Medic!

Following my disappointing Amazon experience recently, my replacement Studio Series #82 Ratchet arrived today, and I was pleased to find that it was actually the Studio Series figure, not another Rescue Bots Academy, or Siege, or Earthrise... However, my joy was perhaps a little shorter-lived than I might have hoped.

I've been reading about this figure yellowing far more quickly than other contemporary figures and, to my dismay, mine was already starting to turn, inside the box. It's quite obvious that different types of plastic have been used, as some parts are pristine white across the whole figure, while other parts are discolouring inconsistently. It may not be easily apparent in the photo below, but the the panel the right side rear wheel is attached to and the robot's right thigh joint are perceptibly discoloured versus those on the opposite side, while the front wheel arches on both sides are discoloured. Making this all the worse is that the white paint used for the front section is far whiter than any of the plastic, possibly because it's painted over translucent blue.

Left side: Pristine White

Right side: Discoloured

Not good, Hasbro... Really not good, considering the price hikes. I'm also a little dubious about the engineering, but I'll get into that later...

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Having received a whole bunch of Amazon gift cards for Christmas, I tried valiantly to avoid using them for TransFormers toys, but the temptation to acquire the first wave of new Studio Series toys from the Bumblebee movie - #80 Brawn, #81 Wheeljack, #82 Ratchet and #83 Soundwave - quickly proved too great for me.

Naturally, everyone who ordered the toys from Hasbro Pulse (as I would normally have done in the absence of Amazon gift cards) would have received them earlier, but my shipment from Amazon was despatched today for collection at my local post office. Upon receipt of delivery confirmation, I wandered down, collected my parcel, brought it home, and opened it to find... this:

Now, strangely, while the three Studio Series toys in the box were listed as having been sold and despatched by Amazon, the erroneously-included Rescue Bots Academy Autobot Ratchet was not - it appeared to have been sold by a third party vendor under Amazon's umbrella. In these circumstances, though, I'd have expected it to have been despatched in a separate box, so I'm more than a little confused.

I've gone through the Returns procedure - with the small hitch that the closest shop that has an Amazon counter did not have a functional printer, so I had to come home, cancel the return, restart the return and print a label myself. No great shakes, really, but it was raining by the time I was ready to head out again, so I decided to wait till tomorrow/later in the week.

The figures I ordered are quite fun, so hopefully I'll get to writing about them soon. I'll re-order Ratchet once the refund comes through.