With TRU effectively gone (two stores opening by the end of 2019 doesn't really count), Target is stepping up on the exclusives. (While not technically exclusive to them, BotBots only seem to be showing up at Target most places too.)

THRUST: The final Earthrise G1 Seeker, yet another store exclusive, yet another case of Target selling out of pre-orders within minutes and then cancelling pre-orders right and left. 12/20/20: A single one on the shelf in Amarillo TX. 12/21: Culver City CA (had to ask an employee to check in back). 1/3/21: Braintree MA. 1/4: Target in San Pedro CA. They appear to be hitting shelves a lot of places, though (Amarillo got two more on 1/3 and then another two on 1/4). 1/6: Pace FL.

MASTERPIECE VW BUMBLEBEE: A Target-exclusive re-release, $79. 1/6/21: Pensacola FL. 1/21: Redondo Beach CA.

ECTOTRON REDECO: Deco based on the upcoming Ghostbusters movie, may not be a Target exclusive, but I'll put it here for now. Comes with a comic and one more ghost. $60, hard pass for me. 1/6/21: Target in Pensacola FL. 1/11: Target in Sterling VA. 1/12: Target in Burke VA. 1/23: Torrance CA. 1/24: Culver City CA. 1/30: Amarillo TX, Braintree MA.

DELUXE RUNABOUT: Redeco and maybe headswap of Runamuck. Might be a Black Friday endcap exclusive, I have it on preorder. Fingers crossed, a lot of Target pre-orders have been getting cancelled lately. 11/16/20: Starting to hit shelves by mistake, it's street-dated to Dec 1. 12/1: Torrance CA, Redondo Beach CA, Manhattan Beach CA, Gardenia CA, South Carson CA (but they won't go on the shelf until the 6th, you have to ask someone to look in back). Oh, and mine did ship...it's regular Runamuck that Target's got backordered and "delayed" for me. 12/10: Woodbridge VA. (Meanwhile, my local Target is just not restocking any toys, and the shelves are getting threadbare.)

FUNKO POP STARSCREAM: Meh. It's a Pop. Street date December 11, but might be findable and even buyable before that, if you're into that sort of thing.

Walmart Exclusives

RETRO HEADMASTERS WAVE 1: Reissues (maybe slight deco tweaks) of Titans Return Brainstorm, Chromedome, Hardhead, and Mindwipe, in G1-inspired packaging. 1/12/20: Lumberton TX. 1/17: Canyon TX. 1/18: Amarillo TX. 3/2: Pace FL (might've been wave 2?)

RETRO HEADMASTERS WAVE 2: Highbrow, Weirdwolf, Skullcruncher (got original names back) and reships of Hardhead. 3/2/21: Amarillo TX, Canyon TX. 3/22: Pace FL.

NETFLIX EARTHRISE DELUXE: Bumblebee (extensive retool of Cliffjumper), Elita-1 (retool of Arcee with some weird color choices), Wheeljack, Impactor, Red Alert. 11/21/20: Spotted in Arizona. Impactor and Red Alert are one per case, the rest are two per case. 11/23: Sterling Heights MI. 11/30: Bumblebee back up on pre-order. 12/1: In person all five in Torrance CA. 12/11: All five in Amarillo TX (and my online order hasn't shipped yet). 12/12: Canyon TX. 12/23: Pace FL. (Also, all four Amarillo stores are now out of Bumblebees, but have plenty of the rest.)

NETFLIX KINGDOM DELUXE: Cheetor (green eyes, darker blue), Deep Cover (Siege Sideswipe in blue), Sparkless Bot (Siege Barricade in rust), Quintesson Deseeus Army Drone (Siege Ironhide in gray). Note, there is a slightly different Deep Cover available as a Generations Selects. 3/28/21: Columbus GA. 4/9: Quincy MA. 4/10: Fair Lakes VA. 4/18: Just Cheetor, Amarillo TX.

NETFLIX EARTHRISE VOYAGER: Optimus Prime (slight redeco, with yellow and clear yellow versions of Soundbarrier and Pteraxadon; the Battle Masters are renamed Shieldron and Enerax), Soundwave (significant retool to allow a proper tapedeck mode, includes Ravage and Laserbeak). 11/30/20: up for pre-order on walmart.com. 12/9: Canyon TX (Optimus only, Soundwave might never have made it to the shelf), Quincy MA (both, and someone had done a swap-Soundwaves-and-return on one of them). 12/16: Amarillo TX (Optimus only, but my online order of Soundwave arrived last week, so I'm okay). 12/23: Forgot to mention, Soundwave showed up in good numbers a few days ago in Amarillo. 1/12: Milton FL.

