At least you guys are getting the Alts. They stopped shipping them here over a year ago, and for me, buying online is prohibitively expensive. So it's not something I'm going to do often... but me, I like the pictures of the repaints I've seen and I'd buy them.

 

Actually.. they didnt cancel him.. takara stll making ginrai and black * convoy.

on preorders
http://www.action-hq.com/cgi-bin/action-hq/scan/fi=products/st=db/tf=category%2Cdescription/co=yes/sf=category/se=Transformers%20Binaltech%3A%3AAlternators/va=banner_image=/va=banner_text=.html

 

Interesting, here in New Zealand, Smokescreen was a huge sucess, he sold out instantly and was hard to find, everyone wanted him, kids and car enthusists alike. Sideswipe did fairly well, and Silverstreak was a quick seller too, Hound and Dead End were the ones to begin to sell slow....and there was Meister.....he was worse than a plague of insecticons.....Meisters....everywhere...so many Meisters, we got craploads of 4x Meister cases, flooded the marketplace and we went without any new alts for months....only late last year did we get the Ravage/Shockblast/Wheeljack/Windcharger case, we basically totally missed Swindle/Grimlock. But now, thanks to good sales of the latest wave, we're going to get in the next case, (Skids, Prowl, Sunstreaker) but we're ditching the Rollbar/Ricochet wave, luckily Hasbro NZ knows what and what not to import....even though Riccochet probably would've sold fairly well...

 

Damn right. I'm really looking forward to acquiring him. I think that he's going to be a VERY popular figure. I want to buy 2 because both of his modes look so well done.

 

That is so odd how the popular ones like dead end and meister and the unpopular ones like sideswipe and smokescreen is reversed there in New Zealand, I find that so funny....

 

Honestly, I don't understand the whole repainting/retooling/re-whatever thing. I was thinking that the Alternators line was supposed to be a high quality homage to the G1 line. I understand that the G1 line itself was retooled/recolored but I wasn't expecting Hasbro to treat it like a kiddie line. The rubber tires, attention to detail, working doors/hood/trunk, guns that were part of the car, etc lent the line a nice quality feel. After having finally gotten a hold of Tracks, I am surprised that they don' go with the same smooth paint job on all the cars.

Frankly, I agree with the first poster. Hasbro IS getting lazy with their line. I think the decisions are being made by business types and not the people who actually like the toys. Optimus as a Dodge Ram is laughable. Are we supposed to assume that the Ram is the epitome of what Optimus respresents?

 

The Alternators line isn't a homage to G1 though. It's intended to recapture the spirit of what G1 was, realistic vehicles turning into cool robots. The homages are purely there to build an association.

As for the retooling, I think it is merely to keep the costs down. These guys are complicated for their price, and I'm sure they don't have the same production runs as the mainline stuff. Therefore, redecos and redesigns are needed to keep the costs down. And hey, some of them are dead cool. Shockwave, Wheeljack, even Decepticharge are all little bits of awesomeness in my book.

 

i just dont get why alt stepper ISNT the mazda mould? the subrua mould is the biggest shelf warmer EVER! tons of unsold Alt smokescreens and bluestreaks but when Hasbro released Jazz and Shockwave (the mazda moulds) people went crazy over them and just loved the moulds (personally i dont see why) so if Hasbro wanted to get its money back for making the crap were getting like Alt Prime then they should have just released alt stepper as the mazda mould as it would have sold alot better.

personally im waiting for the alt prime mould to be fixed as trailbreaker and hoist

 

Rollbar and Ricochet are much cooler in your hand. The paint application and the plastic used is darn good. And the flames look good too. But I can totally understand people wanting to skip these molds. I would too, but I'm getting every Alt.

 

I don't mind the repaints. I just wish that if they're gonna throw repaints at us that they'd atleast make them Decepticons. These are for supposedly for collectors right? The "kids want heroes" rule doesn't apply at all. Give us more bad guys damn it  

I also agree that Ricochet should have been a Meister repaint. It looks ok though regardless.

 

I'm glad they made Ricochet. It made my kitbash easier.



 

 

Hahaha...true that.

I wish I could think of a reason to kitbash Richochet/Stepper, but I can't.

 

does anyone have any pics of kitbashed alt steppers using the mazda mould? i wouldnt mind seeing afew examples of how stepper SHOULD have looked