Can someone help me understand the 3rd party Transformers stuff?
Long time lurker here. So, asides from a few Generations purchases, I haven't really been keeping up with TF toy news. A few months back, someone posted here about the 3rd party stuff coming out. I had no idea what they were talking about, so I did some googling and was blown away! The websites that seem to be making this stuff though don't really seem to sell directly and/or be in English. So, few questions:
1. What is the best way to purchase some of these? Have I missed the boat on initial releases and have to rely on ebay now?
2. Looks like there are 2 competing versions of Devastator out there. consensus on which is better?
Thanks!
My personal choice for buying most of my 3rd party stuff if Bigbadtoystore.com, but many other online stores also sell this stuff. Some of the earlier stuff would be pretty hard to get a hold of at this point, but a lot of 3rd party companies do additional production runs later on if demand is there.
The two Devastators are Hercules from TFC Toys, and Giant from Maketoys. I have both, and my personal preference is for Hercules. Bigger, more fun to mess with, and better individual robot modes. He's also much easier to find at this point. However, there are plenty of people out there that would vehemently disagree with me so your mileage may vary. I would advise you to do your own research before dropping the large amount of coin needed to get either set.
Another site to buy third party figures is http://www.tfsource.com. I've never bought from them but I know many TF collectors do.
Below is a link to a forum that discusses third party figures - you can read about all the various new/old third party figures:
http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-3rd-party-discussion/
Before you buy any figures, I suggest go to YouTube for reviews. For me, watching videos of the figures are much more helpful than looking at pictures. Plus, often reviewers will show the figures with other TFs for scale, and they talk about the overall quality, etc. YouTube user "Peaugh" does a good job a reviews.
Thanks for the words of wisdom! The tfw board really helped.
So, after reading a bunch this past week, it's just overwhelming how much 3rd party stuff is being produced currently.