Wow, it’s been 3 months since my last Transformers post, Transformers! Final Part. Time really flies. My Transformers collection has also grown in a scary manner. Somehow, when you’re obsessed, you tend to be able to find $$$ to fuel the obsession somehow. It’s a dangerous addiction that I’ve also passed to my brother. Thankfully, we are obsessed with different range of the Transformers line. I’m more of a Generation 1/Alternators freak while he is a Beast Wars freak. So it’s becomes a complimentary effect instead. But my bro blames me of course for passing the addiction to him again.

For this post, I’ll concentrate on my obsession, the Alternators series. Back in my last post, I had only ONE Alternator figure, Wheeljack. 3 months later, I have 7. Scary? Haha. Let me introduce the rest of the crew.

Alternators

02 – Sideswipe

Sideswipe is another classic character from the G1 cartoon series. He has a twin brother, Sunstreaker. Both these 2 characters were among my favourites because they transformed into bad-ass sports cars. For the Alternators line, he’s a cool Dodge Viper SRT-10!

03 – Hound

Hound is another instantly recognisable character from the G1 cartoon. He’s a Jeep Wrangler Sport & looks amazing. This guy fetches one of the highest prices in the second hand market nowadays, as shown in this BigBadToyStore listing.

06 – Tracks

I didn’t really recognise Tracks initially. Reading his bio in TFWiki confirms it, I quote, ‘Tracks was one of several Autobots who appeared out of nowhere one day.“.  But upon seeing his pic I knew who he was. He’s a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 & it’s one of the nicest looking car in the Alternator line. The figure in car mode shows the least amount of transformation lines that might give him away away as a Transformer.

22 – Mirage

Mirage is known as the Mr Invisible in the G1 cartoon since that’s his main power. He’s a freaking cool Ford GT & I really like his colours. Unfortunately his car mode shows one too many transformation lines which spoils his car look a bit & his doors are a pain to open & close properly. But I still like him.

Binaltech

BT-19 – Bluestreak

This figure is a bit on the weird side. Takara calls him Bluestreak but he looks way more like a de-sponsored Smokescreen. There never was a ‘blue’ Bluestreak, he was always silver in the G1 cartoon & later on, he was renamed Silverstreak (this was for trademark reasons). Anyway, for this figure, I prefer to call him Smokescreen instead. He’s a Subaru Impreza WRX, one of my personal favourite real life sports car. Oh ya, the key difference between the Alternators & Binaltech figures is the use of die-cast metal and the plastics are painted, usually in metallic, for the Binaltech line. This make the Binaltech figures look amazing & heavy as well so their prices are always higher.

BT-20 – Argent Meister

The name of the figure will make most people wonder who the heck is this. Meister is actually the Japanese name for the character Jazz, my favourite character in the G1 cartoon. The word “argent” is Latin  for “silver”.  The original Alternator figure for Jazz was white in colour, this is a redeco of the original with an upgraded chassis & silver metallic paint, as homage to the live action movie Jazz in terms of colour. This is a Mazda RX-8 Mazdaspeed Version II & the paintjob makes it look amazing.

That concludes the Alternators/Binaltech line. I actually still have Sunstreaker sitting in the ‘Pile of Loot’ in BigBadToyStore. I’ll update my blog when that arrives somewhere in July or August. Stay tuned for more updates to my collection. Hope you all enjoyed this post.

I ran into Borderlinx on Citibank website one day, promoting the ability to do online shopping in USA by providing you with a local USA address to send your items to. This perked my interest to check it out as I thought this is a neat service to have. When I first checked it out sometime last year, it was still very new & the website didn’t have much info. Apart from creating an account, I didn’t bother to do much more. That was until one day I received an email notification from them regarding their new ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool in their website. This happened around the same time I started to check out BigBadToyStore. Call it a coincidence. I compared the shipping cost using their ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool with BigBadToyStore international shipping & it seemed at that time, Borderlinx didn’t cost a lot more, like maybe around RM40 to RM50 more when converted. Unfortunately, the ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool didn’t really make it clear how shipping cost is calculated nor did I have a clue as to why there was a section in the tool to enter the dimensions of the package. It’s like, how would I know how big the packaging would be? So I ignored it & proceeded to try out using Borderlinx. This is where the ‘nightmare’ begins.

Borderlinx Total Cost Calculator

Basically how Borderlinx works is that it provides you with a local USA address to send your stuff to. This is of great help when online shopping sites only ship to USA addresses & don’t do international shipping. Their service has since been updated to offer a UK local address as well to do online shopping in UK. So you pay for local shipping from the online merchant to Borderlinx, then ship it back when you are ready. Sounds great right? So I waited for my item to arrive in Borderlinx, and when it did & I checked the cost of shipping it back, I was floored. From just being an extra RM40 to RM50, the shipping cost is now a staggering RM100 extra. I instantly used their very useful online chat to find out more. Here I found out 2 things:

1) Volumetric weight vs Dead weight. Volumetric weight is the amount of space a package requires while Dead weight is the actual weight of the package. Shipping is charged based one whichever value is bigger. So if your box is big but it’s light, you’ll get charged for the space of the big box.

2) Items can only be kept in Borderlinx for 30 free of charge, after that, it’s shipped & your credit card automatically charged.

