Friday, November 09, 2007

Lamest deal of the week ever STRIKES BACK (plus an update on the Insectrons Insectrons)

Holy crap remember back in August when that store called ABCtoy4me was selling the complete set of awful Burger King Transformer movie toys for $10? They've cut the price for the set down to $1.95. You can tell I'm desperate for Deal of the Week material when I pull that one up again.

Speaking of desperate, I've been desperate for information on those $28 Insectrons that I mentioned last week. Did that store really have them or did they forget to take down the order page after they sold out? Luckily Richard (only the second guy brave enough to admit trying these sale links I put up) has been filling me in. This is what he wrote regarding his order:

"Dear Steve, you are the greatest guy ever. Here's the response I get. It could go either way...

'We are sorry for the delay, as our staff is currently scattered across the country working anime conventions. Once we have someone back in the office we will update you on your order status. Thank you for your patience and we are sorry for the inconvenience.'"


It looks to me like those Insectrons bugged out of that store a long time ago time ago. However, I did find the wacky E-Hobby recolors of that set for $54.99 at tmpanime.com. So if you want a robot grasshopper named "Shot-Hole" here's your chance.

There was this one guy selling a slightly damaged BTA-02 Sunstreaker for $34, but it's more of a deal of the week for the do-it-yourselfers. It has the box and everything-it's just got a break on the rear deck panel where the roof hinges on. I'm pretty sure that if you were feeling all Sparkplug Witwicky about it you could swap that piece out with the deck portion of a spare Alternators Sunstreaker you may have lying around. It'd take a little dissassembly and some skill removing metal pins but I am positive it would work.


"these parts" meaning "this galaxy"
Hold on-on second thought don't listen to me. Before I convince anyone to try what amounts to toy robot organ transplants let me say I don't really know how complicated this procedure is or if you need special tools or anything. I'm not responsible for whatever happens if anyone takes a screwdriver to $60 worth of toy robots and ends up losing an arm. If it was me, though, I'd be all up in there trying it out. Like in the first Transformers comic book where Spike drives an injured Bumblebee to his dad's garage and he's looking at this injured bleeding alien space Volkswagen and going 'OH SHIT! OH SHIT!' But his dad Sparkplug says, 'Sure why not? Alien robot? Not a problem. I'll fix that mortally wounded robot car from outer space. I'm not fuckin' Auto Zone employee of the month for nothing.'

Occasionally I'll run across awesome deals I missed out on and I'll feel like my robots collection is a little more gay expensive than it should have been. Why do these stores bother to keep their webpages up for product that's sold out? It kills me! I really would have liked that $40 Binaltech Grimlock. At least those guys let me know they don't have it anymore when they use that big "OUT OF STOCK" graphic. The absolute worst is when stores don't pull the page down or say it's out of stock and they just leave the robo-cocktease page up but take away the "Add to Cart" button. Fuckers!

8 comments:

naladahc said...

Shot-Hole is an awesome name!!!

Evil King Macrocranios said...

They should have named the other two Shot-Face and Shot-Head.

Anonymous said...

Huh. I don't recall using the word "greatest." Must've been a slip as I would have used something along the lines of amazing, incredible, spectacular, fantastic, or uncanny. Never greatest though.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Yeah, those things too!

Anonymous said...

When did Grimlock become a car instead of a dinosaur?

Evil King Macrocranios said...

The Ford Mustang Grimlock came out in the US as part of the Alternators line in December 2004. Only the packaging of the Binaltechs (the Japanese counterpart to Alternators) had any sort of backstory to go along with the toys. Basically Grimlock's dinosaur body got beat to hell so Ford made him a new one.

Heavyarms said...

That happened to me with a Yamato VF-11. After MONTHS of searching, I came across one on sale for 39.99. I didn't hesitate to order it. After two weeks, I sent them an e-mail asking "What gives?" The reply, "Oh, we're sorry. That has been out of stock for three months and we didn't take down the link."

Totally burned me out on Yamato Valkyries after that.

Anonymous said...

No Insectrons for me, of great and wonderful Steve. Here's they're response to my second inquiry:

"We are very sorry to inform you that the item you have ordered was been discontinued and is no longer available. If you check your billing records, you should see that we did not charge you for the item. Thank you very much."

 

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