Benjamin Meyer's Personal Blog

Transformers Rodimus Kit Build Instructions

2011-08-21T11:45:00.001-04:00

I got a preview copy of the Transformers Rodimus Kit from kotoys.com. The copy I got was the clear version. It is also available in clear black, clear red, black, and white. Like previous kotoys.com kits this didn't some with instructions so I tool some photos and notes as I went.

Package

The tree's came in a plain white box. I am not sure if the final product with have artwork or not, but that isn't as important as what is in the box.

Parts

Included in the box is three trees of parts, a bag of parts and you should also find some stickers (it wasn't ready when mine was shipped)

This tree wasn't completely clear, but had a very slightly pink tint to it. I would expect that the final version will be all clear.

My bag of screws was missing some parts. The final version might contain a spring for the gun and some more screws (I used screws from my sideswipe for now).

Putting it together:

Gun
Getting the easiest thing out of the way collect the five parts (and a spring if the final box comes with one)

Assemble and a spot of glue and you are done.

Back / Wings

Attach the steering wheel and if you want use some glue (mine was pretty snug) to the lower part of the back.

Thread the long pin through the top front of the car, the back piece and back through the front of the car piece. The holes on mine didn't cleanly line up and after assembling it I ran a small drill through the length to make a smooth hole for the pin first.

While it looks like the center spoiler screws right on none of my screws were big enough to fit the hole so I just used some glue which holds it well enough. Use a second screw to secure the front of the car / robot back.

Pop on the two wings and you are done.

Arms

With a small amount of glue attach the inner upper walls of the arms.

Using the longer screws attach the ball joints

While you can attach the wheels now I would recommend waiting until the end when the chest is ready to try out the ball joints to make sure they are secure and all the way in before attaching the wheels which are a pain to take off (and make this screw inaccessible).

Using a pin attach the upper and lower arms

Attach the hands and saw. Tripple check you are putting them on the right side and in the right direction before putting in the pin.

Legs

Start with the lower legs. Unlike other transformers all four wheels are the same size so you can pick any one.

Assemble the lower leg without the kneecap and wheel

Three screws hold the lower leg together

Attach the wheel

Attach the kneecap. Note that once you do this taking apart the lower leg is much more difficult so confirm everything is all ok. Make double sure that the left knee cap is used on the left leg and vice versa as they are not the same.

The upper legs come in four pieces and require two screws (don't put together just yet)

Attach the upper leg piece to the lower leg

Assemble the upper leg, transform the leg to confirm that the correct left side/right side parts were used and then screw it all together.

Attach the hips with pins, again check that the left/right is attached

Chest

The chest is made up of a number of larger pieces and a small connector where the head sits.

Start by connecting the small connector (where the head will sit) to the bottom of the front of the car.

Place the shoulders into the front of the car

Place the hood on top and then screw the front of the car together.

Connect the two main pieces of the chest together. When threading the pin through the rear chest piece it came out at a slight angle, once again I used a small drill to smooth it out so they lined up again before inserting the pin.

Put in the crotch piece so the screw hole is facing up and screw down the bottom chest piece holding it in place.

Attach the legs to the crotch and screw down the other half of the crotch.

Pop in the arms into the shoulder sockets

Place the back/spoiler into the hole and use the flat screw to secure it.

Head
The head is made up of three parts (front/back/eyes) which slide together, but don't lock together.

A little bit of glue to keep the two sides together and place onto to the chest

Finished!

Gallery

With my one armed KO Kit Starscream

Classics Rodimus with some repo stickers and the TFCC Sideburn.

Solar Panel Installation

2011-08-15T20:54:00.007-04:00

After deciding to get solar panels a few months ago we then had to wait six weeks for the Mass rebate to get approved. In that reguard signing the paperwork was a bit anti-climatic, but once it was approved work began on our roof and before long we were producing power.

Throughout the process I took photos to catalog the install.

