Gotta buy 'em all... if they can be found

We (that is, Transformers collectors) seem to be in a new situation this month. It's been building for a while now, ever since the demise of the Transformers Animated toyline. For those unfamiliar with how these things go, Hasbro will plan out a line of toys for a season or year. Usually, those toys tie in to a show or movie. So, each year we've had a movie, toys appear a month or two in advance based on the movie characters. Between movies, we've had toys based on a couple of TV cartoons as well as a series of "classic" characters that are from shows of years past.

Well, lately some of the toys that are created for a series don't make it onto the shelves in the stores before another series or movie takes over... so, there were around half a dozen toys created for the Animated TV cartoon that didn't get wide distribution in the U.S. because the second Transformers movie came out before they could be shipped. We (again, collectors) were somewhat lucky that stores like Toys R Us decided to take those and sell them as "exclusives" that were on the pegs the same time as the movie toys. But even with that effort, there was still at least one figure that never made it to stores in the U.S. at all. Animated Blackout had to be imported from Japan, the only place he had been released.

Forward to today, and we're seeing an even larger gap in "announced" toys that aren't being shipped to stores. Either the stores aren't ordering them because they're getting space cleared for the newest movie, or Hasbro has declined to produce them because they're making the toys from the newest movie. Either way, it could end up being a case of trying to hunt down rare figures as "exclusives" from a single retailer, OR, simply never seeing them in the U.S.

It's a shame, since many of the figures not being released in larger quantities were ones that long-time collectors were excited about. They tended to be characters based on the original series of toys from way back in 1984. There are three of the ill-fated "Power Core Combiner" line that I still need in order to complete that series on my shelves. It's almost like we suddenly have too much of a good thing... there are too many characters that Hasbro's trying to put into stores and they're starting to step on one another's release schedules. I finally started ordering some of my figures from Hasbro's online Toy Shop. But even there, not all of them are available to order... they either don't get enough stock to keep up with demand, or just don't get added.

So, for now, I'll just have to be content that I managed to snag Lugnut online, since he's an awesome figure! Much more articulation than I had expected, and very stable in robot mode. I'm used to most of the plane-based Transformers being back-heavy, because they invariably seem to have an entire tail section hanging off their backs. But this guy is rock-solid.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to cut my collection pretty soon. Either stop buying new figures (which seems very unlikely to stick), or start selling some of my lesser-liked figures to make room for new ones. I'm just seeing less and less shelf space available each time I get a new character unpacked. I mean, my Primes and Megatrons are almost shoulder-to-shoulder right now!

I know that I can do some re-arranging of some of my figure layouts to gain a bit more space. But it's going to be a losing battle no matter what I do. Eventually, I'm going to run out of horizontal surfaces to safely display everybody. I have a feeling that the latest movie, Dark of the Moon, will test the remaining space I do have in the coming months...

Number One Thousand...

Well, I managed to make it to the magic number before the end of 2010... sort of. As my previous posts mention, I have about a dozen "Real Heroes", "Titanium" and another dozen or so non-Hasbro/Takara/Tomy figures added in to my collection count. So, my "official" Transformer count is a bit lower than what my database shows. But, for my own purposes, yesterday was the day my count hit the big one-zero-zero-zero! What figure rolled me over to that magic number, you ask? Well, I'll tell you two versions of the story. The first is the one I prefer:

Back in 1984 I had just turned seven years old. One of the presents I opened was a brand new Transformer that changed from a robot into a little red race car; Cliffjumper. I carried that guy all over with me, and he's still in my collection to this day, albeit now with a broken-off head and very loose joints. Fast forward to 2010, the Christmas season. New on the pegs, just in time for the holidays is a brand new Transformer that changes from a robot into a medium sized Cybertronian race car; Cliffjumper!


