Seekers

[Jason X]

I keep forgetting about Icestorm. Yes, add him to the set too.

[Lord_Onslaught]

Sunstorm and Icestorm both I don't mind buying the KO version since I know Hasbro would never make them. Acid Storm was a fluke I highly doubt we will see any of the other Rainmakers in the ClassicVerse. Even though Sunstorm has been everywhere since his reintroduction

[KFGatri]

Apologies in advance if I mess up the attributing here . . .

 

Just because the cartoon writers didn't exploit some of the characters properly doesn't mean they weren't cool. Look at Thundercracker - he has what I consider the most interesting personality of all the Seekers, yet until recently this has NEVER been exploited by TF writers!! Freakin' ticked me off for years... but I still always loved the fact that Thundercracker wasn't fully convinced of the Decepticon cause of galactic conquest, but only fought for the Decepticons because he disagreed with the Autobot cause even more. Kinda like when you vote for one party not because you agree with them, but because you disagree with the rival party more. :P

 

That's completely how I'm making my decsion in the upcoming presidential election, honestly - I'm voting for the Republican nominee which I currently refer to with the placeholder designation "Notobama". It is a shame the writers never dropped a little of that into the media.

 

Classicsverse is seen as the "new" G1 now, so it's understandable that people wanted all the Seekers from the beginning. Another thing is, as repaints, they're relatively cheap and easy to do because you just recycle the same core mould. One thing that frustrated me was how they gave us an obscure character like Acid Storm (who pegwarmed BADLY) years before giving us Thrust, Dirge and Thundercracker in retail. :( :( That's just stupid. If they're gonna give us another Starscream repaint, they should've given us Thundercracker before Acid Storm... surely. At the time Thundercracker was only available as limited exclusive BotCon and Gentei figures - which are inaccessible to a lot of people (and even Gentei Thundercracker was expensive at the time of purchase), and yet I kept walking around store to store seeing Acid Storm sitting there gathering dust.

 

I did feel that way about the Movieverse though, which is why I never bothered getting any of the other movie Seekers as Voyagers - and only later when they came out as Deluxes (cos they're cheaper, heh) :)

 

Oh, Classics is totally G1 to me as well. They're what we would have gotten if modern toy tech existed in the 80s, plain & simple. And I have to disagree about Acid Storm and Thundercracker. IMO TC should have replaced the superfluous, lame, toy-inaccurate Starscream. Starscream is silver-grey, not white! We'd already gotten a better-looking, less floppy Screamer in Classics, one which was far closer to the original toy's colors in a cool reimagined deco pattern. I grabbed Acid Storm immediately; Lamescream only when he was on clearance.

 

I actually have gotten all the Classics/Universe etc. Seekers - it's just that they were a cool to have rather than a must have with me. I also had no problem with how they were released. It wouldn't have looked too good to have so many nearly identical toys on the pegs at once, kind of like all the Camaros clogging the pegs right now. Sure, we know all those jets are different characters (unlike the Camaros), but would retailers? An entire case of "Decepticon Jet" likely would have been passed over by Walmart.

 

Besides, spacing the Seekers out builds antici . . .

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I didn't get Thrust though cos I already have Breakaway. Meh... I guess I really don't care that much about completing the movie Sky Raiders because, as you said, they're not the same characters.

 

To me the Classicsverse Seekers were, so I did definitely have a more burning desire to complete them.

 

The Breakaway mold was such a novel, fun design that I didn't mind the reuse, and the new head made it a BWII homage, how cool was that?

 

 

Okay, but I think the point is this -- Hasbro WANTS to make repaints. Hasbro are going to make repaints. If Hasbro are going to give us repaints, why not give us repaints that make sense and have an appeal factor and thus sell better than all the endless slews of pointless and random repaints they keep pumping at us that just peg/shelfwarm?? e.g. Recon Ravage, Sea Attack Ravage, and the plethora of Optimus Prime and BUMBLEBEE repaints!! :o

 

Well, Optimus & Bumblebee are somewhat justified because they're the stars of the trilogy, although the sheer number was excessive. Hasbro was so determined to avoid the Bumblebee drought from the first movie line that they went too far in the opposite direction. Keeping the most popular character available is a good thing. Having 3 different very similar deluxes out simultaneously is not.