The first day the installers mounted the beams that the panels would be attached to.
And the next day they mounted the micro inverters to the beams and ran the initial wire connecting them up. Rather than having one central inverter our system had a micro inverter attached to each panel. The big advantage is that if one panel gets some shade or goes down it doesn't take down everything it is connected to.

On following Monday morning an eighteen wheeler delivered a palette containing our 30 Schüco 185 watt solar panels to our house.

Over the course of the day they first tested each panel and then installed most of them up on our two roofs.

The last two panels were left off until the electrical work is done (the electrician was on vacation when this was happening). On the upper roof the left four beams were trimmed and got black boots. The two beams on the right of the upper roof have been trimmed, but the boots have not yet been installed. The boots really make a big difference minimizing the visual impact of the solar panels.

Before we can connect the solar one of the tasks we had to get done was to upgrade our electrical system. The existing main electrical box was only 60amps which the regulation wouldn't allow for the panels to be wired into it. While there is an extra cost in performing an electrical upgrade this was something we knew we would have to do one day when we bought the house.

The nice new electrical 200amp electrical box with the old box now as just acting as a sub panel.

Meanwhile our electric company replaced our outside meter with a net meter (so it could go backwards) and the solar electrician began running wires from the panels down to an external emergency disconnect and another new meter that will measure the solar production. From the solar meter the wiring ran into the house and attached to the new main panel.

With everything all wired the system was turned on for a few minutes to make sure all of the panels were working and we got to generate a tiny bit of electricity before it was turned back off to wait for the electrical inspection.

With the construction finished we are very pleased with how the panels ended up looking. When we first started looking into solar panels we spent a bunch of time wondering if they would end up being an eye sore. I am very happy with the results and how day to day really unless you look up you probably wont notice they are there. Our worries about our neighbors hating them were unfounded and multiple neighbors have inquired about the panels and the feedback has all been positive.

After we had the electrical inspection and approval from our electric company we finally got to turn on the panels full time. The data from all of the micro inverters is gathered and published up to the cloud via the Enphase Envoy unit (the little pill box not yet attached to the wall in the photo of the electrical box). With the data up online it has a number of fun graphs and all sorts of real time data. There is a public site for our house where much of the recent data is available. The real value of uploading the data is that they continuously analyze the production data and notify me if anything seems wrong such as if a panel stops producing.

After much debating if we should even get panels I am glad we did. The install went smooth, they look nicer than I expected and this months electric bill arrived today lower than any before.

Solar Panels

2011-08-12T20:29:00.000-04:00

Like every new home owners after buying a house we found a way to spend a bunch of money on it only a few months later.

Earlier this year after playing around with 1bog's solar estimate tool I learned about various rebate, tax, and credit incentives that Massachusetts has for those who install solar on their roof including:

* Federal tax credit for 1/3 of the install cost
* Mass State $1000 tax credit
* Mass State rebase which for our install worked out to be around 25%
* Solar panels wont be included in your estate tax for 20 years
* In Mass when generating power from solar for every megawatt you get one Solar Credit which the utility companies buy to fill their quotas (The program will be running until 2020).
* And of course with solar panels our electric bill will be dramatically less (we estimate it will go down to the minimum of $6.95 a month).

Once you combine those together you can project that the system will pay for itself in around five years and over the following fifteen pay for itself again just in electrical bill reductions. And finally if/when we sell our house we can ask for more because we will have solar panels so we should be getting back our initial investment once again. Not too bad of a way to put money into your house.

We got various quotes from solar installers and discussing it with friends and family I got a ton of questions with some skeptics about the payback. Fearing making a major mistake I generating all of the projections to double check the numbers myself. Just a few of the things I ended up looking up was the average electrical percentage price increase in Mass, average number of hours of sunlight for my town, the angle of our roof, angle of house to the sun, and the efficiency of the panels and inverters and even looked up the tax and rebate laws to make sure they applied. Running all the numbers it came out to pretty much the same as the estimates in the installers quotes (theirs were more conservative than my conservative estimates!) so we decided to go ahead and install panels on our roof.

