Artifact of the Week: Transformers: Kre-O Family Mart Exclusives

These “Kre-O” Family Mart exclusive were released in Taiwan in 2012. While based on the Kreon design, they are not compatible with Kre-O building sets. The blind buy figures are about 3 inches tall and the Optimus Prime USB Hub is 8 inches tall. The blind buys were not all the same kinds of figures. Bumblebee, Megatron, and Sideswipe have an LED in their chest that can be turned on by a switch. Optimus and Starscream’s heads come off revealing a stylus pen you can use on your smart phone or tablet. I’ve been looking for a set of these for a long time, and finally found one at a reasonable price.

The Optimus Prime and Starscream are functional items you can use. These lights really aren’t powerful enough to do anything. Just seems like they all would have been more useful as stylus pens, though I’m not sure every phone had a flashlight app in 2012, so I guess that could be the reason. In any case, they all look really cool.

The USB Hub Optimus Prime looks great, though he would have looked better if the USB ports were in his feet, leaving his chest to be properly painted. It would have made more sense functionally, as I can imaging the cords pulling him forward.

As always, you can find over 15,000 Transformers artifacts from every Transformers series and generation at TFMuseum.com.

Thanks for reading!