There's some very nice symmetry in that, so it's the version I'll probably stick with. But there's also the second version:

Cruising through my local Target during the 2010 holiday season, I find a lone new figure hanging from the pegs; a single Cliffjumper, all by himself. I figure, I'd better grab it now, since I may not find another until after the Christmas rush goes away. After checking out and driving home, I realize that he's my 999th figure in the database... so close to 1,000! But I've always loved the character, so I couldn't have just left him in the store at the time... oh, well. That leaves me going to a second Target store two days later. Hanging on the pegs I see at least two Cliffjumpers, plus: Thunderwing!


So, technically, my 1K figure is Thunderwing, which still isn't bad. He was a very cool G1 figure, and had some great plotlines in the G1 and later comic books. So, he's worthy of the title if necessary. But I still like to think that, since they were both purchased close together and both released in the same wave, Cliffjumper is the deserving 1K winner.

So, 1,000 figures right at the end of 2010... only took me 26 years to get here. Here's to at least 26 more! (years, not figures) :)

The end is just the beginning

So I ended up back with Photoshop to stitch together my photos. One side went fine, the other is a bit distorted on one end, but isn't terrible. It's been 57 days since I started the project. That's almost two full months from installing the first shelf supports to putting the final Prime in place. The current figure count (I don't call it "final", since that would be inaccurate... I'm still collecting, after all) comes to a grand total of:

945 Transformers

I didn't include the non-transforming Titanium figures or the half-dozen or so Robot Heroes figures I also have, but that's as close as I can come to an accurate count. So there you have it! The one number that stands out from my count is the number of Mini-Cons I have now. I've been collecting groups of them for quite a while, but I didn't really realize how many I really had until the spreadsheet gave me the total: 107 Mini-Cons... that's one ninth of my entire collection!


So that's it for the vast bulk of my installation project. All that's left is finding room for new figures as they're released. I have a feeling I'm going to need some extra shelf space in the near future, or have to sell off some of the less interesting figures. For now, I'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief that everything is back on display after several years!

Everything is on the shelves!

I put the final figure (a new Prime) up on the shelf about an hour ago. Since then, I've been trying to get photo software to stitch together my pictures so that I can get each wall in one shot... so far Photoshop has completely failed me, so it's on to other freeware options. First up is Microsoft's Image Composite Editor.

Out of Prime Real Estate

I'm finally down to just two full tubs of Transformers, which represent about half of my remaining collection. Which means that they must be the small to medium size figures to pack together that tightly. One should be my Beast Wars collection, and the other looks like my Armada/Energon/Cyberton figures. I can't remember if I left most of them in robot mode before packing them up, but hopefully I did. The time I'm taking to re-transform figures is still slowing me down the most. Even looking up the figure names doesn't take that long.


Last night I gathered up all of my Bumblebee figures, which were all in vehicle mode except for two. I still have three left to convert before I'm done putting them onto the top shelf.


Right now I have about two and a half shelves left open, all together. That includes a couple of feet at the ends of the two top shelves. What I don't seem to have anymore is room for my Prime/Primal and Megatron collections... I started the Primes on one side of a shelf and the Megatrons on the other. Last night I put my second to last movie Prime on the shelf and filled the remaining gap. I can still fit a few more in front of the other figures, if they're shorter. But for the most part, any new leader figure I get will have to go on a completely new shelf. I considered moving the Megatrons to the other side of the room, on their own shelf, but that would mean moving the other figures I already have over there... plus, it doesn't look quite as impressive split out that far. But it might still need to happen at some point. Maybe a year down the road I'll take the time to move them around better. For now, they can stay where they are.


My overall figure damage report was really low until a few days ago. There were less than half a dozen vehicles that had small paint scratches or rubberized parts that had been bent in a curve that needed to be straightened back out. But over the weekend I tried to work with my Generation 2 Jazz figure... the plastic they used for the front end didn't stand the test of time well at all. When I tried to pull the arms out to the sides, the top of the hood split apart, on both sides for both arms. Then the entire front end detached from the rest of the figure. So now he's in several pieces on my desk as I figure out what I want to do. My G1 Jazz is still discolored and has fairly loose joints, but it's still in one piece. I may see what I can do with some glue to put the other guy back together again. It's just a shame the plastic came apart so badly, as he's one of my favorite characters.