The installer is a local company Brightstar Solar that had been very patient with our questions. The system we decided to go with will put 30 Schüco 185 watt solar panels (the photo up top). We went with the Schüco panels partially because of aesthetics and also because they hit the best bang for your buck.

The past few weeks they have been at our house installing the panels. I took photos of the process and will follow up with a post of the whole install.

Transformers Sideswipe Kit Review and Build Instructions

2011-06-27T23:56:00.003-04:00

Sideswipe is the most recent Transformers kit to come out of kotoys.com. Sold as "Lambor LP640 Kit" this kit is the mold used for the Transformers CHUG Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, RedAlert, BotCon's G2 Breakdown, TFCC Punch/CounterPunch, BotCon G2 Sideswipe, and TFCon R.E.V. Included in the kit is the four different heads used by the toys, all of the different accessories, three guns, and a clear and clear red set for the windows. Between those you can build the toy however you want. Unlike last time there is an actual box and (after asking on the forums) they left all of the parts on the plastic tree just like a normal model kit (and no missing, duplicate or incorrect parts!). Originally the set was going to be sold in nine different colors, but only 50-100 black kits were sold as the manufacturing mold broke in the factory in China. I ordered two sets as soon as they were put up for sale and was one of the lucky few. Just like with the previous kits there were no instructions so here are some instructions on how to build the toy. Click on any image to view a high resolution version.

Parts

A few of the parts became loose in shipment. I tried matching them all up with where they belong for the photos.

A closeup of the four different heads with Punch/Counterpunch in both "modes". I am selling off my extra heads (and a few other things on tfw2005.

There is actually two clear roof tops (so you can have the lightbar or not) just like with the red set, but I didn't photograph it for some reason.

My two sets came with a different number of screws and pins and I don't think some of the screws were ever used so I am not sure the exact number you should have or what is extra.

Not photographed I also got a bonus deception set of stickers with my shipment, but it wasn't inside either box so I don't think it was part of the normal item, just a bonus.

Paint
First take the parts off the tree and trim off the excess plastic.

For painting lightly sand the parts you want to paint, give them a white base coat and final coat and you are all ready. There isn't a blue version of this toy so I decided to go with my interpretation of the Italian state police Lamborghini Gallardo crossed with an Energon Prowl to make CHUG Prowl. I am in no means a pro at model painting so you have to suffer through my bad paint job for the remainder or the photos. I originally was hoping to limit the amount of painting by getting several kits of different color plastics, but alas that was not to be with the mold breaking at the factory.

Arms

Here are all of the main parts you need to put the arms together. Two screws and three pins are required.

First using the small flat screw put in the door window

And screw the door/arm attachment piece. Make this tight, but not too tight as it will need to rotate.

Using two pins connect up the main part of the arm.

Put in the third pin connecting the arm to the door. Note that you want the black part at the top to face forward when in bot mode.

Repeat for the other side and the arms are now done and can be set aside while we build the legs

Legs

Almost everything you need for the legs. (Missing is the two knee ball joints that connects the top of the lower legs to the rear end, but they are included in that photo step below).

First put together the upper legs.

Be very careful with the black piece as it can go on either way, but only one way is right.

Pop the ankle ball joint into the foot

Attach the knee cap ball joint. Note you want the ball joint to point up/out.

Attach the rear wheel with a pin/screw (my pins were too small so I used screws). Note that the FAT wheels go on legs (the thin wheels go on the front/shoulders).

Connect the four main parts of the legs with screws. Note: the feet ball joint connectors are not identical and if they are on the wrong leg the foot will not be able to fully go inside the lower leg in car mode.

If you want the spoiler screw the spoiler piece to the rear end piece. I decided to skip this in my version.

Clip on the knee cap / rear end of the car

And you have a rear end of the car done!

Car Front end

The parts for the front of the car (and optionally the front of the chest in robot mode if you end up going that route).

First assemble the shoulder. Note: the ball joint is attached to the flat side.

