Sadly no. But fun fact, Shigeru Chiba, aka the voice of the Gaburivolver and Dr. Ulshade/Kyoryu Violet I, does the voice.

Its just so so different from Kaye's rendition! Completely changes the tone of the show

Every indication is that the Japanese dub is more parody than anything else.

That's because it is. Outside of G1, every TF series that made outside of Japan was redubbed into a gag show.

We’ll see. Megatron appeared in Age Of Extinction (as Galvatron) and Lockdown was the main villain there so it’s not off the table

This is what a typical day dubbing Beast Machines(called Beast Wars Returns in Japan) was like in Japan apparently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1T3RuGaPxg

Shigeru Chiba can be seen recording around the 6:00 mark.

So how rare is the Walgreens exclusive Siege Ratchet?

I think it came out in 2019?

Like a lot of Walgreens exclusives, it was super easy to find... for a very limited time. You could get it on their website, and local Walgreens (by me, at least) had a half-dozen in stock at every store. Now, since Ratchet is such a core character, they're ridiculously expensive on the secondary market. Looking at eBay, copies go for around $100.

Kind of weird how Hasbro picked Ratchet to be a retailer exclusive, two lines in a row, and now both are in the triple digits.

Honestly, it's just name value. The mass retail Siege Ironhide is also going for about $100.
Meanwhile, their retools, the lesser known Crosshairs is going for about $25, and Deseeus Army Drone, while Wal-Mart exclusive, is probably one of the most plentifully stocked figures I've seen in a while.

That's a shame about Ratchet. I just started watching the Netflix show and he is far and away my favorite character. Imagine my surprise trying to track down his toy :(

I guess it pays to be in the loop.

There is currently a rumor that he'll be reissued during Kingdom. He's the only character with a profile blurb on Hasbro's site for Kingdom that doesn't have a Kingdom figure (Well, him and Bumblebee, but Bumblebee is in a weird spot).

Or, at the very least, it's weird that he didn't get a "battle-damaged" paint wash and get reissued under the Netflix subline through Walmart. Seems like it would've been a popular release!

Ratchet has always been the most perplexing character to get this treatment to me, because if you look outside the big headliners - OP, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Bumblebee, Grimlock - he's probably the most consistent and recognisable Autobot?

He's featured as part of the main core cast in every major instalment bar BW and the Unicron Trilogy; he's been a breakout popular character in series like TFP; in the original Marvel comics and IDW he was practically the main character for a bit... like, this guy is extremely important! Especially compared to others that consistently enjoy normal releases like Ironhide, Sideswipe, Prowl... he's far from some obscurer character tucked away to the back or a cult favourite, he's one of the main standbys of the entire franchise! Why does this keep happening!

Hilariously (?), Hasbro also opted to make Ironhide and Prowl exclusives through Amazon for Earthrise, so they both now go for stupid amounts.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that -- and now they've even done the same for Sideswipe and Mirage in Kingdom! I swear, Transformers WFC has at once made a billion amazing steps forward from literally anything that came before but also introduced some of the most frustrating stuff Generations has ever done

Well then I'll hold out hope I'll be able to secure him somehow. He was very cool in the show indeed.

I keep checking out Transformers because they are just so dang prolific among toy circles. But there are so many lines and releases and exclusives to keep track of, it can be off-putting to someone just watching from the outside. I imagine this is what new Toku collectors feel when they first get into the hobby, though possibly worse because of importing and the dreaded "P-Bandai" concept.

I dunno, as someone who spent the last ten years buying Transformers, and the last year buying Toku, I think Transformers might be a little worse?

It's the unreliability of releases that really gets frustrating. Figuarts have a set time that preorders open, and a set day they release. Same for FRS, same for SO-DO, I assume the same for role-play stuff. P-Bandai and importing fees suck, but even with that you get the positive of a very wide window in which to secure an order.

