Beautiful.

My SHF Drive is now in New York. He should be any day now this week.

Are two-packs crazy-expensive because they're sold at a disproportionate price point, or does it just seem that way because the shipping costs tend to be inflated? I confess I passed on VulShark and VulPanther because the markup on BBTS was just too steep for me.

Something Bandai hasn't tried yet is selling a two-pack involving both the red hero and one of the others, like selling AkaNinja with ShiroNinja. Maybe it would alter collectors' buying habits?

Your problem is buying SHF from BBTS

Nippon Yasan and CStoys are better when it comes to web exclusives in my opinion. They are cheaper and easier to pay for then paying for prices that are created by middle man and importing fees. BBTS is good for domestic releases but not so much with Japanese imports if you ask me.

Well Rider is more popular amongst collectors than Sentai that much is true. I think the difference with form changes is that collectors don't necessarily feel obligated to collect all of them since form changes are all of the same character anyway. For example, with W, somebody might only get CycloneJoker, LunaTrigger and CycloneJokerXtreme and feel perfectly content with that because you technically don't have an incomplete "team".

Most collectors are more invested into getting all characters from a show versus all forms from a show. And for Sentai, pretty much every release is a new character.

Another thing to note as well is that form changes, being that they aren't new characters, don't hold quite the same importance as a ranger character. A form change is a suit that may show up the first 15 episodes of the show and never appear again. A ranger is there from episode 1 all the way down to the last episode.

I haven't had much luck with CSToys in the past; I always seem to check them once they're sold out. I just noticed they have a mailing list for exclusives; I'll give them a try.

So after messing with Drive...

...he's a damn-good release. The paintwork and detail on him is stunning. The entire back of the suit is sculpted hit for hit with the actual suit. The paint has a definite car-like finish to it. He literally looks like a car given human form with that specific kind of shine you get from car paint. The tire is actually made of a rubber-like material and feels super-authentic, too. Taking it off requires removing a small panel from the back and essentially unfolding it off the chest holes. All of his Shift Cars (Max Flare, Midnight Shadow and Funky Spike) are already plugged onto his holster, but pop off via tiny pegs. Mine stay in securely.

The Max Flare bonus parts are also very nice. The engaged form of Max Flare swaps out with the Type Speed bracelet piece easily and the belt is really interesting; The face of the belt comes off and you swap the screen piece inside. The tire's made of hard plastic and clamps around like we expect it to. The rim of the wheel even has two extra pieces on it so the Max Flare wheel by itself looks whole. Pretty sure the flame pieces are re-packs from the effect set, but hey, can never have enough flame clips.

Small accessory count be damned, Drive makes up for it all on his own. And the first release bonuses help that even more, as we all expected. Really looking forward to Mach, Mashin Chaser and the eventual release of Chaser's rider form.

I decided due to costs to only collect females.*ofcourse that was shot to hell when HurricaneBlue and KyoryuPink were in two packs*