eBay

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Ebay is a website where you can buy and sell items. The company's provided services are enjoyed by both humans and evil alien robots alike!

Fiction

Transformers film

Sam Witwicky, hoping to get money to buy a new car, put his great-great-grandfather's belongings, including some glasses, on eBay. Unfortunately for Sam, Frenzy and Barricade saw the listing and attempted to kill him and retrieve the glasses, which had the location of the AllSpark encoded on them. Transformers

Notes

• In the real world, eBay is an online market for buying both new and used Transformers toys, whether in full or for parts (we're told other stuff gets sold there as well.) Its sheer size and market share mean that the selection and variety of toys is enormous; however, it has also given rise to scalpers. In addition, stolen leaked prototypes "acquired through unauthorized means" also often end up being offered on eBay, often going for even higher prices than toys sold by scalpers.
• In the movie, Barricade states the eBay item number for Ladiesman217's glasses as "21153", a five digit number. In the real world, eBay item numbers had already reached the eight digit region by 1998; and in 2007, when the movie came out, they were already in the twelve digit region. This could be explained as Barricade impatiently cutting himself off after the first five digits upon realizing the human would more likely understand simply "the glasses".
• In issue 1 of the movie's comic book adaptation, the eBay logo on Sam's computer has been changed into "ePay", possibly to avoid accusations of product placement.
• According to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, eBay was not written into the movie as part of a sponsoring deal (although eBay was a partner for the production), but had already been explicitly referred to by name in the script even before the deal between eBay and Paramount was reached.^[1]
• Starscream can't use eBay, as he can't get a credit card without a date of birth. Transformers Comic issue 10
• eBay ran a video competition titled "Transform Your World" during the run-up to the first movie.

References

External links

• eBay on Wikipedia
• eBay section of Transformers merchandise