Walmart’s Collector Con listings tend to appear without much of a run-up, and the two Transformers on this round were live by 11:15 Eastern, when TFW2005 posted the links: Retro G1 Decepticon Exhaust and Retro G1 Decepticon Bug Bite, $27.97 each, sold by Walmart.com rather than by a marketplace seller. Hasbro’s product copy went up with them, carrying the sizes, the step counts and the contents of each box.

Exhaust is the larger figure, standing 5.2 inches in robot mode by Hasbro’s reckoning, converting to a race car in 18 steps, and carrying a shoulder launcher that pegs on in either mode. Bug Bite stands 4 inches, and his box holds a blaster. But he is the fiddlier of the two to convert, at 23 steps, and the prices on the two listings were identical.

They are identical because the card is the product. Both figures arrive on the same purple and yellow G1 blister card, under the same chrome-lettered logo and the same MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE line, with the same clip-and-save tech specs printed down the back and the same Evil Decepticon lockup in the corner. Hasbro has been running this packaging for years now, and it has never been priced on the plastic inside it, whatever the size of the toy. [1]

The Exhaust and Bug Bite blister cards side by side, both on the purple and yellow G1 grid backer with the chrome Transformers logo and a yellow Decepticon name panel.

What is inside is a pair of Decepticon repaints wearing Autobot bodies. Both are repaints of moulds the line already had. Exhaust is Wheeljack under the paint, down to the winged head and the shoulder-mounted launcher, done in white and red and blue with LANCER along the shins and 598 on the bonnet. Bug Bite is the Beetle, white where the Autobot version is yellow, with a purple badge on the chest where the red one goes. Neither character has much of a screen record to trade on, and neither of them needed one: the appeal is a silhouette we already know, in the wrong colours, hanging on a card that looks like 1985. It is a good trick, and it still works!

Both listings read Out of Stock by half past five Eastern, with no pre-order control left on either page. [2] The Classified Night Force Sneak Peek had gone the same way earlier in the day. It has been a loud week for Hasbro either way, with four Age of the Primes figures and three Studio Series shown in New York the night before the Javits floor opened, so a pair of quiet Walmart repaints was never going to get much of a drum roll.

Neither figure is orderable tonight. BigBadToyStore carries no Exhaust and no Bug Bite, searched this evening, and Hasbro Pulse has no product page for either of them. What BBTS does have is the Autobot the second one is painted over: Transformers Generations Retro G1 Autobot Bumblebee, $29.99, in stock with the add to cart control live when the listing was read this evening. It runs two dollars over Bug Bite’s Walmart price, on the same Beetle, in the colours the character is supposed to wear. [3]

[1] The card calls him BUGBITE, one word, in the yellow name panel. Walmart’s listing title and Hasbro’s own description both write Bug Bite as two words. The card codes are printed bottom left, G3700 for Exhaust and G3699 for Bugbite, and they match the manufacturer product numbers on the Walmart pages, G37005L0 and G36995L0.

[2] Both pages still carried the $27.97 price and the Walmart.com seller line at that point; the availability field is what had flipped.

[3] BBTS lists three packaging tiers on that figure. The $29.99 is the mint one, and the cheaper rows are substandard and damaged packaging on the same toy rather than a different product.

Sources

Key art and card photography: official Hasbro product images from the Walmart.com listings.