NETFLIX NEMESIS PRIME: This season's "big mystery box" set.

NETFLIX SIEGE: Redecos launched to promote a Netflix CG-animated Siege series. Mostly redecos with a more burn-like damage pattern instead of silver spatter. Deluxes: Chromia, Autobot Hound, Decepticon Mirage (dark gray), Scrapface (Refraktor redeco), Sideswipe. Voyagers: Decepticon Hotlink (seeker jet) with Heatstroke and Heartburn (weaponizer redecos), Decepticon Megatron with Captive Lionizer (G1 orange and gray) and Captive Pinpointer (red and black Firedrive). Voyagers have a list price of $40. Leader Ultra Magnus with Battlefield Rung. 4/22/20: all at Lagrange GA. 4/26: Hound and Sideswipe behind security glass in Torrance CA. 4/30: Ultra Magnus, Hotlink, Megatron in regular TF location in Amarillo TX. 5/5: Just the Deluxes in Pensacola FL. 5/10: Most of the Deluxes found in Amarillo TX (Scrapface must be shortpacked and someone beat me to him). 5/25: Pace FL. (I did eventually find a Scrapface.) Some stores have started getting endcap displays devoted to this, but none around me yet, nor the Pace sighting. 6/7: Sideswipe and Chromia in Quincy MA. (Oh, and some of my local stores have the endcaps now, albeit in the aisle. And at least one has clearanced Magnus to $35.)

Amazon Exclusives

   (Apologies for not keeping up to date on these, but it's still possible to pre-order all of them as of October 28, 2020.)

AUTOBOT ALLIANCE: Heavily retooled Siege Ironhide gets a new roof to make his vehicle mode look more like the cartoon version, and it becomes a shield. Prowl is a redeco of Walgreens-exclusive Bluestreak, with a lightbar instead of shoulder cannons. Still available for pre-order, delivery December 2020. 12/21/20: Out of stock.

GALACTIC ODYSSEY COLLECTION: Focusing on the planets in the upper right of the Earthrise map, various retools and redecos crank up the number of exclusives. Instead of map pieces, they have the entire map in the box lid, plus an infocard for their featured planet.

• Encounter 1: Paradron Medics - Green Arcee redeco and a Ratchet retool of the Earthrise retool of Siege Ironhide from Autobot Alliance. Still available for pre-order, December delivery. In-hand samples have started showing up.
• Encounter 2: Micron Micromasters - Battle Squad redecoed as yellow fire trucks Fireguard and Roadburner, Race Track Patrol recolored as Runner and Motorhead, Hot Rod Patrol redecoed into Windstorm and Stingracer (which claim to be inspired by MASK vehicles). Still available, release Feb 1, 2021.
• Encounter 3: Biosfera Autobot Clones - One more shot at these guys too, with slight deco tweaks. As of 10/28/20 these show as available for purchase rather than pre-order, but with delivery in late November.
• Encounter 4: Dominus Criminal Pursuit - Barricade (redeco of Prowl, with shoulder guns) and Punch/Counterpunch (lighter blue redeco of previous Amazon exclusive Punch/Counterpunch from Power of the Primes). Available for pre-order, March delivery.
• Encounter 5: Still unrevealed, presumably set on Botropolis.

Other Store Exclusives

WALGREENS BLUESTREAK: Apparently a Walgreens exclusive, at least it has been spotted at a Walgreens. 10/20/20: Mt. Zion IL. Also available on Walgreens.com, with free ship to store (or free ship to home if your order is $35 or more). Mine shipped within an hour of ordering. 11/28: Amarillo TX. 12/22: South Torrance CA.

AUTHENTICS: Replacing the repackaged Legion figures that have been perpetually available at stores like Dollar General. The "Bravo" assortment has Legends-sized figures for $5, first wave being Bumblebee, Megatron, Optimus, and Starscream. These are simplified designs in the same vein as the Cyber Battalion figures. The "Alpha" assortment adds a few joints and is closer to Battalion size, but is still very simplified, and packaged on a large blister card. 4/23/21: Bravo class Barricade at Family Dollar in Amarillo TX. Needs window paint, but otherwise decent in both modes. It even has elbows. 5/17/21: Alpha class Shockwave at Dollar General in Amarillo TX. It turns into the inevitable "spaceship," although I'm pretty sure the instructions and package photos have the spaceship mode upside down.

MPM IRONHIDE: I forget who originally had this, but now it's at Ross for $25. 11/5/20: Ross in Amarillo TX. I passed, even at $25 I'm not keen on MPMs.