I have to say, I was shocked. Shocked because I knew, no matter what I’m stuck with Borderlinx & will have to pay that amount to ship it back, whether I liked it or not. Worse, I had to do it in 30 days max. During that time, these particulars weren’t clearly mentioned in the website & the support staff apologised for it. I even asked the support staff how could I know how big the package would be in the first place? He conceded that I wouldn’t be able to know. That’s OK, lesson learned, I thanked the support staff & waited as long as I could before I hit the ‘Ship It’ button.

The day finally came when I had to hit the ‘Ship It’ button. Luckily, the exchange rate for USD to RM went down so I saved a measly RM5 on shipping. So I clicked the ‘Ship It’ button, hoped to see my package arrive in a week time & be a happy guy. Too bad lady luck completely deserted me. A week after I shipped the item, I got a call from the local DHL office, informing me my package has arrived, BUT I needed to settle customs tax before I could  get my item. How much was I charged? Tax + administrative charges = RM100++. At this point, I’ll be honest, I was PISSED & really wanted to ‘kill’ someone/something.  I couldn’t believe my luck. But I decided,  I was going to find out how did they calculated the tax & get it reduced. After a few days talking to DHL & customs, it turns out it was calculated based on some odd shipping charge DHL was giving customs. After clarifying & providing proof of the shipping charge I paid to customs, DHL finally informed me my item has been released from customs FREE of tax! Wow! Thank heavens! Finally it’s settled, after a week being stuck in customs & DHL.

By now, you must be thinking, this is a damning review of Borderlinx & I would never use it again. It almost reached that point. But it didn’t because of the great support staff. I chatted with 3 different support staff & had email exchange with 2 more. They all answered my queries well, even though they couldn’t exactly give me a better solution, they at least helped by clarifying everything. I’ve noticed after my conversations with them, the website was updated with more detailed information, like for eg, clarifying volumetric weight & a detailed section about tax & duty. It’s even mentioned in the tax & duty section that tax & duty is now prepaid with shipment & your item SHOULD NOT be held in customs. I’ll hold them on that.

So would I use Borderlinx again? Maybe, because it can clear customs faster & will most likely arrive when compared to using international parcel. I got an email from the support staff thanking me for my feedback & rest assured that my feedback would be channeled to higher management so that the service will be improved. That email kind of made me feel, OK, at least my relentlessness paid off.

Having rekindled my Transformers interest, I find myself checking a couple of Transformers fan sites daily nowadays, checking on news of new figures, new happenings, conventions & stuff like that. It’s a very lively community, with yearly Botcon conventions organised by Transformers Collectors’ Club & Hasbro in the USA. There are BotCon organised elsewhere around the globe too like in Europe & Japan.

Two sites I check daily nowadays are Transformer World 2005 (TFW2005 in short) & Seibertron.com. TFW2005 is more of a forum while Seibertron is more of a news site. There’s a gallery section in Seibertron where you can check out tons of galleries of past & present Transformers figures. Browsing these 2 sites, I can’t help but notice a link to BigBadToyStore.com on both sites. So curiously, I went to check it out. Turns out it’s huge online toy store with an amazing variety of selection you can gawk at. They sell mint as well as 2nd hand toys in loose, opened or sealed form which is great as buying used toys is the only way to get some very hard to find figures, provided you can afford it of course. My focus was of course Transformers, in particular the Alternators section. As mentioned in my Transformers! Final Part post, Alternators are rare collectible figures now so I was wondering if I might be able to find 1 or 2 figures that I was looking for at reasonable prices. To my surprise, there were 2 figures, in good shape (one is sealed, one is opened but Back in Box condition) & price wise I can afford it. So I took the plunge, created an account, paid for it with my credit card & sat on the order for a while, wondering how I was going to ship it back here.

I had 2 options for shipping it back, use BigBadToyStore shipping by US Parcel or use Borderlinx, a shopping consolidation service by Citibank. Shipping it by US Parcel was cheaper but slower delivery (3 weeks) & most likely will get stuck in customs. Shipping it by Borderlinx was a little more expensive but faster delivery (5 days) & might slip through customs, depending on my luck. So I decided to use Borderlinx & try it out. I’ll blog about the Borderlinx experience seperately as it was not a very smooth one, unfortunately.

So finally, I got my package from BigBadToyStore, delivered via Borderlinx & here are some pictures to commemorate the ‘joyous’ occasion.

Overall I’m very happy with the packaging & how they sealed each box individually. I have no issues recommending BigBadToyStore to anyone, but please keep in mind, you’re shipping from USA so shipping cost is a bomb. Always try other cheaper alternatives in finding your rare figure, whenever possible. But if you can find an alternative method to ship it back, then shopping on BigBadToyStore is highly recommended, especially since they have clearance sales quite often.

UPDATE 21/04/2010: Talk about coincidence. BigBadToyStore is having a 15% sale on almost everything till this Friday, April 23, 2010!!! So go check it out.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday was BigBadToyStore has a ‘Pile of Loot’ shipping system. What this does is allow you to buy an item, store it in their warehouse for up to 6 months, all the while adding new items you wanna buy to the pile. A great way to consolidate stuff you want to buy & ship it in one go. I still have stuff sitting in my ‘pile’ over there now .