Review – Transformers Dog Tags

Enter Play (website) offers a variety of different collectibles — see their product selection — but these Transformers Dog Tags are my very first purchase from the company. Priced at $4/each, I grabbed two packs because seeing these in the store repeatedly eventually wore me down and allowed my curiosity to take over. It’s a cool basic idea, but I need just a little more to make me get excited enough to buy another pack of collectible dog tags. I’ve now seen this type of product.

Dog Tag, Tattoo, and Decal

Enter Play offers a complete gallery of all of the tags on their website (gallery here) so jump over there to see the 24 different designs. These are plastic tags, but they’re pretty durable and nicely produced.

And in addition to a single tag each pack also includes one temporary tattoo and one decal/sticker; there are 12 different tattoos and 12 different stickers in the set so someone trying to collect the entire set doesn’t have too many pieces to track down. Well, except . . .

Gold Tags!

Listed as one per 10 packs, four of the dog tags in the set are rare, gold tags. I only bought two packs and didn’t get a gold tag but the internet can sometimes be your friend: see Non-Sport Update for what appears to be a photo of gold tags. I find it a little annoying that the gold tags aren’t something as simple as the silencer — that rubber ring around the tag — in gold because what they’ve done is made it very tough for anyone to collect all 24 tags.

Are These Worth Buying?

Since these Transformers Dog Tags are completely disposable trinkets/collectibles their value is totally something every single Transformers fan out there will have to answer for themselves. I managed to get two relatively inoffensive tags — these are movie-based character designs, after all — but other than maybe hanging these from something random (it’s nice that these tags include chains) I won’t do anything more than I’ve already done with them. And the stickers and tattoos will get shoved in a drawer; at best I’ll apply that Decepticon logo sticker to my netbook.

I’m gonna say that these are a pass unless you’re buying them as stocking stuffers for a kid for Christmas — in which case one or two packs are plenty — or you happen to be a dedicated Transformers movie collector. A well-produced product that just doesn’t have any appeal for me now that I’ve satisfied my curiosity.

Philip Reed is now starting to think about what it would take for him to grab another series of collectible dog tags. It would have to be more than just images on plastic dog tags, but so far he hasn’t figured out what that “more” would have to be.