Thanks to friend site and sponsor Dorkside Toys we have a good set of new stock images of the next Walmart Exclusive G1 Blaster reissue.
Blaster won the past Walmart Exclusive G1 Reissue 2020 Fan Vote over Skywarp last year. This is a good chance for fans to add some G1 nostalgia for their collections. We have a look at the packaging and the figure itself in both modes. The same as it was released while back in the G1 era, Blaster doesn’t come with any cassettes.
Click on the bar to see the mirrored images and then sound off your impressions on the 2005 Boards!
RoDu
I need some more minibots, my reissue collection needs a Pipes
CobraKai
That makes perfect sense. I never find anything nearby and I go outta my way to someplace like Buttsmoke, California.
RKillian
Walmart's distribution algorithm has an inverse bug. It sends the highest volumes to areas with the lowest spending. That's why your store never has anything but Cracktown and Cokeville an hour away are stuffed to the rafters.
Edit: I watched Blaster for a few months online. Every time they dipped down to $18 to $20, they sold out and "mysteriously" were relisted around $45.
wideload
Some of these G1 reissues sat too. Problem IMO is that they just keep putting out the same toys over and over. Would be nice to have a reissue like Hound or Prowl, or even to have a mold revived somehow. If they can give you dozens of different Grimlock toys, surely they can find a way to make a new G1 Grimlock mold.
Rodimus Prime
They're just doing BW characters right now. Saves me more money.
The Star of Astaroth
So… have Hasbro given up on these G1 reissues? Haven't heard anything for a while…
G1 Cassette Hunter
Check ur Pm's – Please close thread ^^
Goose24
Bumping this because I stumbled across this guy at a Walmart for $2.09 recently. Picked it up for my 5 year old but I know he's going to ask about the tapes. I'd really rather not pay $30 for Rewind when I paid $2 for Blaster, so does anyone know of any reissues/knockoffs/anything that would work? Because a 5 and 3 year old will be playing with it, it doesn't need to be collector level or anything. Just curious as my quick google fu hasn't come up with anything.
Sylent
I've only seen Blaster twice and both times, the packaging was aLl JacKEd uP. I should have asked management for a discount, but didn't think that far and was ticked that someone would wreck the box that badly. It looked like someone used it as a hockey puck.
I figured that Blaster would be widely available like Astrotrain, Optimus and Soundwave, but that's not the case in the Bay area. Everyone here thinks they can scalp it for double the cost, so they greedily buy them all. If they can't sell them online, they use them for trade fodder with the local comic shops.
G1 Cassette Hunter
Big difference from Hasbro & Walmart discounting them. Hasbro is out of the equation once Walmart pays them. As to Devastator being priced 19.99 – by the time he entered the clearance cycle, Devastator was 95% sold out in all stores. It is standard clearance policy to empty old stock in this manner. Devastator was perhaps the single best seller of the entire line.
As to aftermarket pricing, as many of us know, the dollar amount attached is only as good as what someone is actually willing to pay. There are just so many out there, unless you are incredibly impatient, it is very possible to find it at a price you are more comfortable with.
Back on topic folks please! This is the Blaster thread
wideload
It obviously does. Why else would Devastator be selling for over market on Ebay yet need to be discounted by 80% in limited markets? It's an obvious major issue in the market as a whole.
You're the one who's stating that since the item was available to very limited amounts of markets at $19.99, there was no demand. It's you who has the wrong view of the market as a whole.
Edit: I just checked, and the Walmart Reissue Devastators are now selling for over two times retail on Ebay, $217 CAD or $170 USD. Yet, you're telling me, it was necessary for Hasbro to discount them to $20, to get them to sell?
backhawkdown
But you were attempting to claim your individual experience reflected the market as a whole.
wideload
The whole point is that you could not find a devastator in any of the stores near me, or online. They stocked only a few at the $99.99 CAD, and people were actively trying to buy them at that price. People are re-selling them now on EBay for above that price. Yet, somehow in order to move them all, Walmart needed to discount them to $19.99? It's a case of extremely poor distribution. Why have so many in a market where no one wants to buy them and you have to discount them by 80%, yet have none available online.
backhawkdown
No, it wasn’t an individual store issue; Walmart clearanced them out systematically, ending at $19.
whether they now go for more than that doesn’t change the fact that Walmart clearanced them out. I’m sorry that fact doesn’t fit your narrative but it’s a fact.
wideload
The whole lost/damaged mold excuse is such garbage. Surely, remaking a mold from an existing toy is cheaper than designing new toys and creating new molds. It's too prohibitive to recast the G1 Grimlock, but they can design a dozen different new Grimlock toys that no one really wants? Hasbro comes out with a new G1 inspired Prime toy just about every year, but it's too cost prohibitive to recreate the trailer from an existing toy? What a load of complete BS.
It's poor management. The people in charge are out of touch with what the market actually wants. They could easily list 4-5 in demand G1 reissues on Haslab at a markup and people would buy them. A $60 G1 Dinobot reissue via Haslab would sell out instantly. They just did the same thing with vintage "Hero Quest". There's multiple Grimlock toys on Haslab for sale right now, but it's too cost prohibitive to recast the G1 mold? Despite the fact that multiple knock-off companies from China have made new G1 molds?
It's really not that difficult or expensive to recast molds. Hasbro has just been milking collectors, and they're destroying the market in the process.
G1 Cassette Hunter
If they had included the trailer it might have cut down on all the diecast non-transforming Prime by Jada Fraud returns to Walmart who was stupid enough to even allow them to occur in the first place.
The Star of Astaroth
I blame the price point. Blaster literally costs what his previous reissue did, only the previous reissue came with three cassettes and Perceptor and all his accessories. It's a ripoff.
The whole mold thing – it makes no sense to me. In order to make something, you either need the mold, or the thing the mold made to make the mold again. They have sheds of old TF's they can buy to make a new mold – it's easy. It does not make sense.
Plus Primes trailer was reissued with the 25th anni version, and it available in abundance as a KO on eBay.
Still don't understand why they didn't reissue the Blasster tapes like they did with Soundy. They've done them before.
^This^
GizmoTron
Nonsense. If the temptation was really still there, TakaraTomy would have done it years ago when the reissue craze was in full swing. But really, there's clearly a reason that the past few Encores and reissues from TT have been both years apart and not even toys from G1.
Afterburner
Anything not reissued from 84-86 would be like printing money. Even several later items would be at this point as the market is drying up more and more.
The initial prices on these were stupid, they made several errors with them, they've all been done better before other than maybe the packaging, and they weren't evenly distributed at all. Yep, it's a classic Hasbro fuck up. Astrotrain was the only one who interested me to finally get him in his original Hasbro colors, but even then the purple is pretty off for no good reason.
I'm guessing at some point the temptation for TakaraTomy to fill in some gaps (especially Mirage/Wheeljack/Sunstreaker, Dinobots, Shockwave, and several movie figures) will become too much and they'll remake them. In fact my guess is at some point they'll remake several of the commanders we haven't seen as well.
I've always thought it was pretty simple. Just straight up reissue the figures and original packaging, that's what we all crave at the end of the day. Update copyrights on the packaging so that you can tell vintage from new, and you're all set.
"This is 1984." Release the whole lineup under that banner and take us back to 1984. No way that wouldn't sell like crazy. Then do 1985, etc. This is what I would have liked to see a fan club doing. A subscription service for fans interested in old style toys – then the new stuff goes to market where kids have easier access and there is more natural crossover appeal. Higher prices would be much better justified under this scenario too. Different colors on a figure you can get at retail for 20% of the price makes no real sense. Premium prices for figures not otherwise available at retail however, does.