Saturday, April 09, 2005

Across the ocean blue...

I've recently gotten an email stating that my order is on its way. I expect it to arrive in two weeks due to the slow nature of non-express shipping. It's a sacrifice I have to pay to save a little on shipping. The currency rate for the yen is horrendous and was not like that before. But needless to say, the old conversion concept is back and it's easy to calculate a rough estimate of a product in US dollars. Hopefully the American economy will get better, since it's been quite a pain to endure the poor performance.

I expect Exillion to exeed my expectation due to the very slick design of the vehicle. For a car of its design, it appears to be the most realistic since it can very well be a design to be used not too far off in the future.

Nitro Convoy will always be vaguely similar to Speed Racer's Mach5. I do not know why but it just does. It could be the coloring or the design of it. Either way, it'll be a very nice addition to the family.

Lastly, Fang Wolf will add a beastly air with the Beast Wars figures that stand tall... real tall.

Live Convoy is still set on my radar. But maybe I should just settle on preordering it. The snag I mentioned in the previous entry is actually something I encountered when I tried to order from Fan2Fan. While it's nothing, I do not like it when I'm being faced with additional charges upon trying to confirm an order. It would have been a nice deal but alas, the deal is just not there anymore. Perhaps it's all due to the way how PayPal works -- I dunno. But it's a sad result that I won't be preordering from Fan2Fan any time soon.

As a result of this, I am leaning to using Hobby Link Japan as my primary source of all things Transformers. Not only is this the cheapest, but it is perhaps the best way to get import figures than through other good stores such as Big Bad Toy Store, which, by the way, just recently bumped their flat rate shipping to 7 dollars.

With more import Transformers figures to go, I wonder just how long it will take before the total outnumbers my Hasbro versions. Needless to say, I've a bunch to go. But considering the difference between my old Generation 1 and my "current" (Beast Wars by Mainframe and beyond) generation, the gap between the current and my imports is slowly diminishing. And it won't be long before I have more Takara than Hasbro. But it's quite sad in retrospect. It would not have been this way had Hasbro been smart about all of this. The disappointing changes are what made me so angry at them that they are no longer worth a company I'd support wholeheartedly. That reminds me. I need to make a separate entry regarding a certain software publisher.

I've my own reasons to support Takara over Hasbro. But the single biggest reason is this: consistancy. Over the years, Hasbro has been lacking in consistancy that sometimes things don't make sense at all. The color, mold, mechanics, and name changes are what separates the original from the carbon copy. Takara has been consistant when it comes to getting customers. Repaints, die-cast metal, and original color schemes are what drives the hardcore collectors to preferring theirs over Hasbro's domestic copy. For instance, Hasbro's 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime "features" a shortened smokestack, which is a change from the original both in character and in release. Takara's version featured the original high smokestacks such that it's more true to the character and franchise it's dedicated to. So while there are reasons behind shortening the smokestacks, it doesn't hurt to keep its length anyway, as such price, weight, and complexity makes it not for most children. The marking "AGES 5+" on the box pretty much sums it up.

There are other rantings behind this that could very well occupy this space, but I'll leave that for later. For now, I'm anxious to get my hands on these figures and I hope they come very soon. But I should not think about it so much.

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