Holy Decoys Batman!

I never really thought much about Decoys. For those of you that don't know, Decoys were packaged with smaller Transformer figures as sort of a bonus throughout 1986 and 1987. Mostly they came with combiner limbs and throttlebots. Decoys are basically just what their name implies: small rubber decoy robots of other Transformer characters. The odd thing was by the time the Decoys were released, most of the characters they imitated were long gone from the toy shelves. All of the Decoys were for toys that were released in 1984 and 1985. I had a few as a child, but never really paid much attention to them. They ended up being battle damage.

Apparently I like to draw my battle damage.

 Even in my quest of a complete G1 collection I still didn't give them much thought. I just never really considered them all that important or part of a G1 collection. Fortunately many people agree and they are usually readily available for somewhere between $4-$8 each. So when I finally got down to the last few remaining figures in my G1 collection, I was looking for ways to round it out. That means Decoys. I finally started to recognize these tiny figures for what they were: an essential part to any complete G1 collection.

Random Internet Picture.

 As it turns out, obtaining all of these things is a lot harder than it looks. First off, there aren't just 52 different ones out there. There are 63. Originally Hasbro had planned to manufacture all the Decoys in one color: red. However sometime after the initial run they changed their minds and started to manufacture the Decepticons in purple. Thus there is a red set of Decepticons and a purple set. One red Decepticon decoy is hard to come by, not to mention the whole set. I was fortunate in that I found a partial set of red Decepticons, but I still don't have all of them.

Over halfway there.

 Secondly, most of the sellers on eBay have overinflated the prices of these things. I see many listed for over eight dollars when that really isn't the going price. So most of my purchases have to come from online message boards or in person exchanges. In fact I haven't even started on the regular release Decoys yet due to this fact. I am hoping I can find another large set at a good price to start me out. Then again, I could always just go for this auction.

Just a little too expensive ($500!)