn't line up with the back of the car

 

I know these are retools of like Siege Prowl and Ironhide and retools of Earthrise Starscream. But would you still consider these to be new mold Exclusives?

 

Whenever that happens immediately call Amazon & bitch & moan about it. They'll give you a partial refund. You basically get the set for half price. And if enough people would do this, maybe they'll stop shipping things like that. If everybody would call & complain you might be helping out the rest of us that do care about the box. Why should the F'ing ebay scalpers get the nice mint boxes while *REAL* collectors that actually care have to settle for ruined packaging?

They shipped mine the same way. I called & got a partial refund. I was able to remove all the shipping stickers with a hair dryer & Goo-Gone but you can still see the outline slightly. It pisses me off because it shouldn't have happened at all.

Then I get a bunch of orders for household items, art supplies & cat bowls that get shipped with care in an actual shipping box. The only shipping they mess up are the high value collectible toys that I want to be in a mint box.

Sometimes I think they're doing it on purpose just to fuck with me. And I told them that the last time I called them.  (They're probably not but I told them anyway. Why not?)

 

Mine arrived with a sticker on the box. I didn't call Amazon. I don't feel entitled to a refund of any kind as the box was getting tossed either way. My figures are great, I'm happy with them and honestly after reading through the thread I'm happy to have received the pair at all. I understand the gripe boxed collectors would have and it's warranted, I'm just laying down my experience with the set.

 

An amount matching the price of the Ironhide/Prowl set has been taken from my card. The delivery charge wasn’t taken though, so would that be taken separately? (I’m not eligible for free delivery this is as I live in England.)

The status of the order itself hasn’t changed yet, but hoping his means it’s about to ship.