Friday, December 23, 2011

2003 Fleer Transformers Armada

Greetings!

Here's another crawlspace pack...just what you all wanted for Christmas!  I believe this was a $.99 pack in the Target bin, and you all know my love for all things Transformers...here's some 2003 Fleer Transformers Armada!


Five cards per pack, 122 cards in the set, with various inserts.  You can see the full checklist here.

Armada is the first series of the so-called "Unicron Trilogy" (the other series being Energon and Cybertron), because Unicron, the planet-munching Transformer, plays some sort of role through all three series.  The animation and writing is very Japanese.  At this point in the show's overall history, I'm not paying much attention to it.  Here's the pack:


#64 – Smokescreen
#31 – High Wire

I seem to remember some controversy for the Smokescreen character, just because of the name...in the original series, Smokescreen was a race car.  It fit, because Smokescreen's ability in the old show involved blowing smoke out of his tailpipe to confuse and divert the Decepticons.  Here, Smokescreen's a crane.  The name does not fit the character.  Now again, I did not watch the show that closely, so maybe he did distract the Decepticons by puffing smoke out of his tailpipes or something.  Anyway, Hasbro's later use of the name associated it with race cars again, and all is well.

I was planning to show the back of High Wire, but I guess I messed up.  Nothing exciting, though, it's just a brief description of the character.


8 of 10AP - Armada Poster Card / The Star Saber

These cards came 1 in 9 packs.  It is pretty shiny, too bad the scan did not turn out so well. 


8 of 10AP - Armada Poster Card / The Star Saber (back)
#117 – Puzzle:  D / Piece:  6

Here's the back of the Poster Card , for those who are interested.  The 4 puzzles are each made up of 9 cards.


#117 – Puzzle:  D / Piece:  6 (back)
#55 – Skywarp

And here's the back of the Puzzle Card.  Yes, the Puzzle Card I got is part of the same image as the Poster Card.  The Decepticon Skywarp ends the pack...at least he's still a jet here and not a minivan or something.

That's the pack.  Merry Christmas to all; more next week.  Thanks for reading!

2 comments:

flywheels said...

Hasbro is now notorious for using names that don't fit certain characters. If they don't use the names then they can lose the copyrights. I'm guessing that's how Armada Smokescreen got his name.

Jafronius said...

That's true, I guess. Each series of the show needs to have a Bumblebee, for example. I guess it was just so strange to see a crane named Smokescreen. They couldn't just create another car? On the other hand, I wonder if Hasbro still has rights to your Flywheels moniker...