RAC

None other than Optimus Prime was sighted celebrating the right of all sentient beings on July 4th! Thanks to @5ColorsCo1 on Twitter we have photos of this new Optimus Prime balloon which was a part of the St. Louis Independence Day parade this year. It seems to be a new balloon and looks pretty good! As best as we can tell, the design is based on the "Evergreen" design pool that the Authentics line draws from and that Cyberverse seemingly uses as a base. Click Image to Read the Full News Story Now

Revealed in yesterday's story from IGN, we've now got an update showing off the cards for Private Camshaft, Private Downshift, and Sergeant Overdrive! The three will be available in a special convention pack being sold at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Gen Con, and PAX Unplugged, as well as Hasbro Pulse. Click Image to Read the Full News Story Now

IGN has revealed more details of the recently announced SDCC-exclusive Soundwave vs. Blaster pack for the Transformers Trading Card Game! Art has been revealed for the pair as well as for three cassettes each: Eject, Ramhorn, and Steeljaw will join Blaster while Buzzsaw, Frenzy and Ravage will be included on the Soundwave side. Click Image to Read the Full News Story Now

If there's something strange in your neighborhood... obviously the first thing you should suspect is giant robots from space. Ghosts of Cybertron, Part One is written by Erik Burnham with art by Dan Schoening, colors by Luis Antonio Delgado, and lettering by Tom B. Long.I was kind of hoping Gozer would ask Megatron if he was a god. Click Image to Read the Full News Story Now

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Every so often unofficial Third Party Transformers come up with something fun and completely unexpected. Such was the case with last year's announcement of X-Transbots' MX-17T Taiho, which has just been given a new photo gallery on their official Weibo page. Taiho is based on the Honda Today police vehicle car used by Natsumi Tsujimoto and Miyuki Kobayakawa, the main characters of Taiho Shichauzo (literally "I'll Arrest You!", titled You're Under Arrest! in the United States). Click Image to Read the Full News Story Now

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I think the presence of older MPs is a lot of it, yeah. To re-release MP Soundwave at the same basic price he always was just as this hideously expensive Prime hits does make you wonder. As for whether the price tracks, I'm having a hard time tracking down what MP-1 actually cost at the time in Japan, and since the US release left out the trailer and all I don't think it's an especially good point of comparison, so I dunno. But also there's just the fact that pricing is varied right now in ways that make it hard for me to draw comparisons. Deluxes are 2x what they cost then, Voyagers are up 50% from when that price point was created... and then you have things like the RID Prime where the price has effectively tripled from its initial release. (Which makes Soundwave even more of an anomaly, even though his mold isn't as old as that...) The underlying math probably works out, where inflation-adjusted engineering costs Plus licensing Plus the added complexity equal this being a reasonable price. Maybe. I suspect production run size factors in too - you're going to sell fewer $300 God Fire Convoy sets than you are $20 Deluxes and smaller batches cost more per unit. Even if so, I think a lot of it comes back to the old problem that costs may have doubled or tripled since 2003 but collecting budgets sure haven't. ?

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