    Gotta catch a mall!

SINGLE-PACK WAVE 1: A blind assortment, $3 each. 12/5/18: Walmart has these in their holiday impulse buy aisle bins. 1/10/19: Some Walmarts are getting POP displays of all 24 in a nice display box. 1/11: Target in Pensacola FL.

SINGLE-PACK WAVE 2: Green blisters instead of red, and the codes are on the top of the cardback just under the hook. #1-12 are redecos, #13-24 are new molds. Unfortunately, I missed that and ended up just getting the back half of a fresh display, which was all the redecos. 5/2/19: Walmart in Amarillo TX. 5/5: Target in Menlo Park NJ. 5/19: Target in Amarillo TX (just one on a peg, so for all I know it was a return-and-reshelf that was bought at Walmart). 8/20: Target in Ashwaubenon WI.

SINGLE-PACK WAVE 3: Orange blisters. 11/2/19: Found a lone series 3 on a peg full of series 2 at Target in Amarillo TX.

FIVE-PACKS WAVE 3: Orange blisters. 8/23/19: Target in Amarillo TX. Seems to ship with some wave 2 rather than a pure case.

EIGHT-PACKS WAVE 3: Orange blisters. 10/26/19: Target in Lubbock TX.

EIGHT-PACKS WAVE 5: Tennis-ball yellow blisters. 3/20/20: Target in Amarillo TX. Never did see series 4 on shelves.

ARCADE RENEGAGES 16-PACK: Eight fixed and visible Arcade Renegades team members, and eight blind-blister figures. Four are supposed to be Arcade Renegades as well, and the other four are "random figures from other themed teams". There's six different packs, buying on Amazon gets you a random one. So...good luck being a completist? 7/25/19: On Amazon for $30 with free shipping.

SERIES 4 CAPSULE PACKS: A claw machine and a gumball machine, each with six BotBots and four stickers in a gimmick package for $20. People tell me that Targets have 'em elsewhere, but I haven't seen them in person and no one has sent me sightings yet. Two different ones of each type, ordering online gets you a random one of the two. 3/23/20: Target in Salt Lake City UT had them, Corgis Pal from the AllSpark got my a claw machine set from there, but they were already out of gumball machines.

SERIES 5 CAPSULE PACKS: A toilet with brown capsules, and a pirate ship. No sightings yet. Probably the same price structure as Series 4.

    On a routine patrol, four 'bots in stasis...who have now set up an Academy.

REDUCED WASTE PACKAGING BASIC WAVE 1: New packaging eliminates the plastic tray, and as a result the figures stand at the bottom of the card and look smaller. This wave has reissues of cement mixer Salvage, VTOL Whirl, helicopter Blades and racecar Heat Wave, possibly others. 4/13/21: Walmart in Amarillo TX. 4/14: Spotted the Blades at a different Walmart. 4/15: Off-Road Bumblebee (green accents) is also in this wave. 5/1: Off-Road Optimus Prime (a new to me mold, uses the same transformation as Off-Road Bumblebee but puts the front end at the torso instead of the feet) spotted.

CLASSIC HEROES TEAM: Repackages of "Basic" class sports car Bumblebee, truck Optimus, and possible others. There might be more repacks under this logo, but I haven't seen any yet. 1/21/21: Target in Amarillo TX.

DELUXE NASCAR BUMBLEBEE: Running change adds in a Bumblebee that turns into a NASCAR-style racecar, with an action gimmick on robot mode that makes one of his wheels pop out on a strut as a saw. 1/28/21: Target in Amarillo TX.

FIRETRUCK HOT SHOT: The mode seen in the cartoon as his fourth pick, it's basically the Scout-sized Heat Wave mold in engineering, scaled up to "Leader" sized but feeling pretty hollow, plus a light and sound gimmick in the foam/chemical generator. Seems to be mostly a "sandbox toy" meant for hard use. $30, I left it on the shelf. 8/12/20: Walmart in Amarillo TX.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    GIANT FUNKO POP OPTIMUS PRIME: A Walmart exclusive, oversized (8-10" tall) Optimus Prime Pop. It's not quite as hideous as most Pops, but it's still a Pop. 4/14/21: Amarilllo TX.

    ZOTEKI STATUES: Somewhat stylized G1 characters on bases that can be linked into a single battle scene. May be shelved with collectibles like Pops, or with things like Roblox, rather than near regular Transformers. 1/23/21: Target in Torrance CA.

