Hotwheels - Another collection..

So not too long ago, maybe a month or so I was browsing the isles at Walmart and seeing nothing new for Transformers like usual. We're still stuck on wave 1 of PRID. And not every store here even has that.

I walked past the Hotwheels section, and the 1966 Batmobile just jumped out at me. I'm not entirely sure why that was. But I took it down to look at it, and I remembed that as a kid I had a much larger metal version of this one that came with little Batman and Robin figures that sat in the seats. It also had a red plastic flame in the back and a movable metal saw on the front bumper.

Anyway, I ended up leaving Walmart with like 5 versions of the Batmobile and the A - Team truck. And when I got home I checked out Ebay and picked up a Ghostbusters Ecto-1, Back to the Future Time Machine and another Batmobile.

Now, I don't have much of an interest in cars in general. I don't know much about them. And I don't see that changing much anytime soon. But there are some cool looking Hotwheels cars outside of the TV and Movie ones. But the ones that really interest me are those. And the majority seem to be Batman. But I find myself eying up some of the others. Like the Breakfast cereal ones of Count Chockula, The Flintstones and the new SDCC 2012 Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. I would really like that Mystery Machine, but I don't yet see myself paying $50 it seems to be asking for on Ebay for a little Hotwheels car. But this is the same thing I said about Transformers when I started that. And now I have some very expensive pieces.

So it would seem that that one little 1966 Batman Batmobile, has managed to slightly spark onto something I remember from being a kid much farther back than my mid 80s transformers days. The sub 10 year old days of playing in the dirt with my 'Dinky', 'Matchbox' and 'Hotwheels' cars.

Now unlike the Transformers, which unfortunately has sprawled more than my Wallet would like. I favor quite a few different lines. I think I should be able to keep the Hotwheels limited to the Movie and TV varieties. And coming in at about $1.33 here when I see them. They are absolutely cheap. Even with Ebay they are usually only been a few bucks.

Of course the dark side of the coin is that in almost 5 years of TF collecting I have only run into other 'mature' collectors a few times. And none were clearing the pegs like I heard about. In the last three weeks or so since I bought that first Batmobile I've seen it twice with Hotwheels.. in two different cities. Men older than I am, just going through the pegs and dumping stuff into the cart at their feet. So I guess it's true and this does happen.

And when I think about it, I guess it should be all the more common with little Die Cast cars. Since so many are licenced and exact little duplicates of real world cars. Which makes me wonder if the in-laws and such would be so different in their outlook if I had a large miniature car collection, or of military planes and vehicles instead of robots. I think every TF collector knows the answer to that one.

KO City Commander & Shadow Commander Add on Kits

Picked these two up a couple weeks ago now. They came in a plain bubblewrap with no paperwork, or anything at all. The plastic quality on them is quite nice, feels like a real thing.

Got the two shoulder launchers and rifle. The colors are matched up to suit the City Commander and Shadow Commander color schemes. My displayed City Commander is a KO Armor with a KO Ultra Magnus. And they plug in tightly. And the rifle is also snug in the hand. The missiles themselves have a little spring to them, makes them feel spring loaded. But they don't seem to launch.

The Shadow Commander is also a good fit, mine is also a KO Shadow Commander Armor with a KO Nemesis Prime.

So overall these are great quality, and the price was fair. And shipped from overseas they arrived really fast.

They complete the look of my Commanders. And allows me to keep my authentic CC in his box. I'm far from a MISB collector. But the real valuable pieces I hesitate to open.

RiD BRAVE MAXIMUS

Well, a little over a month ago after a year of watching prices and even twice I tried to bid one for a decent price on Ebay I finally sprung for and bought a Robots in Disguise Brave Maximus.

None of the two Ebay attempts panned out for me. They always ended up getting bid up too high for my blood. Certainly with the nature of Ebay I wasn't comfortable with such an expensive purchase should there be anything wrong with it, or not as described. I could only imagine the nightmare of having to try and return something of that size and weight. And the headaches increase.

So I got a line on one from a reputable source. And he was supposed to be in very good condition and complete. Box and all accessories. The price was a little more than I would have liked. But the shipping was good, and the security and peace of mind was worth it.

So he came with his box, insert and all of RiD BM original accessories. And since he was such a crown piece for my collection. I decided to hunt down some repro parts from Fortress Maximus to kit him out. So I managed to get FM two guns. The FM Twin Blaster and FM large Photon Rifle. As well as Cog who forms two small tanks and a larger robot. So all I am missing is the repro gun for Cog. I find when it comes to the FM guns the dark blue color seems to go well with BM. Rather than the more appropriate repro color matched to BM. Although I do think that Cog would look better if he was color matched to BM in red and black. I'm thinking about painting him myself but I haven't yet. And I even grabbed the Crazy Devy Massive Sword since it was on clearance. And it's just about as tall as BM himself is.

The last thing I picked up was the Headrobots Courageous Headmaster kit. It was also a little pricier than I would like. But it was supposed to be limited to 200 pieces. Not that that made it any cheaper. But, that gave me two nicely detailed Headmaster heads and a nice translucent blue sword.

Over all BM was somewhat dusty when he arrived. Nothing that a dry cloth and a can of air didn't mostly fix. And to my surprise it seems that all of his stickers are in excellent shape. None seemed to be faded, scratched to coming loose at all. I found that to be amazing really. I've transformed him once, from robot to city mode and back again. His joints seem to be tight and in good shape. All in all I couldn't be happier with him. It's fun just to look at him. And being the largest transformer ever made is a fun fact. And I prefer this color version of Fortress Maximus to the other two version. The colors as was mentioned somewhere else, looks fantastic as a city at night with the lit up windows.

And a reminder of him being from a bygone age in toys, the plastic he is made of, is of just a better quality than you see with Hasbro today. And maybe even Takara. It just feels sturdy, and not cheap or fragile at all. The heft of the whole figure is surprising. This thing is heavy.

And one last surprise I had when I got looking at the box and little details. It seems that I ended up with a Takara release of Brave Maximus. I had assumed that it would have been the Korean release. So that was a nice cherry on top. From everything I checked out it definitely seems to be the Takara version.

RiD is becoming one of my favorite continuities in Transformers. And is starting to rank up there with G1 as far as I am concerned. There just seems to be a lot of nice figures, and good quality materials in the line. And there is a handful of figures I still want to get from the line. It's too bad it didn't go on even one more season than it did.