Grapple and Windcharger are supposedly showing up at Ross. Hasbro really screwed the pooch here. The last few waves are impossible to get; I dig Skullgrin and Thunderwing and Straxxus, but I'm smart enough to know I'm not the majority. Good luck finding Wheeljack, Thundercracker, or Warpath, y'all.
Anyway, the reason I dredged this thread up was to link to this:
http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/PopCul ... 194308.jsp.
Don't you think it would've been cooler if the cassette images were
all of the cassettes, or at least all of the Decepticon cassettes? Or, hell, at least all five of the originals. (What's with screwing Buzzsaw out of the image? If you had Soundwave, you had Buzzsaw, though you probably pretended he was Laserbeak.)
Just seeing if I can name all the cassettes who got American release without looking. Anyone want to check? (And fuck the dozen or so Japanese repaint cassettes. If I wanted a girl Ravage, I'd shoot myself in the head.)
Wave 1 Decepticons:
Buzzsaw (packed with Soundwave)
Frenzy and Laserbeak
Rumble and Ravage
Wave 2 Decepticons:
Ratbat (packed with a Frenzy re-release... sorry, Laserbeak)
Wave 3 Decepticons:
Overkill
Slugfest
Wave 4 Decepticons:
Squawktalk and Beastbox (combine to form Squawkbox)
Wave 1 Autobots:
Rewind and Steeljaw
Eject and Ramhorn
(I might be mixing up the packaging here. Since they never played a role in anything and were identical except for the color, Rewind and Steeljaw are about twice as boring as the average fuck.)
Wave 2 Autobots:
Grand Slam and Raindance (combine to form Slamdance)
Of all these, I'm going to say the coolest 2-pack was, easily, Rumble and Ravage. Both were really nice toys, and both were highly prominent characters in all media. Plus the characters were fucking awesome. Ravage might've been able to carry the set all by himself, but Rumble was icing on the cake.
The lamest was Grand Slam and Raindance (though I never had the Decepticon combiner cassettes). Theoretically, they're fucking awesome: two cassettes transform into a tank and a plane, both bristling with weapons, that combine to form a robot who has more guns per square centimeter than probably any other Transformer. But then you read the bios, and they're both pacifist reporters who record the horrors of war in an effort to end it, and all their "weapons" are either harmless defensive smoke cannons or recording devices. Sure, there's irony that the tank and plane are pacifists, but kids don't get or want irony. Plus, neither cassette has a robot mode (kinda goofy, since they have distinct personalities), and the tank (Grand Slam) was a fucking cheap piece of shit.
Look me in the eye and tell me there were any kids who, if they read the bios, didn't discount them entirely and have those two components be the baddest-assed mofos in Blaster's tummy.
