Dave's Transformers Rant: Tiny Tins Spychangers These were solicited in Diamond's Previews Magazine quite a while ago and finally arrived this week, although I had sightings in Britain some time back. CAPSULE Tiny Tins: Eight different Spychangers (first six RiD ones, plus Side Swipe and Prowl 2) packaged singly with little metal boxes. There's nothing new about the Spychangers themselves, but the boxes are nifty. Not five dollars worth of nifty, though. Overpriced unless you're a completist or somehow missed ALL the other Spychanger reissues. $4.99 at my comic shop, but no MSRP was provided so we kinda negotiated that price based on the $2.99 wholesale price. RANT These are carded one at a time on RiD-pattern cards 8" (20cm) tall and 6" (15cm) wide, with the upper right corner carrying the Tiny Tins logo. A gold 10-pointed star has the words "Collectible Tin" on it. The toys are packaged in robot mode, holding their guns, in a plastic bubble-and-tray. The tins are next to the robot, slightly open so that you can see the artwork inside. The back of the package shows the eight Spychangers chosen for this line, but there's no other info or individualized packaging. They don't even have a name sticker for each toy on the bubble, relying on their name being on the tin. The package calls the tin a metal garage for the car. Go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/RiD/ near the top for reviews of the Spychangers themselves. I'm just gonna review the tins here. The tins are 8cm long, 4cm wide and 3cm tall (Tiny Tins are a UK concern, so I'll stick with just metric). They are made from two pieces, an outer sleeve open at the small ends and an inner box open at one of the 8cm by 4cm faces. The outer sleeve is crimped together on the bottom face, the inner tray has rounded corners. The outer sleeve has a photo of both the robot mode and vehicle mode of each toy wrapping around, with the Autobot symbol on the left side and the "Transformers" logo on the right side. The background is the same pattern as the background of the cards, red blocks giving way to yellow as you go from top to bottom, all in a sort of energy swirl. The back of the sleeve has the product number in white at the bottom (#5001 to #5008). The inner tray (same dimensions as the outer sleeve, minus a millimeter or so to be able to fit inside) repeats the front picture on the inside of the bottom. The outside bottom is blank silver, as are the inside walls. The outside walls have the vehicle mode on the right side, robot upper body on the left, name on the top and Tiny Tins logo on the bottom. The guns of Crosswise and WARS wrap around from the left to the top. Because of the folded metal on the bottom of the outer sleeve, the boxes do not stack well on the largest side, they rock a little. Stacking other ways work okay, but are inherently less stable due to smaller surfaces. The main advantage of the Tins is that the six original Spychangers can keep their guns with them in the Tin. }-> All of the Spychangers can fit inside the Tins in vehicle mode, but Mirage is the only one that can do so in robot mode. They all rattle quite a bit (Ironhide less than others, of course...he barely fits). Dave Van Domelen, planning to finally open Unicron tonight....