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| PICTURE ARCHIVE ENTRY 1 8/17/02: RID RUINATION & CR2000 BALDIGUS |
| When deluxe Bruticus (3 headed dog) was released last year I was at a loss for what the Japanese named as Baldigus was going to be called in the states. Well the answer came a few short months later during the Christmas season of 2001 when the newest incarnation of the classic G1 Bruticus was redubbed "Ruination". The name change didn't bother me as I basically called them by their G1 names anyways. As we can see in the photo on the left G1 Brawl transformed into RID Armorhide, Swindle into Rollbar, Vortex into Rotor, & Blast Off into Movor. Below left we see the RID Mega-Octane, who was Onslaught in G1. The value across the board seems to be in the toilet for these particular characters as millions upon millions of bootlegs have appeared on Ebay. It's interesting to note that the bootleg Armorhide is tan and brown instead of blue and black. If you look at the bottom picture you will see the bootleg was modeled after Armorhide's Japanese Car Robots 2000 counterpart. On the topic of bootleg's I'd like to say I got two bootleg two-packs that contained all four of the combiner elements for $1.49 a pair. I hope to get a pic of the bootleg packaging when I get my hands on another set, silly me I threw out the packages for the ones I bought. |
| BELOW: Besides getting the RID releases of Ruination, and the bootlegs, I also managed to score the Japanese Baldigus carded set seen below. The tell tale signs of these products authenticity are the golden autobot logo 15th anniversary sticker, and the fantastic pack-in CGI trading cards. You of course can judge for yourself the differences in the designs; I for one think the Japanese packages have a whole lot more flair. Except for Destronger written up along the side of the card all the text is in Japanese, unlike our "American" versions with the English, French, & Spanish text. I think Hasbro should have taken a |
| closer look at the appeal of the Japanese cards before designing the American cardbacks. Granted it is cool that Hasbro took the conventional deluxe sized blister card and turned in on it's side. That was new and different. Nevertheless I feel it is evident that the Japanese package style is super cool. Feast your eyes for a while and look for more entries soon. SandmanL5 8/17/02 |
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