    HERSHEY'S KISSES TREASURE SURPRISE: Blindpack minifigures of Transformers and MLP along with a couple of Hershey's Kisses, appear to have TF and MLP versions separately. $2 each, might be in the toy aisle, might be in the checkouts, haven't seen them personally as of 11/13/20. 11/14: Found them in five-to-a-display trays in the checkout aisle, they don't really stand out. And it does not appear that buying a fresh display will get you all five. Dynamic poses, although Bumblebee is comically badly sculpted.     ReAction Figures: Mostly limited to specialty retailers, Target has picked up some on occasion, mostly the Dead Optimus Prime color variant. $18, which is about $13 more than I think they're worth. 10/9/20: Dead Optimus and shiny Megatron at Target in Amarillo TX, South Carson CA.

    R.E.D. WAVE 1: These are like super deluxe Actionmasters or G1 Robot Replicas, depending on when you got into the hobby. Non-transforming, with a focus on being screen-accurate. Short for Robot Enhanced Designs, think of them as another stab at the "Black Series" concept (Studio Series was the first). First wave is Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Soundwave, all G1. (Second wave has Arcee from Prime and Cheetor from Beast Wars.) According to TFWiki, these are a Walmart exclusive, although there's nothing on the packaging to indicate that. 10/2/20: Walmart in Amarillo TX. 10/27: Walmart in Mt. Zion IL. 10/31: Walmart in Pace FL.

R.E.D. WAVE 2: Arcee (TF Prime) and Cheetor (Beast Wars), plus some reships. Easy enough to spot, since the subline logos are on the tops of the boxes. 3/26/21: Walmart in Amarillo TX. 3/28: Walmart in Columbus GA. 4/4: Walmart in Pensacola FL.

    DOLLAR TREE STICKERS: A small booklet with four sheets of stickers using the "Evergreen" (mostly early Cyberverse) designs. One sheet of puffy, one glitter, one foil, and one regular. 9/2/20: In with the trading cards at the Dollar Tree I checked.

    NANO RIDES: Jada Toys has another wave of Nano Hollywood Rides three-packs, which includes TF G1 (Optimus Prime cab, VW Bumblebee, jet Starscream) and GIJoe (HISS Tank, Snow Cat, VAMP Mk-II jeep), none of which are remotely to the same scale. $6 per three-pack. 8/22/20: Target in Amarillo TX (and other various Targets mentioned online...Walmart carries the line, but is slow to get the new assortment). 9/4: G1 TF and GIJoe at Walmart in Amarillo TX. 9/28: Target in Redondo Beach CA.

    WORLD'S SMALLEST: Non-transforming little figures about 3cm tall, on tiny blister cards inside of larger clamshell (aka "need shears to open") packaging. Case assortments appear to include GIJoe characters as well. These are not the ones that were available at Dollar Tree, they're significantly smaller. 8/2/20: Target in Amarillo TX, in the collectibles section by the registers. No pricetag on the pegs, and they didn't seem to be in the system yet. (Update: $6 each. There's also Masters of the Universe in the assortment.)

    G1 KEYCHAINS: 3" tall "bag clips" of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Soundwave. They seem to be exclusive to Dollar Tree, as they're distributed by Greenbrier (a known DT/Family Dollar distributor). Non-blind carded figures. 11/2/19: Dollar Tree in Amarillo TX. Paint apps are kinda sloppy, but the actual molds are good.

    PREXIO MINIFIGURES: Non-blind bagged G1 characters mostly cast in silvery gray plastic with decent paint apps. Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Grimlock, Megatron, Soundwave, and Starscream. 12/27/19: At most Dollar Trees. (Forgot to put these up last week when I found them.)

    TF vs. GI JOE BLINDBOX: Dollar Tree got in a bunch of Kid Robot keychains based on the Scioli comic earlier in 2019, and just in time for Christmas got slightly larger non-keychain figures. 12/27/19: Amarillo TX.

   I've stopped tracking most of the "artifacts" stuff, since Transformers has reached the cultural saturation point where you can be pretty sure there'll be party supplies, water bottles, t-shirts, and so forth readily available.

NON-TF STUFF
(Things a TF fan might be interested in.)

    LETRABOTS: These are transforming letters, sold blind-packed in the trading cards and collectible stuff aisle next to checkout at Targets. Nine letters in the first assortment, they turn into stumpy little bots. If you can find all nine, they combine into a larger stumpy bot. $4 each, but higher quality plastic than the usual letter-bots you find on places like Wish. 3/5/20: Target in Amarillo TX.

