Hey guys,

I had a last minute change of plan for this week's article, so instead of the Lucky Draw segment of the "In Their Own Words" series, I've gone a little self-indulgent and started a 2-part Top 10 run down of the best finds I've made since returning to collecting 12 months ago, pitching it as a comparison with what all the contributors have provided over the last 4 weeks.

Clearly it doesn't compare, but hey, it gave me a theme!

Intermission ~ 12 Months Back – Part 1 | TF Source News <- CLICK TO READ



All the best
Maz

If I may ask, why did you stop for 4 years?

Interesting but not drop-dead-amazing stuff, which you probably knew since it was the bottom half of your list...but I'm really intrigued about the Revell catalogs you mentioned re: the Countach models.

All sorts of reasons, my then-girlfriend/now-wife lived in Iceland so I spent a great deal of time and money travelling to see her on a regular basis in Iceland and sometimes the US, I was pretty burnt out after creating TF-1 and spending so much time chasing toys and posting on forums, it was also an incredibly unhappy and tumultuous period of time at my job which didn't leave me a great deal of energy or desire to pursue Transformers. I did still pick up the odd Animated and Movie toy, but vintage collecting was off the cards.




Well, I find the Sample Takara Diaclone Smokescreen to be drop-dead amazing, but those are my tastes and not everybody else's. What kind of thing would you class as drop-dead amazing? I'm not sure you'll think that much more of my top 5 either, but do keep in mind I've had to constantly sell things to buy what I have, so you won't see and gold chromed lucky draw or MISB Japanese exclusives I tend to buy really obscure and unloved/undocumented stuff regularly.

All the best
Maz

I love this kind of thing...thanks for sharing this! Congrats on your finds!

All your articles are really cool, and well written. Sometimes the depth level goes above my head, but generally I really like learning! Glad to see you're back and in a good enough place to begin again.

Yeah, the Takara Smokescreen sample was pretty cool. i imagine it's worth at least twice what you got it for.

bear in mind that all of this is from the perspective of someone with nothing rarer in his collection than, like, a Bat-Robo.

Historically, the Smokescreen is amazing. As something to look at on a website, it's pretty much a totally normal Diaclone Smokescreen with a generic "SAMPLE" sticker on it. So while it's an unquestionably important part of the brand, it's nothing I can pore over the image of and be mystified. That's reserved for things like Bizarre Green And Pink G2 Mirage, or Peruvian Minibot packaging, or those Super Speed-Bot cardback mockups that advertise a mail-away Solarbot. Much less rare? Mostly. But still something I'm much more likely to ooh and ahh over pictures of on the Internet.

Now, if the Smokescreen has or is slated for a thorough photoshoot, that might change things up a bit...

Also: solid chrome toys aren't really my thing either, FWIW.

Ohhhh how wrong you are The Smokescreen has had the "Datsun" "Turbo 280Z" "RR"etc factory Diaclone stickers surgically mutilated and then coloured over manually by pen or paint, also there are hand-written marks on the toy indicating where the Autobot symbols will go. For the complete run down see here:
http://www.tf-1.com/articles/pretf_frame.php?art=smokesample

And if you can't be arsed to read all that waffle, here's a pic or 2:





All the best
Maz

Now, see? That's much more interesting.

Part 2 : http://tfsource.com/blog/intermission-12-months-back-part-2/

All the best
Maz

The full Joustra Wheeljack article is fantastic.