Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

Clearly this blog hasn't exactly been a high priority for me, if there's anyone out there that's wondered where I've gotten myself off to, the answer is this: My marriage of 12 years just dissolved a few months ago, and I've decided to get out of toy collecting. I might come back here eventually and keep up on reviewing other things, and just talking in general, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Thanks for reading everyone, Bryce

So, last time I covered Robots In Disguise Optimus Prime, which was the first Prime toy I bought as an adult, but what actually got me back into collecting was reading a Toy Fair magazine that had a feature on the upcoming Armada toy line. As I recall, the article didn't even have any pictures of the new toys, just some descriptions of a few samples, and an overall theme for the line. In the article, at least, Armada was described as the first full collaboration between Hasbro and Takara, prior to Armada, each company worked more or less independently, and would choose to use media or toys from the sister companies on a case by case basis. Most of the US cartoons were brought to Japan at some point, while Robots In Disguise was the first Japanese TF cartoon to be brought to the states. So, what was Armada supposed to be about? The idea was Mini-cons, a new name for an old idea, which is little tiny Transformers. Look back at Star Convoy . The difference this time was that ther...