 

There are plenty of repaint options for the non-Starscreams, too. And a lot of them appeal to me much more than the Rainbow Starscream Squadron. For example, I'm really really hoping for RiD Scourge (not Nemesis Prime!) from RTS Optimus. And what about Glyph and Hubcap from Classics Bumblebee? With a new head for Hubcap of course. Or Megatron redone as Megaplex or post-fishbowl Straxus (in funky UK comic-accurate colors)? Legends Cosmos in gold, as Scrounge? If Hasbro is going to make the repaints appeal to the fans, then let's really have some fun with it! :yay

 

 

If we always have to get what G1 did then why did we get so many red Bumblebees labelled "Cliffjumper"?

Because someone at Hasbro was stupid and inattentive. In G1 Cliffjumper was NEVER a red Bumblebee. We had a red Bumblebee in G1... he was called BUMBLEBEE. Cliffjumper was a different mould (albeit same stock transformation, but not the same mould). Bumblebee was the yellow or red VW Beetle and Cliffjumper was the yellow or red Porsche 944 Turbo ... or they could both be the yellow Mazda 323 (aka Familia) if you got the "Bumblejumper" mould. ;)

 

At long last Hasbro realises the fact that Cliffjumper wasn't a red Bumblebee and shouldn't be a red Bumblebee. I can accept a red Bumblebee with a retooled head as Cliffjumper (eg Alternity, Generations)... but the one thing that excites me about Prime Cliffjumper is that he's a whole new mould! YAY! They should release a yellow repaint and call it Bumper. :P

You know, for years, until I got the KMart Legend Bumblebee, my only one was the red one. That's why I could never accept the red repaints as CJ. :tfhuh Well, the Classic toy's deco managed to give him a different personality from Bumblebee, but a new head would have really clinched it. I'm among those who put WFC Cliffjumper's had on the Classic toy. The red isn't a perfect match, but it's reasonable.

[Goktimus Prime]

Oh, Classics is totally G1 to me as well. They're what we would have gotten if modern toy tech existed in the 80s, plain & simple. And I have to disagree about Acid Storm and Thundercracker. IMO TC should have replaced the superfluous, lame, toy-inaccurate Starscream. Starscream is silver-grey, not white! We'd already gotten a better-looking, less floppy Screamer in Classics, one which was far closer to the original toy's colors in a cool reimagined deco pattern. I grabbed Acid Storm immediately; Lamescream only when he was on clearance.

I didn't get Universe Starscream as I already had Classics Starscream. I didn't think Universe Starscream looked bad... but yeah, I didn't feel the need for him. Definitely would've preferred Thundercracker at that stage.

 

I actually have gotten all the Classics/Universe etc. Seekers - it's just that they were a cool to have rather than a must have with me.

If they'd just released Starscream, then I wouldn't have cared about the other Seekers. But they gave us Skywarp and Ramjet in Classics, so suddenly I had this weird feeling collection of Starscream and Skywarp - no Thundercracker, but there's Ramjet! But no Dirge or Thrust. Huh? (o_O) And it's not the same as say releasing all the Autobot Cars which would require a lot of new moulds -- the Seekers are repaints of the same core mould. And year after year we just kept seeing more and more superfluous repaints, but none of the other missing "core" Seekers cast. Acid Storm is one, Universe Starscream is another. Both of these should have been released AFTER they gave us Thundercracker, Dirge and Thrust. Or release Universe Starscream and Acid Storm as limited convention exclusives and give us Thundercracker, Dirge and Thrust as regular store figures sooner... but instead it was the other way around.