With Transformers, who the hell knows. You can reserve some stuff at BBTS or Hasbro Pulse, but everything gets released whenever. BBTS might get it first for one release, and three months later for another release. Store exclusives are like a worse version of Figuarts retail releases: a highly sought-after figure that goes on sale with no warning, local shops that may or may not even stock it, and scalpers that descend on servers at a rate that even HLJ and AmiAmi would weep at. (Look over at HissTank for the raw seething rage the word "Target" evokes.)

It's a gigantic pain in the ass to be a Transformers collector, is what I'm getting at.

For me I definitely prefer collecting Transformers. With Figuarts it's like, everything has a very short pre-order window and if you either weren't lucky enough or didn't have money then, enjoy paying triple the prices later. With Transformers most of the stuff that's web exclusive is niche things like diaclone recolours and whatnot, and most of the stuff you want is actually released at retail and will probably reliably be there later. Figuarts has been nothing but painful and annoying at every step

I prefer being a TF collector. Figuarts have basically tripled in price (Granted, they have increased in quality, so it's understandable), and a wide swath of them end up exclusive in some capacity. Additionally, it seems there's only one run on them, too. Meaning if you miss the pre-order window or the limited time they're openly available, you're SOL.

Transformers has a shitload of exclusives as well, but it's more manageable. Earthrise has been the exception, where a huge chunk were exclusive (With the infamous earth mode Ironhide mold having never received a non exclusive release), but otherwise, Siege and Kingdom has been far more forgiving.

Yeah, basically. The Earth Mode stuff has been awful, but aside from that the exclusives are like... BWII Skywarp? G2 Sandstorm? I think I'll live!

Interesting. I was actually watching a video about Transformer collecting and the person was saying how the price of Transformers have gone up while the quality has kinda gone down.

I will say, that some of the Siege figures that I've picked up in the $20 - $30 price range haven't felt very worthwhile. They come out of the package with pretty lose joints and then get looser the more you transform them.

My experience with Transformer toys are the ones from the 90s to early 2000s and the Alternators line. So Beast Wars and RID toys which felt like incredible value to me at the time.

I can see the argument towards declining quality with Earthrise, with poorly thought out designs and a slew of QC issues. However, Siege and Kingdom I have to sternly disagree. A strong focus on satisfying transformations, articulation, and a nice aesthetic is leaving me in a collector's paradise. Of all the non-Earthrise figures I've gotten, I feel only Siege Megatron has disappointed me.

I'm just utterly infatuated. However, the collecting experience isn't the same for everyone, so it's fine if you feel it's disappointing.

Personally I don't see that. The quality has increased drastically with Siege onward IMO.

The proper merger of Hasbro and Takara in brand unification has resulted in some figures that can safely be called "Mini-Masterpieces", heck, some even surpass their Masterpiece counterparts for me, like Studio Series Hot Rod for example. Yes, the MP is outdated at this point, but still.

Not that the quality was bad before, but I feel like sculpt, engineering and articulation has improved noticably after the Prime Wars trilogy ended and War For Cybertron began.

If it's worth the increased prices, I leave that up for everyone to judge. For me it is.

And looking at the lineup after what you said, I think a lot of these WFC toys seem like impressive revisits of G1 and Beast Wars characters.

It's also easier to get characters you want in general. Like, okay, putting aside the whole "G1 and only G1" thing for a second (which seems to be getting less relevant soon...), the arrangement of characters they've had throughout WFC has been really really good! Before it was a bit of a grab bag and a long wait to get a complete cast of something, but since Siege they've just been reliably putting out main cast members everyone would want plus some great surprises like Spinister and Apeface. A lot of this stuff too would have been TFCC back in the day, but now it's just stuff you can get off the shelf or at worst for about 10 dollars more on Pulse.

Once I catch up

Carmen Sandiego
Disenchanted
The Fast And The Furious Spy Racers
Jurrassic World Camp Cretacious
Magic School Bus Rides Again
Spy Kids Mission Critical

Transformers will be up on Netflix soon. I've watched the following thanks to Shout Factory DVDs -

Headmasters
Super God Master Force
Victory
Micron Legend (Armada)
Super Link (Energon)
Galaxy Force (Cybertron)

Also streamed the Generation I episodes as a friend had them on his computer.