Attach the front wheels. In the photo I show a long screw, but that wont fit, you have to use one of the normal smaller screws. Note: these wheels should be thinner than the back wheels.

Construct the hinge that will connect this piece to the body.

Place and glue the headlights in.

Attach the hinge to the front of the car with the screw

Assemble the pieces of the front of the car, holding them down with two screws. If you want you can attach the arms to the ball joints right before this point just make sure you put them on the right side.

Chest
The chest parts (Was getting excited and getting ahead of myself here so some are already together). The head choice is up to you as is the roof.

First put the crotch and leg balls together with one screw.

The heads all require one screw to put together. Here is sunstreaker's

Screw the roof connector, gear and the back together

Screw the chest together. To do this you need to place the head and car front hinge inside of the chest and then screw down the other piece with up to five screws. Getting the gear to line up takes a little bit of effort so go slow and double check before screwing it completely down.

Body

Connect the arms and legs to the body. Note on the legs you want the crotch screw to be on the same side as the screws in the upper legs. Note placing the arms on the right side so when in car mode the doors are correct. (I got both of these wrong and had to go back and change them the first time I transformed it)

If you roof has a lightbar screw it onto the roof.

And then snap it onto the chest/back.

Accessories
He comes with three guns and roof accessory. Two for the hands and one shoulder or any combo you want. I went with just two. The guns are slightly too small so you need to add a coat of glue so they are tight in the hands and on the back widen the slot so they can attach to the bottom of the car.

Finished!

Gallery

KO crystal Starscream kit

Various other Transformers toys that use this same mold design. From left to right:
Hasbro Sunstreaker, Hasbro Red Alert, My Prowl, Hasbro Sideswipe, BotCon 2010 G2 Breakdown, TFCon 09 R.E.V

I had an absolute blast putting this toy together. While I usually have a toy on my desk for a few days and get some fun out of it I end up working on and playing with the kit for significantly longer. While the mold might have a few minor issues compared to the real toys I know every little bit of it and have had more fun putting the kits together than any transformer I have picked up lately. The different options on how you can build it really top it off.

The biggest downside has to be the lack of instructions when dealing with the pins and screws. Unlike the Hasbro/Takara mold the screw holes are different so you can't assume a long screw in the Hasbro mold needs a long screw in the kotoys toy. Hopefully instructions like the one I just wrote will let you see where and how many pins and screws are actually needed so you can plan on where to put your pins and screws.

A big thumbs up from me on this kit and I can't wait to put together the next one.

ConsumerReports.org Review

2011-04-11T22:16:00.003-04:00

Last December I signed up for the online access to consumerreports.org Considering they review everything it is only fitting to review the site. The basic service you would expect would be to search for a product, compare and read reviews. On every level the site fails.

Searching:
Just recently I wanted to buy an LED light bulb. Having read consumer reports articles on led bulbs I figure they would have some reviews. Searching for "light bulbs" or "led bulb" or other variations produced pointless results. Having to guess where they are in the "appliances" menu you can click the "view all" option, but that only brings you to a page that shows you some categories each of which you have to click "more" on and further drill down. If they review LED bulbs I don't know about it. On more than one occasion I have given up trying to find a product and just Googled for reviews on other sites.

Compare:
How many different TV's are their out there? How many do you think consumer reports have reviewed over the years? How many do you think are comparable? Less than a dozen. Category after category this is the same. The actual items don't list very many specs for each product making it hard to compare. For all of the hype about energy savings you would think they would actually list the Watt's the TV used, but nope they only show an estimate such as "Energy cost/yr. $59" which has no relation on what my local energy costs might be and makes it especially difficult to compare the TV to one I found elsewhere. This is repeated over and over across the site. This is also inconsistent such as to go with a TV people often buy receivers, but they don't list the energy cost for them. Lastly given that there are only a dozen TV's to compare you would think you could compare them all, but nope you can only compare five at a time. All it is doing is making a table on a webpage, nothing fancy so I can only guess as to why some middle manager decreed that rule.

