Saturday, July 21, 2012

Je ne sais quoi

I really want more Headmasters. My problem has been deciding which ones to buy first. It's the whole kid in a candy store thing. And at $100 a pop, I'm not going to buy more than one at a time. So while wrestling with my decision, I ran across a neat little auction on eBay for a Targetmaster. Hey, at least it's a Master.

What attracted me to this particular Sureshot auction was that it came with it's box. It wasn't MIB, but there was a box and the price was for about what a loose Sureshot would go for without the box. The thing that attracted me to the auction was that the box was bilingual. It was in French and English which meant Canadian. I used to live in Niagara Falls, New York and the bilingual Canadian stuff always fascinated me, so I knew I had to get this.

Box!  French!  English!  Awesome!

This is actually the second Sureshot I've owned. The last one I owned didn't have his partner Spoilsport. I actually gave him to a cousin a few years ago. My thinking at the time was that Sureshot was incomplete and I wasn't too keen on him. That and my cousins are 18 years younger than me and were just getting into Transformers, so that was a way to give them something they'd like.

At any rate, I've always loved the idea of Nebulan partners. Two toys for the price of one? Sold! The only downside is that they're do muchore on the secondary market, especially for the Decepticons. I've never understood why the Decepticon Targetmasters cost so much more than they're Autobot counterparts.

My only real exposure to the Targetmasters was the "Rebirth" episodes of the old G1 cartoon. That, that was horrible, even by my at the time fifth grade standards. Sureshot was mainly a background character in the Marvel Comics. I mainly have a picture of Sureshot getting fixed up by Fixit, drawn by the greatest Transformers artist of all time, Andrew Wildman.

Sureshot transforms into something reminiscent of a Baja buggy, something that you could race on a desert dune somewhere. I'm not sure how that would be helpful on Cybertron. Earth, sure, Nebulous maybe, I'm not sure. His alt mode is still pretty neat, if impractical.


 Here's a shot of the back of the box.  I love the action scenes on the back of the boxes.  They always look awesome and add a sense of grandeur.  I'v always wondered who did the art.

Fort Max is HUGE

And here's the tech spec in it's bilingual glory. Just beautiful.



The box isn't perfect, as the robot points were cut out, which means I won't be able to use them to order anything from the S.T.A.R.S. flyer, but them's the breaks. This was a great purchase. I'll get to a Headmaster soon enough.

4 comments:

  1. Nice pick up indeed! Sureshot was my first Targetmaster. As for why the Decepticon's go for more? My guess is they are cooler.

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  2. Thanks! Sureshot is pretty neat. His colors aren't even garish. I don't think Misfire is all that much cooler than Sureshot, so that can't justify the double or triple price point on him.

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  3. Nice haul man! A Sureshot box is one of the few things I'm missing from 1987....yum. Good one.

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