 

I also had no problem with how they were released. It wouldn't have looked too good to have so many nearly identical toys on the pegs at once, kind of like all the Camaros clogging the pegs right now. Sure, we know all those jets are different characters (unlike the Camaros), but would retailers? An entire case of "Decepticon Jet" likely would have been passed over by Walmart.

So release them in different waves... like they do with all those Bumblebees (it's almost as if every movie assortment comes with a Bumblebee! :o) They gave us Starscream in Wave 1, Skywarp in Wave 2 and Ramjet in Wave 3. In Universe they gave us Acid Storm in Wave 2 and Starscream in Wave 4. Even Generations gave us Thrust in Wave 1, Dirge in Wave 4 and Thundercracker in Wave 7.

 

I don't mind them coming out in different waves - but it should've been done a lot sooner. Five years to release 6 Classicsverse Seekers in retail?? There's no excuse for that...

 

Besides, spacing the Seekers out builds anticipation in the fans,

May have built anticipation for you, but it built frustration for me. I had no idea whether or not Hasbro (or Takara) would ever release the rest of the Seekers in retail. A lot of people jumped on the BotCon Seekers when they came out - I missed out on them. I jumped on Gentei Thrust, but missed out on Gentei Dirge. So I got Universe Dirge (the repaint of Cybertron Voyager Starscream) out of desperation. I then got Gentei Thundercracker and Skywarp. And those Genteis were expensive (and I paid the original prices for them, not inflated aftermarket prices - still expensive!) and Gentei Thundercracker/Skywarp suffer from mould degradation problems. :(

 

Later when Generations Thrust came out - I didn't know if they were going to release Dirge, which is what I really wanted. But I bought Generations Thrust anyway to encourage Hasbro to release Dirge (i.e. I was voting with my wallet). I gave that Generations Thrust away to a friend because I'm happy with Gentei Thrust - but I just wanted to buy one to encourage Hasbro. Then when Dirge came out, I bought that and sold off my Universe Dirge and Roadbuster at a loss (because of course they were already opened). Then Generations Thundercracker came out... I ended up buying that hoping that they'd fixed the mould degradation from Gentei Thundercracker (they did).

 

So my journey to completing the Seekers wasn't just frustratingly long, but time-consuming and expensive too... I'm not made of money! :fire

 

Right now I still don't have Deluxe Wheeljack, Mirage or Soundwave (none of those toys have been released here yet (ever?)), even though it's been 7 months since the first DOTM toys hit shelves here, the movie has finished screening in cinemas and has been available on DVD and BR for ages! Does this fill me with excitement and anticipation? Hell no! It p!sses me off!! And ultimately it's gonna work against Hasbro too, because if they ever release these toys, the movie hype is gone and a lot of kids and more casual collectors aren't going to be looking to buy them now. The Xmas shopping period is gone too. Sure, fan-collectors like us will buy them, but we're a minority! For the majority, the window of opportunity is closed, ship has sailed, horse has bolted... more analogies! And I still see Generations Thundercracker peg-warming at Kmarts now... why? Because it came out in the tail-end of Generations - competing with DotM. Had this toy come out during Classics, before the first movie hit cinemas, I reckon it would've sold better (just as Starscream and Skywarp did - although Skywarp did move slower because he came packaged with Ultra Magnus).

 

Timing is also a key factor to successfully selling products and Hasbro needs to strike while the iron's hot... not wait months or years after everything's cooled down! *sigh* It's not brain surgery...

 

The Breakaway mold was such a novel, fun design that I didn't mind the reuse, and the new head made it a BWII homage, how cool was that?

I don't mind Breakaway... then again, I got him for free as a bday pressie. Would never have paid for him. :P And that's why I didn't get ROTF Thrust... nobody gave one to me! Would you like to give one to me? ;)

 

Well, Optimus & Bumblebee are somewhat justified because they're the stars of the trilogy, although the sheer number was excessive. Hasbro was so determined to avoid the Bumblebee drought from the first movie line that they went too far in the opposite direction. Keeping the most popular character available is a good thing. Having 3 different very similar deluxes out simultaneously is not.