Reviews:
In a magazine you are limited to the amount of space you can write about a product, but not online. And yet the reviews for items are sometimes so short I half wonder if they are just computer generated from the half dozen product ratings. If I wanted to know what thermostat was the number one consumer reports pick I could Google it. I paid for the subscription expecting to actually read an in depth reason why it was better.

To conclude when researching items on consumerreports.org when I can actually find the categories I find myself Googling elsewhere to read the in-depth reviews. Often those other sites even list the same group of very good products making me feel taken for having paid for consumerreports.org when I didn't end up finding anything of value on the site.

Rating: Poor

1-10 photos every day starting in 2006

2011-01-10T13:00:00.008-05:00

In 2006 I got a MacBook that had a built in camera. I close the lid to my laptop several times a day so having it take a picture every time I opened the lid seemed like an interesting idea. I knew I had to setup an automated system for handling this and one of the first things I did after getting the laptop was install the Sleepwatcher daemon. Sleepwatcher will execute $HOME/.sleep and $HOME/.wakup when the laptop goes to sleep and wakes up. Originally I had it just take a picture, but more often then not this took an absolute horrible picture. Using OS X's Automator tool I created a quick script to launch Photo Booth and take a picture. Photo Booth does the normal countdown (3..2..1) and the photos ended up much better as I can actually smile or even just get in the frame. And if not, the application was right there open and I could take a better one.

Over the years I have taken thousands of snapshots and thought I would share just a few from 2006-2009. As you might expect the vast majority of the photos are boring with the vast majority me just straight faced or smiling into the camera. But with taking so many photos you do end up getting some interesting ones.

Looking through my archives the oldest photo I was able to find was this one. It was taken in December of 2006, sadly I was playing with the effects and it is a horrible picture.

I had very long hair back then so it is amusing to see at how differently it made me look.

This was taken only a few minutes after I got my hair cut in April of 2007. Unexpectedly after having it be so flat it was just about impossible to manage and oddly mostly just wanted to point straight up.

And for the next week I had photos filled with funny hair

While most of the photos are of only me, numerous photos included friends in the background

At Trolltech my coworker Jesper hearing the Photo Booth beeping would often leap across the office and behind me just in time to get in many of the photos.

And some KDE devs at aKademy

And sometimes catching them by surprise when they would use my laptop, open the screen and it would take their picture

And our new shy kitten Bobbin

After a while I tried to incorporate objects into the photos to make them more interesting. This was a mixed result, but ended up with a number of photos of food in them for some reason.

This one in particular is special as it was taken on Christmas day so it is Jen's Christmas morning cinnamon buns.

I take my laptop with me everywhere. As a result I ended up with photos in various locations mostly by accident.

Our house in Norway

Rome

All over Italy including Pisa.

MIT

England

Trip to the mountains of Norway

Three of the many books that I ended up getting in the photos.

And at time I just needed a camera and used the laptop because I had it there in my hands.

Squirrels fighting on our deck

Beating Super Mario World

A crazy rain storm approaching like a wall across the city

My last photo taken before moving back to the US.

And when I would get hurt that got documented like the rest of it

One of the results of an evening of playing paintball.

When I broke my hand there was three weeks of photos with the cast.

After the cast came off and my hand was a big green and plenty swollen still.

And getting burned in Norway after visiting Trolltunga

Sorting through the photos is a bit overwhelming as there are just so many, but here is a few that stood out for one reason or another:

How did I even take this one?

The last photo from 2009

I am glad that I did not try to get the exact same shot day in and day out as I originally thought about doing. It was much more amusing to see photos of silly faces, friends, places and remember all of the random day to day life that I end up capturing. The iSight camera in my 2006 MacBook wasn't the best camera nor took very high resolution photos, but it easily made up for that deficiency by the simple fact that the alternative was no photos.