I'm glad that I can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel now. It's been fun to revisit a number of figures as I put them on the shelves, but it's also been a much longer process than I had expected...

Further along, but still quite a bit left

So I managed to get my Alternators on the shelf and moved ahead to the rest of my figures over the weekend. It's going faster than it was last month, but it's still slower going than I had assumed when I started the project. It looks like I transformed about half of my figures into vehicle mode, or at least partially into vehicle mode, when I packed them up several years ago. That means that it's taking me longer to transform them back into robot mode again before I can place them on display. I had to change every single one of the Alternators back to robot mode, so that, in itself, took most of an afternoon.


I'm also finding it a bit difficult to find the "taller" figures that I want to put on the shelves first, so that I can put shorter figures in front of them without completely blocking the one in the back. I have more and more of the "basic" size figures sitting on my desk, ready for placement, but not enough larger figures to place them in front of yet. I think the next tub of figures has a greater number of the big guys though, so hopefully that will sort itself out in the coming week.

So I finally got far enough ahead to be curious about the numbers... I've been cross-checking my figure names in my database as I put them onto the shelves, so I can get an accurate count of what I have. As of today, I have 341 figures on display. Not bad, just slightly over a third of my total collection in place now... but that means I still have two thirds of them sitting in the remaining tubs. At this rate I won't be done until November! Although, as it gets colder outside, I'll be spending more time on the project inside. I think I can probably get through the rest sometime in September, at the latest.

Maybe.

Pushed around by paperwork

I fully intended to sit down and convert all of my Alternator figures from vehicle to robot mode this weekend, then get them onto the shelves. However, after pulling all the vehicles out and setting them on the table, I realized that I probably needed the instructions for some of them. That led me to the cardboard box full of instruction manuals, and from there I ended up spending close to an hour sorting all of them out into their respective toylines/series.

By the time I finished sorting through them, I was running out of time for the evening. My wife and I are still working on the exterior of the house, and evenings and early mornings are the only times we can work without a heat advisory making it dangerous this time of the year. So rather than start the Transformation process for a bunch of fairly complex figures, I went the opposite direction. I opened up and displayed some of the simplest figures I own:


The Mighty Muggs Transformers figures are an artistic rendering of some of the more popular figures in the shows and movies. They don't transform into anything. They're just short, vinyl figures, all the same shape (with minor variations like Bumblebee's horns) with paint used to make them look like their toy counterparts. They've been out in stores for a year or more now, but at least half of them had never been removed from their packaging until yesterday. I've been collecting them because they remind me of my own Cuboyd Transformers customs. I don't think there are any plans for new Mighty Muggs Transformers figures at this point, though. So, this particular collection may be complete already. (NOTE: From this point forward, I'll be adding clickable images with a red border for photos that have larger versions you can preview.)

I did finally open up my last two Starscream toys from their boxes, to complete their lineup on my top shelf. I had the Leader class movie figure and the Alternity figure still waiting for display until the past weekend. It isn't a complete representation of all the figures ever released, but it's a pretty good grouping of them.


Since the latest "Hunt for the Decepticons" and "Generations" toy lines have started hitting stores, I've been picking up more new figures. I'm still trying to limit myself to just those that look interesting, since I still have hundreds of other figures that still need my attention... but there are quite a few interesting figures in this series, so I'm sure I'll be adding quite a few in the next month. I also finally have my hands on the Japanese Takara/Tomy release of Blaster as a fully-functional USB hub! This guy was announced over a year ago, got canceled, then re-scheduled and finally released.


So the original figure (on the left) turned into a ghetto blaster. The USB hub turns into a laptop computer that works as a real USB hub. You can see the ports on the robot's legs in the photo above. What I think is the coolest part is the fact that any of the old cassette figures that fit in the original Blaster will also fit in the chest compartment of the new figure! I've also confirmed that the new figure can hold the original Blaster's rifle just fine. It looks huge, but the holes in the fists are identical sizes.

So, that's the collection status as of now. The Alternators will definitely be next, then we'll see what else presents itself from the tubs.