Thanks to Netflix I can now watch Prime and Rescue Bots.

As every Transformers fan knows, Kingdom recently went live! Here's my (mostly) spoiler-free assessment.

- Watching G1 and Beast Wars characters interact is surreal! Despite all the comic material over the years which tries to merge them together, it doesn't change the fact that this is still surreal!

- Don't expect a large and involved Predacon cast!

- Dinobot is given his fair share!

- Don't expect a lot from the voices. Some of them grow on you, but others...

- Definitely some interesting visuals here!

- Story is a little wonky and the end feels like it's more suited for Cyberverse.

- Remember how the Maximals were all about defending the Autobots legacy in the original B.W. show without anyone telling them to do so? Don't expect that here from the onset.

- Liked Galvatron's appearance in Earthrise? You'll get more of him here.

- The Golden Disk from B.W. was referenced in Earthrise. It seems to have a little more play here, though only in terms of actual usage. It's still not as memorable as the B.W. version.

- The characterizations from B.W. for the Maximals don't necessarily apply here. Some references are made, but these are entirely different Maximals!

- If you're hoping for the Vok or the Tripredacus Council or Fuzors...sorry.

- Know the Ark is getting a toy which is already making isolated appearances on shelves? Keep that in mind.

- There is definitely something in mind for the future already. The finale doesn't shy away from that fact.

Hope some of this helped.

Help it did. Good stuff. :rock:

Man, I haven't bought Transformers in a long time. The last one I have, and still have was the TFP Vehicon, love him tho. Always kinda turned off by the price - size of the toy ratio.

But, if there's one thing I'm crossing my fingers hard, just One that I'd love to buy, this guy that they showed off 2-3 years ago?

Armada was my G1, basically.

https://static.seibertron.com/images...-convoy-08.jpg

Shame you haven't been buying TFs. Honestly, ever since the start of Siege, I feel they've been the best they've ever been in ages. Smaller sizes, yes, but the push for greater articulation and sidelining gimmicks to specific characters really makes buying new figures super fun!

I guess it also doesn't help that the shelves I look to are stocked in characters I've no idea on. And when it comes to known characters my thoughts fall back on "There's always a better version coming out/It's not the design you want."

Like: "Oh, this is Impactor from.... Uh..."

or

"Ooh, it's Warpath! But it don't look like the Warpath I know from that one video game."

I got weird irrational thoughts like those. :lol

Not really! Just wanting figures of characters you actually know is about the most normal thing I can think of in this hobby — it’s part of why I keep my collections relatively small

The R.E.D. Coronation Starscream and Bumblebee have been released. That photo was taken at the Walmart in Pineville, Louisiana.

Origins Bumblebee, Worlds' Collide, and T-Wrecks have also been released. That photo was taken at the Target in Alexandria, Louisiana. There were five Bumblebees, five T-Wrecks, and one Worlds' Collide at the time.

Meanwhile, my Targets were stripped dry of basically everything :lol

The ones I took the photos at aren't much better! I consider the area sparse when compared to larger locales 90 minutes south of where I saw that bunch. In many ways, I'm marginally surprised that it's actually going this far this fast!

Honestly, if you're at Target and you see an Origin Bumblebee, snag it for me, because, no exaggeration, my local Target was 1 Kingdom Arcee, and 2 Cyberverse one step changer Megatrons :lol

My other Target only had 2 Cyberverse Ultimate Shockwaves. Finding Transformers in person for me is impossible because apparently where I live is where every TF scalper lives

Now when you say "snag it for me"...

I really want this Bee, so if you find one in the wild, buy it, give me your Paypal, I'll pay you back, and then mail it my way :lol

Oh I saw a bunch of those last Sunday, will go check again tomorrow.

Y'all lucky as hell :lol

Much appreciated!