    DOLLAR TREE KNOCKOFFS: Sold as Robot Transforing Vehicle, these are Legion sized, and $1 each...you get what you pay for. There's a jet (with elements of Thunderwing from the Classics Clear Skies Team of Mini-Cons), a tank (clearly based on the G1 Micromaster Sidetrack), a missile truck (which sucks), and a military ship. They're molded in two colors each, and color-flip version are also available (so a green tank with gray guns, or a gray tank with green guns). 3/23/18: Amarillo TX. (Later notes: the jet IS Thunderwing, just misassembled. The missile truck is Red Hot with some tweaks. Best guess on the boat is that it's a bullet train turned upside down and with boat details added.) 3/16/19: Legends-size simplified Windcharger, upscaled Legion movie Brawl, Legends-size jet of unknown origin. Dollar Tree in Amarillo TX. Windcharger and the jet come in two varieties, swapping colors as with the previous Robots (Windcharger is red and gray, the jet is yellow and purple). Brawl comes in three schemes: blue/white, white/blue, and green/gray. (If there's a gray/green, it wasn't on the pegs where I found these.) 12/27/19: Fresh allotments of all of these went out for the 2019 holiday season. 8/23/20: A new wave of the upscaled Micromasters is out. Three are slight retools of wave one (a blue missile truck with different shaped missiles, still based on Red Hot), the unidentified-source boat with a new top deck, and the tank redone with new weapons in tan and brown. An entirely new mold is a weird jet (no real equivalent) with a generic Micromaster-style transformation.

    MARS Converters: $10 large toys, generally found at Walmart and various discount stores (TJMaxx, Family Dollar, etc). Current wave is dinos and dragons, with a red T.rex, a blue sorta-stegosaur, and a yellow dragon. 9/30/16: Family Dollar carrying these as part of their holiday toy expansion. 4/20/17: The vehicle waves are starting to show up again at Walmart in new packaging, with a "Cybotronix" line name in addition to MARS Converters. Spotted the blue sportscar and the gray sportscar in the new packaging today. 10/13: Tank and fighter jet join the assortment, found at Family Dollar. 11/4/18: A two-pack of the red and blue dinosaurs has shown up at Ross, $18. 11/9: There's also two-packs of the tank and jet, plus the blue and silver sports cars, part of their holiday displays at Ross. 10/26/19: New sci-fi sports cars with slide-out wrist wrapons, Solar Spark and, um...Bustrunner. Ookay. Spotted at Ross in Lubbock TX. 10/27: Part of the Walgreens holiday toy aisle.

    SUPER WINGS: This is a show for very little kids, like "too young for Rescue Bots" level, from what I've heard. At the $10 level there's Rescue-Bots-level aircraft that turn into cockpit-torso'ed robots: Jett (cargo jet), Donnie (cargo heavy lift prop plane), Jerome (fighter jet), and Dizzy (pink female helicopter). 3/31/17: These are finding their way back into non-TRU stores after months of absence or "stick it in a corner somewhere" stocking, and the larger sized Paul is now in the assortment. Cosells indicate Grand Albert, Bello (safari striped bush pilot plane) and Mira will also be available at this size soon, if not already. 5/22: Grand Albert and Bello Deluxes at Target in Green Bay WI. Decided to not try to fit them in my luggage, though. 8/13: New rescue vehicle sets have hit TRU as part of the Fall reset. The main four characters each get $15 sets that use a "Legion" sized figure as the driver, and a vehicle that turns into a mech suit for which the little figure forms a head. Transtectors, basically. Dizzy's Rescue Tow, Jett's Robo Rig (fire truck), Donnie's Dozer (more of an all-purpose construction vehicle), and Paul's Cruiser (Paul displaces Jerome in the main four, apparently). There's also a super-sized $40 Jett's Robo Rig that uses a $10-size "Deluxe" Jett as the pilot and head. They all have functionally the same transformation. 1/21/18: Finally found Deluxe Mira at TRU in Amarillo TX. 2/8: New Legion-type set found at Walmart in Amarillo TX for $9.80. Astra (space shuttle), Flip (cargo plane), Todd (drill plane o_O) and Agent Chace (sic, jet). 3/29: Found Deluxe size versions of Astra and Todd (Chace and Flip are cosells, but didn't see any on the shelf). 10/22/19: A clear pink plastic Dizzy ($3) and the moon rover Legion-scale set ($5, two minifigures and a moon rover vehicle with some action features) showed up at my local Ross.

    OTHER KNOCKOFFS: 11/5/20: Ross has a walking RC dinosaur that breathes steam vapor breath, and is basically AoE Grimlock's beast mode.