It was a pretty busy weekend for me, and the primary reason for that was that I spent four hours driving around to 11 different Walgreens stores in my area. My disdain for toy shopping at Walgreens is well-known, and there’s only one thing that would send me to a double-digits number of Walgreens stores in a single day, and that was that I saw that the Walgreens exclusive Halo 4 Series 2 Spartan CIO (Steel/Green) figure had turned up on ebay. That’s right–the McFarlane Toys Halo 4 Series 2 figures have now been released, and have been found at retail at Walgreens stores!

Driving around the greater Boston, Massachusetts area yesterday, I hit a grand total of eleven different Walgreens stores. The first store that I visited had only a Halo Reach Series 6 Unhelmeted Jun figure, and I probably would have given up immediately if the second Walgreens I visited hadn’t had two case-fresh Halo 4 Series 2 Master Chief & Micro Ops Cortana figures on the shelf!

And thus, I ended up hitting an additional nine Walgreens stores before calling it a day after turning up no more Halo 4 Series 2 McFarlane Toys action figures. I found a good number of Halo 4 Series 1 Elite Zealot figures, Grunt Ultra figures, and even a couple red Spartan Warrior figures, but not a single other Halo 4 Wave 2 action figure.

It’s unfortunate that the first and only new figures I found during my hours-long odyssey yesterday were both the absolute only figure I had no intention of purchasing. Marked at $13.99 plus tax ($15+ after tax), I decided to pass on the Master Chief and Cortana Halo 4 Series 2 figures for now. Don’t worry, I’ll do a full review and photo gallery of the Halo 4 Master Chief when I find the whole set, but I wasn’t willing to take out my credit card just to pay for a figure I don’t care about.

I did stop to take some close-up photos of the Master Chief Series 2 Halo 4 figure in the package, though. If there’s any difference between the Series 1 and Series 2 Master Chief figures (besides the Railgun and Cortana accessories), I sure couldn’t see them.

As of now, only three figures appear to be shipping to Walgreens from Halo 4 Series 2: the exclusive Green/Steel Spartan C.I.O., the Rust Orange Spartan Scout and the Master Chief with Cortana. Stores are only receiving two figures at a time, made up of any combination of these three Spartan characters. It appears we’re going to have to wait a little bit longer for our long-awaited Jackal Storm, Elite Ranger and Violet Spartan CIO figures.

The hunt is on, Halo collectors! If you’ve found Halo 4 Series 2 action figures at your local Walgreens (or any other store, for that matter) leave a reply and let us know what you’ve turned up so far!