They just need to ensure that there's plenty of stock. They can just release more of the same toys in subsequent waves rather than repainting them in bizarre colours that people don't want. Collectors and kids will say, "But that's not the Bumblebee I want!" and go hunting for that Bumblebee they want rather than buying the same mould in a weird funky repaint. As I understand it, the reason for the repaint is because Wal*Mart demands it. They keep demanding new products from Hasbro, and instead of just putting their foot down and standing up for themselves, Hasbro just bends over backwards to please Wal*Mart and churns out these ill-thought-out repaints that just end up shelfwarming. *sigh* This kind of thing seldomly happened before Hasbro allowed themselves to become Wal*Mart's beeotch (it's not as if every wave of Beast Wars came with another repaint of Cheetor!)

 

There are plenty of repaint options for the non-Starscreams, too. And a lot of them appeal to me much more than the Rainbow Starscream Squadron. For example, I'm really really hoping for RiD Scourge (not Nemesis Prime!) from RTS Optimus. And what about Glyph and Hubcap from Classics Bumblebee? With a new head for Hubcap of course. Or Megatron redone as Megaplex or post-fishbowl Straxus (in funky UK comic-accurate colors)? Legends Cosmos in gold, as Scrounge? If Hasbro is going to make the repaints appeal to the fans, then let's really have some fun with it! :yay

Except for Scrounge (sorry :P), I think those are all neat ideas! As I said, there's nothing wrong with repaints per se... everyone understands that Hasbro needs to do repaints to survive and make more money out of the moulds that they've invested in, that's fine... but what people want are GOOD well thought out repaints. Not, "here's a toy we slapped some random colours on, you buy now!" (-_-)

 

One cool thing about some of the Generations figures is that they actually plan for future repaints during the conceptual stages of designing the toy! These toys may have had alternate parts cast off the same sprew (thus saving costs by not needing to actually retool the mould later on). Examples include:

+ Generations WFC Bumblebee - the instructions show him with a Cliffjumper head, and sure enough, we got WFC Cliffjumper.

+ Generations Thunderwing - the instructions show him as Black Shadow, and now we have Generations Sky Shadow.

etc.

Even Generations Kup's instructions shows him with some alternative head (which we've yet to see used). Gears? Orion Pax? You decide! :)

 

You know, for years, until I got the KMart Legend Bumblebee, my only one was the red one. That's why I could never accept the red repaints as CJ. :tfhuh Well, the Classic toy's deco managed to give him a different personality from Bumblebee, but a new head would have really clinched it. I'm among those who put WFC Cliffjumper's had on the Classic toy. The red isn't a perfect match, but it's reasonable.

Same here! But really, Classics Cliffjumper should have had a different head from the get-go. :( I bought Classics Cliffjumper not because I thought it was a good Classics Cliffjumper toy, but because it was the ONLY Classics Cliffjumper toy and I would dislike not have a Classics Cliffjumper more! Again, it's like bi-partisan politics!! (-_-)

[Shadowpanther]

I honestly think only completist complain about repaints. because their forced to buy everything due to their completist ways regardless is they like the mold or recolor or not.

 

I'm not a completist,I buy what I love & leave the un-desired TF items I loathe for the next buyer.

 

As a non-completist,I Enjoy repaints because It allows me to select my favorite color scheme & favorite persona for a brand new TF toy mold I love.

 

I love all the seekers repaints,I don't buy all of them. I buy the seeker repaint that I feel the colors look best on the New TF mold I like.

[chonosmoon]

I'm a seekers fan myself... I'm actually working on making a couple set s as a customizer.

 

I think why seekers even though they are typically repaints of one mold are so great is because what they subconsciously represent, a team.

This is probably part of the reason why combiners and dinobots are so popular.

 

As far as trying to get all 3 or 6 or 9 (depending on which ones you count) in every mold it a little absurd.

