From the "WTF?" department: New Spychangers out... well, actually not really THAT new. Anyway, Scaleface of Seibertron.com reported having found "new" Spychangers at a Family Dollar store and provided photos of the toys in their packaging.

Now, a long explanation is necessary in order to understand what exactly happened here. Take a deep breath first.

KB exclusive wave 1: Back in August 2002, clear recolors of the original six RiD Spychangers (Hot Shot, W.A.R.S., Ironhide, R.E.V., Crosswise and Mirage) were exclusively available from KB Toys stores. The exact same toys in those exact same colors and on those exact same cards were later also available from Target stores in March 2003. Those six Spychangers matter the least to us right now.

KB exclusive wave 2: In June 2003, KB released ANOTHER exclusive wave of clear Spychangers - again the same toys (Hot Shot, W.A.R.S., Ironhide, R.E.V., Crosswise and Mirage), but now in different colors. These ones will become important for our news right here.

KB exclusive wave 3: In January 2004, KB released a third wave of exclusive Spychangers! This time, Hasbro gave them the new molds - the four previously unused G2 Go-Bots molds which had later been released as part of Hasbro's RiD line, as well as two of the newly designed RiD Spychangers. All six of them were repainted and turned into homages to G1 characters: RiD Spychanger Side Burn became "Autobot Jazz", RiD Side Swipe became "Silverstreak", RiD Daytonus became "Wheeljack", RiD Prowl 2 became "Prowl", RiD X-Brawn became "Hoist", and RiD Spychanger Scourge became "Optimus Prime". No longer part of the RiD line, all six Spychangers were available in generic "Transformers" packaging without a sub-line title.

Dollar Stores wave 1: In February 2005, the KB wave 3 "G1" Spychangers (Optimus Prime, Autobot Jazz, Prowl, Hoist, Wheeljack and Silverstreak) suddenly popped up at Dollar General stores. Those were not mere liquidations of old KB Toys overstock - they were available in entirely new "Universe" packaging with bios and bizarrely random character artwork. The same toys were later also available from Family Dollar stores. Which brings us to..

Dollar Stores wave 2! These are the new ones which Scaleface found. So what are they? Three carry-overs from the first wave (Optimus Prime, Autobot Jazz and Prowl), but with new card backs in order to accommodate the addition of the three "new" toys. But what are these NEW toys? They're actually re-releases of three of the KB exclusive wave 2 clear Spychangers - Mirage, Ironhide (now called "Hoist", oddly enough) and W.A.R.S. (now called "Autobot Camshaft"). As with the first Dollar Stores exclusive wave, they're also available on new "Universe" cards - again with (this time newly drawn?) character artwork.

And as if that wasn't enough yet to drive variant collectors insane, there's also a second wave of Dollar Stores exclusive Energon Basic re-releases on new "Universe" cards coming up in the near future...