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| LEFT: Act 6 chase Dirge ABOVE: Another Dirge pic RIGHT: Act 6 chase metallic Galvatron Decepticon leader. |
| TOP LEFT: Bootleg of Act 3 Reformating Megatron LEFT: Act 5 Ghost of Starscream ABOVE: Nice clear shot of Act 2 chase Galvatron BELOW: Act 4 chase Grimlock |
| Some of the PVC chase figures: Ok today we take a look at some of the chase figures of the PVC Act's. For those who don't know what "chase" means, it's an item that is extremely harder to find than other items. For example the foil cards in Pokemon were chase cards because they didn't come in every pack. These PVC chase figures I believe come packed one to every factory case of PVC boxes, 10 cases per factory case times 12 individual figures per case= 1:120 chance of getting a chase figure. The odds might be even higher than that but I'm not sure. So Dirge is a chase figure in Act 6, rounding out the G1 second series seeker jets Thrust and Ramjet who can be found as normal figures in the Act 6 series. Galvatron makes his appearance twice in the chase as a normal color version in Act 2 and a Metallic highlighted version in Act 6. Reformatting Megatron as seen in the Transformers movie is a chase in Act 3. Grimlock shows up in Act 4, and the Ghost of Starscream is the chase of Act 5. Now although short packs have been known to happen in action figures, I cannot think of a time when chase action figures ever happened. (Note: Mattel does have chase cars in it's Hot Wheels collection, packing out in some odd ratio of cases) A short packed figure only means its number relative to the other figures in a case is smaller, normally being 1 per case (of say 12-16 figures). In the early 90's it was not uncommon to short pack Villians and Females who at that time were seen as less likely to appeal to kids. That was about the time that non-kid collectors started to have bearing on the toy "market". Now a chase figure that only randomly packs out in so many odd cases seems very unlikely as Hasbro has never been known to have done that. Star Wars is a fine example of short packing without chase figures. If Hasbro didn't take advantage of collectors with chase figures in Star Wars it's unlikely to start with Transformers. I for one believe Hasbro will focus on releasing TV and Movie related G1 characters in the US, while dumping the Japan exclusive Transformers. It's likely that the chase figures will just become regular figures in the US PVC line. Time will tell. As a collector for a great many years now, I must declare that if Hasbro does chase figures in random cases in the US I will be furious. That's the sort of anti-collector behavior that alienates diehard collectors. Looks like I'm out of space yet again. : P Catch ya on the flipside. END OF LINE (I don't even know if this little rant makes sense!?! SML5) |