Thanks to friend site Cybertron.ca we carn report that Cliffjumper, Ironworks, and Wheeljack have been spotted in multiple Walmarts and Toys “R” Us’.

Additionally, over the last few days Earthrise Micromasters were spotted at Toys”R”Us in Ontario and Earthrise Voyagers were found at Toys”R”Us in both Quebec and Ontario.

Happy hunting!

 

I picked up most of wave 1 in Barrie, Ontario over the last 2 weeks. I only need Starscream and they have been available at EB games,  Walmart and TRU. I actually got Prime, Wheeljack and Hoist of 117.00CDN after tx with a bogo 1/2 price and 10% of total purchase

 

Look at you Hasbro, still trying to disguise some voyager figures as leader class.
Astrotrain and Optimus, in this case.

 

I saw wave 1 Battlemasters at a Wal-mart almost 2 weeks ago.

 

Yes, clearly, Optimus with the trailer should have been voyager. People definitely would have bought the trailer separately. But seriously, Astrotrain is the size he was in the cartoon. He was never massive, and the toy reflects that. He was as tall as a seeker, but required the engineering of a leader.

 

I will never accept Astrotrain as "in scale" until you can shove Devastator into his dark payload bay.

 

So then we should redefine how to classify these classes since size is no longer an object. Got it.

 

These are targeted for kids, meaning they wanted to give it a play feature like Shockwave before, leaders just come with a bunch of accessories. Prime\'s trailer is accurate. Astrotrain coming a trailer that turns into a carrier/launch pad for the Shuttle is, in my opinion, really cool

 

Even though they're Voyagers they needed a "bigger boat

 

These are targeted for kids, meaning they wanted to give it a play feature like Shockwave before, leaders just come with a bunch of accessories. Prime\'s trailer is accurate. Astrotrain coming a trailer that turns into a carrier/launch pad for the Shuttle is, in my opinion, really cool

 

Clearly Hasbro should just sell Optimus as a Voyager and include the trailer for free.

They've always been price points that define a lot of factors such as mass/weight, part count, number of joints, number of paint operations and, in case it's just a single figure, oftentimes also size, but the latter has never been cut-and-dry. 2007 Movie Voyager Class Blackout was a small Voyager by 2007 standards, because he featured a massive backpack in robot mode. It's been the fans who have made the price point all about the figure's size.

Once again, Optimus's trailer, Astrotrain's accessories, Studio Series Optimus Prime's trailer, Siege Shockwave's backpack/accessories/whatever, they are all part of the buget. Hasbro isn't ripping you off by selling you a tiny figure at a higher price and then attempting to justify the size/price ratio by including extras that could have been included for free otherwise. That calculation doesn't work.

 

A bit weird this is a frontpage news story now, when I picked up stuff over the last couple of weeks myself, but hey, not everyone checks the sightings forums I guess so giving them a heads-up is always good.

 

These are targeted for kids, meaning they wanted to give it a play feature like Shockwave before, leaders just come with a bunch of accessories. Prime\'s trailer is accurate. Astrotrain coming a trailer that turns into a carrier/launch pad for the Shuttle is, in my opinion, really cool

 

I agree, that said, some of these figures really push it as far as what reasonably takes up that budget. Deluxe Cliffjumper, for example, simply doesn't come with the same amount of plastic as Hoist. Big gun or not, dude's ridiculously undersized for a Deluxe. It's also a hard sell to look at Siege Astrotrain and SS Scavenger and see them as the same value. It's not that they're Voyager figures with accessories at the Leader price, it's that they don't have enough accessories to justify the price.

They may cost more than Voyagers, but I sincerely doubt they cost as much as actual Leaders.

 

Remember that budget allocations are by Wave, not on a per-figure basis. Costs shaved off of Cliffjumper might go into extra paint budget for Wheeljack, for instance.

In WFC, Shockwave came out a little below average mass for modern Leader size, but Ultra Magnus was over by a not insignificant amount.

Doesn't balance out fairly if you're going to pick and choose your figures, but it gives the designers more leeway to deal with more troublesome designs and features.

 

It's pretty tough to justify though if you're not picking up the entire wave.

 

I mean, I already said as such. But yeah. It wasn't so bad before when the price points were more standardized in size. It was mostly just a deco thing before. But now that, following Studio Series, they've been more willing to play with the sizes within those price points, the disparities become more obvious.

 

Glad Canada has found all these. The only ones I have found in Austin Texas is Grapple, the Micromaster and that stupid bull that turns into a hammer.

 

You know what I mean. You couldn’t have made an accurate astrotrain with a convincing train and shuttle mode without the additional plastic of a leader. Hasbro watched people moan about scale and G1 accuracy for almost a decade and a half and now that we have it, Astrotrain is apparently too small, and too expensive.

 

so far in my area Hoist and Grapple are already shelfwarming.