KO Klear Starcream Kit Instructions

2011-01-07T11:00:00.003-05:00

I recently bought a Transformers clear Strarscream Kit from KOToys.com. Arriving in a bag with lots of parts and no instruction I slowly put it together and six hours later:

Having no instructions I documented as I went so others would have a little less of a hassle. You can click on all of the photos for high resolution versions.

Tips

First some basic tips I figured out the hard way

When putting in the screw if the plastic turns white the screw is probably the wrong size

Use a paperclip to thread the pieces before putting in the pins to make sure they holes line up.

Use your existing toy to make sure you have the right part. Parts on the left and right side may look similar, but they are just about always different.

Use your existing toy to find out what parts look like :)

Parts

You get a bag of parts and a bag of screws, pins, and springs. Count them to make sure you have them all.

Back

First find the smallest pin and the two shown parts and insert the pin.

With the piece grab two smaller screws, one larger screw and the round top and screw them all together to the back piece.

like so:

Then grab to large screws and the small double hole pieces and attach them.

The back is now complete

Head

Put the cockpit together first. One large screw

Put the cockpit together with the head and nose of the plane with two large screws. Leave them loose for when you attach it to the body.

IGNORE THE SIZE OF THE PINS IN THE NEXT PHOTO! I did it wrong the first time and had to take them out. Looking at all your pins there should two two very small ones that don't have matches. One is very thin (and is used in the next step), you want the other one. The "other small pin" (pictured on the left) goes at the tip (right side of picture) of the plane. A normal small pin goes on the left.

Ignore the pin on the far right of the next photo. Grab the connecting piece for the head to the nose. The thin pin goes on the right (in the middle of the photo) and a normal pin goes on the left. It was at this point I figured out I had the pin in the nose wrong and had just taken it out which is why it is in this photo.

Connect the nose to the back of the plane (the nose should be loose so you don't have to force it) and then tighten it.

Feet

The Flat screws go into the feet

Later they will go inside the legs like so: (the screw keeping the foot in)

Connect the rear wings with a pin

Using two small screws connect the rear wings to the feet. (only one side shown, but do both of course)

Legs

Get the upper leg (the one with a ball socket) and the piece pictured and a pin.

Do both sides:

Next we are going to make the block the slides inside the lower legs. Get the following parts and connect the block with one large screw to the upper legs.

Place the upper leg inside of the lower legs in the track along with the foot and then with two large screws screw the lower leg together. The lower wings should already be attached to the feet at this point. I screwed up when I was putting them together which is why they are not in the photo.

UPDATE: The little plastic U and little spring also go in the leg. See the end of the article for details on this mistake of mine. :)

With a pin for each side attach the robot feet. Note: after you do this taking apart the feet is not as easy as unscrewing them.

All put together (minus lower wings) in robot mode

With the lower wings (later after I discovered my mistake and took everything apart and added them) in plane mode

arms

Connect the fist to the lower arm with a pin and connect the lower arm to the upper arm with a pin. TRIPLE check that the fist is in correctly and on the right side and the upper arm is the right one and the right direction. Setup both arms next to each other and then pin them to know you have it right and compare against your existing toy.

With one big screw and one little screw connect the upper arm to the flap that will be pinned into the body.

I got two left lower arms so finishing the right arm will have to wait for the replacement part.

Chest

Two pins connect the wheel to the front of the chest. Careful! I broke part of the chest putting my pins in (right below the wheel on the right).

Flip the chest over and attach the ball joints with a small screw for the legs

Body

I attached the wings at this point, but I HIGHLY recommend you skip this step and leave it for the very last step as they just get in the way and are not needed until the end.

Attach the arms to the back using two pins.

Attach the legs to the ball joints (this step like the wings could also come after the next one....)

Pin the chest to the back and the small lower back piece using the long pin. The paperclip really helped here.

Guns

Collect the gun parts with the bigger springs:

And put them together.

When you put these together they need to be glued.

Done

Or am i?

I originally had the smaller spring and these three U parts left over.

