Iron Men

Managed to nab a Ratchet: one popped into stock so immediately checked it out. Upon refreshing they had all gone. That does somehow make it more exciting, but I think it is somewhat unnecessary - why on earth was Ratchet an exclusive? For me Ratchet is a top tier character. I think Crosshairs should have been the exclusive and Ratchet in a regular wave. Still, very excited to get him! As a neat little homage to the Universe figure he's looking down in the package.....

I've also picked up a Prowl, great little figure - very good homage to the G1 toy, I was almost a bit surprised when his arms didn't tuck over each other for car mode. I want to use him for some customising, but for the time being will just appreciate the figure.

I used to keep a very comprehensive spreadsheet of my collection (and of my spending), but haven't updated it for years. I've got plans to put most of my collection into storage, I've generally organised my Classics Transformes by the original G1 year or series, but fairly recently I rearranged it to be by modern series (Classics/Universe/Generations/Combiner Wars/etc) which better reflects my increasingly having multiple versions of characters. I thought therefore I would start a new spreadsheet. I have also decided though to include figures I have sold.

This has started me down a path of reminiscing - some great figures that for various reasons I got rid of. It also is striking how much I've sold. It's a work in progress but will give some numbers when I've finished. It's also remarkably tricky to count figures when some are customs which might comprise parts from multiple others, or where a group should perhaps comprise one listing by itself - Micromaster teams for instance, or where a smaller partner robot is included - Minicons or Targetmasters. I'm going to include every toy I own so will take a bit of time. I had a look through this blog to try and work out some of the figures I used to own, in the early years especially I used to get 'stand-in' figures quite a lot.

One thing that is initially quite striking is how many figures the Prime Wars trilogy contributed to my collection, considering I thought I was done at that point, I bought more figures from those lines than everything else (with a classics aesthetic) combined. Titans Return is my favourite line - it really felt like anything could be on the table, and despite the forced gimmick, I loved it.

I try not to do wish lists (too much), but I think my remaining wants can be put into four groups: bigger Dinobots/smaller Constructicons, finish off the Rebirth cast, finish off the leaders (mainly Victory), and Beast Wars. For Beast Wars I have a bit of mis-mash of lines: Takara reissue Tigatron, TRU reissue Primal and Megatron. Universe Cheetor and Dinobot. Generations Rhinox, Waspinator and Rattrap. Plus an original Inferno. I'm happy with most of them but the Universe figures especially needed updating. I think it could easily be done in a wave or two. Voyager Tigatron, Dinobot and Terrorsaur, deluxe Tarantulas, Scorponok, Cheetor and Airrazor would be awesome to fill in the gaps and put everyone in roughly the right scale.

Have bagged the 80th anniversary Mark 50 Iron Man/Iron Spider and the Amazon Magneto/Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch sets in Black Friday sales (technically with Iron Man and Spider it was still Thanksgiving). Very happy to get all these figures - I felt sad getting rid of the Iron Man and Spider as they're both great figures, so great to finally replace them. My MCU armoury is complete, another significant milestone for my Legends collecting. Getting Magneto means I have all the main X-Men villains and am another step to getting all of the main villains - Doom is coming so just need a Red Skull.

I'm surprised at how excited I am getting the Iron Man/Iron Spider set, but I suppose it's my two favourite characters from my (almost) favourite film. Iron Spider is great but getting the extra limbs plugged in was tricky and trying to put the Peter Parker head on him resulted in the neck joint coming out - ended up using a screwdriver to force it back in. I have therefore put that on the regular MCU Spidey (which makes more sense for a picture at least). Iron Man has some great accessories, he has a flaw on his (left) eye though that somehow makes it looked cracked. So a slightly flawed set, but still very glad to have it in hand.

I looked at the Magneto set, all the paints apps look good so will leave it unopened for the moment.

A Mastepiece Raiden has been announced, must admit I'm a bit disappointed it's not a Classics release, but I wonder whether it might be a heavy retool of Titan class Devastator - which was designed to somewhat fill the MP gap for that character. Will wait and see but given the cost of the Seacons, it could be very expensive.