Recently I experienced the G1 Turbomaster Rotorstorm toy for the very first time, from an era of Transformers that completely passed me by. To be fair, I was ignorant of the quality of toys from the 1990s and as a result missed out on one of the gems of Generation 1. I knew of Rotorstorm's rising popularity as a result of the comics featuring The Wreckers, but the toy's qualities were only made obvious to me when Colin Pringle (Specimen17) brought one out to a UK meetup a few weeks back. The toy's head sculpt and general proportions blew me away. So how did I manage to get one for free?
I didn't set out to get anything for free, that's for sure. I also had no clue about the value of a Rotorstorm, especially with a few sealed ones from Greece asking over £200. Was this to be one of those Euro exclusives that foreign collectors go mad for, and something I should have paid attention to and bought years ago when the advantage was there to be had? Loose ones were £50 if I wanted to buy near complete, especially with the pink blades.
Enter the above lot from Europe, listed with a Buy-It-Now of 15 Euros and shipping of 16 Euros to the UK. I grabbed that (31 Euros shipped, equivalent of £26.21 GBP), and waited for it to arrive. What I got was a broken Springer (no legs), rust-ridden Micromasters - where Heavy Tread had the front-end missing, 2 KO Technobots, Flash with no arms, Snare with a broken chest box wotsit, Killbison with no parts, a paint worn and wobbly Actionmaster Shockwave, a KO blue Onslaught with no parts and a little pre-Power Rangers lion thing. The good parts were an Actionmaster Tracks with no chest sticker or parts, a decent G1 Brawl...and the best condition bot in the lot? Rotorstorm.
That's all I got though, a body. I was hoping that by liquidating the rest of the lot (before I knew there were KOs mixed in and stuff was broken) I could end up in the green with this purchase. It was obvious that the Actionmaster Tracks was going to do most of the heavy lifting where recouping costs was concerned. I was lucky in that the Rotorstorm body was tight, relatively clean, unbroken and just begging for parts.
What now?
CURRENT STATUS: - £26.21
All the best
Maz
Technically that was actually a KO of Great Cannon, a Japanese-exclusive Onslaught redeco.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is just easier to go with the most easily accessible descriptive term for something that isn't the focus of the review than to get technical and precise at every opportunity.
DeleteAll the best
Maz
Fair enough.
Delete