 

Personally I suggest just collecting the molds molds and iterations that you enjoy. Food for thought~

[Heavyassault]

I too love the Classic Seeker mold.So much so that Ive moded 4 new Seekers.

Took Dirges cockpit and switched it with Thundercrackers cockpit and vice versa.Thats 2 new Seekers.The blues matchup pretty good.

Then I took Acidstorm and Thrust and did the same and more.Making a 2 unit Seeker(Russian sounding team) team.Not going to go into to much detail on that 1.

[Jason X]

I too love the Classic Seeker mold.So much so that Ive moded 4 new Seekers.

Took Dirges cockpit and switched it with Thundercrackers cockpit and vice versa.Thats 2 new Seekers.The blues matchup pretty good.

Then I took Acidstorm and Thrust and did the same and more.Making a 2 unit Seeker(Russian sounding team) team.Not going to go into to much detail on that 1.

Any plans for Sunstorm/Icestorm/Sandstorm repaints? I'd love to see those some time.

[Heavyassault]

I too love the Classic Seeker mold.So much so that Ive moded 4 new Seekers.

Took Dirges cockpit and switched it with Thundercrackers cockpit and vice versa.Thats 2 new Seekers.The blues matchup pretty good.

Then I took Acidstorm and Thrust and did the same and more.Making a 2 unit Seeker(Russian sounding team) team.Not going to go into to much detail on that 1.

Any plans for Sunstorm/Icestorm/Sandstorm repaints? I'd love to see those some time.

I cant paint and just started switching cockpits/legs and sometimes arms(arms because I cant paint) to see what could be done.I was bored and I wanted more Seekers but different 1s.

I do have a extra Hasbro Classic Ramjet that Im going to have made into Sandstorm.I have the chms Sunstorm so no need for him.Id like to use my conehead blue Seeker(Thundercrack with Dirges head/cockpit) for a new and different Icestorm.Im sure its only a matter of time b4 someones does what I did.

 

But guys.I really think you all should give it a go.Im surprised no one has done what Ive done b4.

 

Heres a link to my first mod that I had someone customize.Hes working on another that Ive done.....First Classic Mod Femmebot.lol

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Slipscream-Custom-Generations-United-Thundercracker-Thrust-G1-/160729872759?_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D5%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D6192785720112416753

 

So needless to say I have pics on my phone of my 4 new moded Seeker and am willing to send them to ppl who want to see.Sorry Im not computer smart.......

[Jason X]

I too love the Classic Seeker mold.So much so that Ive moded 4 new Seekers.

Took Dirges cockpit and switched it with Thundercrackers cockpit and vice versa.Thats 2 new Seekers.The blues matchup pretty good.

Then I took Acidstorm and Thrust and did the same and more.Making a 2 unit Seeker(Russian sounding team) team.Not going to go into to much detail on that 1.

Any plans for Sunstorm/Icestorm/Sandstorm repaints? I'd love to see those some time.

I cant paint and just started switching cockpits/legs and sometimes arms(arms because I cant paint) to see what could be done.I was bored and I wanted more Seekers but different 1s.

I do have a extra Hasbro Classic Ramjet that Im going to have made into Sandstorm.I have the chms Sunstorm so no need for him.Id like to use my conehead blue Seeker(Thundercrack with Dirges head/cockpit) for a new and different Icestorm.Im sure its only a matter of time b4 someones does what I did.

 

But guys.I really think you all should give it a go.Im surprised no one has done what Ive done b4.

 

Heres a link to my first mod that I had someone customize.Hes working on another that Ive done.....First Classic Mod Femmebot.lol

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Transformers-Slipscream-Custom-Generations-United-Thundercracker-Thrust-G1-/160729872759?_trksid=p5197.m7&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D5%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D6192785720112416753

 

So needless to say I have pics on my phone of my 4 new moded Seeker and am willing to send them to ppl who want to see.Sorry Im not computer smart.......

Dude, that Slipstream looks nice! If I hadn't just emptied my wallet buying Over-Runabout I'd be tempted....