Swindle & Blurr

After months of waiting and searching, I finally completed my collection of Transformers Animated (TFA) Season 1 & 2 figures! I found Swindle and Blurr at Mid Valley Toys R Us last night. This after going to the One Utama branch 3 times a week since last month. This after the Season 2 ended sometime last year.

The retailers and/or Hasbro bean counters have been pretty harsh in their treatment of the line, preferring to market and hype up the upcoming Movie figures since it's a huge money spinner, making us fans wait several months to a year after the cartoon aired before the TFA toys were released.

The toys however get the 'love' treatment from designers and engineers at Hasbro/Takara-Tomy. They are thoughtfully designed, include little throwbacks from the cartoon series (Ratchet/Lockdown EMP generator anyone?), look very close to their cartoon counterparts, featured homages from past Transformers series and are just so much fun to Transform. All the lines that run parallel or come after owe their leaps in engineering to TFA. Think the new Universe toys' engineering were cool? TFA had them first.

Sadly, Season 3 will be the last :(:( but I'm looking forward to it starting on the 14th so yay. Cartoon Network didn't really support it very much either, showing it at odd hours in the States and I don't think Astro gave it a decent slot either. Oh well, it was great while it lasted and I've been re-watching the series in anticipation of the 3rd Season.