Due to a very brief appearance on clearance, I was able to grab myself a new copy of Brainstorm from Walgreens.
The Robot
Brainstorm wears this mold well, the white, grey and teal are very striking. Like with Nautica, the shoulder mounted wings really help to break up the Blurr outline.
The Titan Master
Teslor is a simple repaint of the Blurr Titan Master with a new backpack.
The Space Jet
The most noticeable difference with this version compared to G1 or the Generations Voyager is the single tail-fin necessitated by sharing Blur’s transformation engineering. The second biggest difference is the fact that the robot arms lay flat along the sides of the jet instead of doubling up under the wings – this worked OK on the G1 version but was a bit awkward on the Voyager so I don’t mind the change.
The Mold
I’m quite fond of the Blurr mold and now have all four versions along with Nautica and Arcee. I’m even considering picking up the soon to be re-released Legends version of Blurr that I missed the first time around.
As you can see from the photos Brainstorm and Arcee got the most remolding with new shields, spoilers and shoulders while Nautica simply got snap-on wings.
Walgreens Exclusive?
I still find it totally bizarre that Walgreens, of all places, has exclusive Transformers. The reason I caught this deal was that I’ve been watching the site closely hoping for this year’s Walgreens exclusive, the Clone two pack, to reappear online.
Brainstorm was released in the US as an exclusive twice, also appearing in the Titan Force box set at SDCC and later Hasbro Toy Shop in a lighter, more anime inspired, deco.
Price Roller Coaster
When originally released, Brainstorm was $17.99 on the Walgreens site. At the beginning of November, it was marked as “clearance” and the price on the listing dropped to $11.09 – unfortunately this price was not honored when adding it to the cart where it still came up at regular price. That was during the “good old days” when the Clones were still listed on their site.
It didn’t take long for the clearance label to be dropped and, at the same time, the price went up to $19.99. Over Cyber Weekend, when I got this one, it went on clearance for real and the price dropped to $8.59.
That didn’t last long either and the price went up to $14.99 where it remains as of this writing.
Pricing Update
The proverbial ink on this post was barely dry when I checked Walgreens site for the clones and found this:
Back up to $19.99, and no clones.