Thanks to Razorclaw from one of the transformer boards I found out they go into the lower leg in the block that slides. The U shaped plastic goes over the small spring (there is three in case one breaks).

Unofficial Agricola Rule Book

2010-03-07T23:22:00.002-05:00

Last Christmas I received as one of my presents the board game Agricola. Agricola is a good game and for a long time was the number 1 board game on BoardGameGeek.com. It has a lot of pieces, cards, boards and a rule book. Unfortunately the rule book is pretty horrible. Using the default rule book you can't sit down with some friends and play it for the first time learning as you go (I tried twice). I ended up sitting down and playing the game by myself (there is a one player version) to figure out the rules. This isn't to say that the rules are really complicated just badly laid out. Agricola as a game is no more complicated then Puerto Rico. It is not laid out to help you setup the table the first time you play. It is not laid out to let you learn each part of the game as you are playing and lastly it is not laid out for easy reference as you are playing. So if you have never played the game you have to read the entire manual before playing the first time. Not very fun.

A while back I played the game Pandemic and the rule book for that game was absolutely fantastic (as was the game, we played four times that night). The rules where well done and easy to reference. Seeing just how well one could make a rule book I spent a few evenings and made an unofficial rule book for Agricola. Hopefully those who found the game confusing will find the instruction book useful.

Update: Now the unofficial rule book for Agricola is also on google docs

Pumpkin Carving

2009-10-12T22:28:00.001-04:00

This past weekend Jen and I went over to a friends house and carved pumpkins. I have been interested in trying to carve one of the 3d pumpkins for a while so I gave it a shot and tried making the head of Transformers Classics Bumblebee. It was fun and I look forward to trying it again next year with the knowledge that I have now.

World Smallest Transformers

2009-04-20T23:42:00.000-04:00

In 2003 Takara released a Transformers toy line that has been dubbed by the fans World Smallest Transformers or WST for short. They are fully transformable two inch tall versions of a bunch of the classic 80's toys. Due to the size and small parts they were only ever sold in Japan. Not too many were made and they were very hard to come by and to make matters worse they were sold in unmarked boxes so you never knew which toy you received. Also there was a different ratio for each toy in the master box making it difficult to collect them all while in the process getting a ton of the common ones. Googling around I was unable to find the ratio's for each toy, so I have put together a list of the toys with the ratios so the data will always be on the Internet.

Wave 1: (2003)
GTF 01A Convoy A (aka Optimus Prime truck cab) 8/48
GTF 01B Convoy B (aka Optimus Prime trailer) 2/48
GTF 02 Lambor (aka Sideswipe) 12/48
GTF 03 Starscream 6/48
GTF 04 Bumble (aka Bumblebee) 12/48
GTF 05 Soundwave (with Jaguar aka Ravage) 6/48
GTF X-1 Skywarp 1/48
GTF X-2 Bumble Red Version (aka Cliffjumper) 1/48

Wave 2: (2004)
GTF 06 Convoy Anime Version (aka Optimus Prime truck cab with blue windows) 12/48
GTF 07 Megatron 8/48
GTF 08 Meister (aka Jazz) 2/48
GTF 09 Prowl 6/48
GTF 10 Alert (aka Red Alert) 6/48
GTF 11 Thrust 12/48
GTF X-3 Streak (aka Silverstreak) 1/48
GTF X-4 Convoy White Version (aka Ultra Magnus cab) 1/48

Dengeki Hobby exclusive Smallest VSX Giftset:
VSX Convoy (variation of Anime colors)
VSX Megatron (aka Megaplex)

Wave 2.5: (2004)
CSV Starscream (from Series 1) 12/48
CSV Soundwave (from Series 1) 8/48
CSV Megatron (from Series 2) 12/48
CSV Convoy Anime Version (from Series 2) 6/48
CSV Meister (from Series 2) 6/48
CSV Hot Rodimus (aka Hot Rod) 2/48
CSV Convoy Container (aka Optimus Prime Anime Trailer) 1/48
CSV Thundercracker 1/48