Awesome.
it's totally not me coming out of nowhere to post something! Hi, guys. How've you been?
And, you are totally bringing sexy back like it never left!
Clearly I've been away too long! As you rightly note, this set of five figures represents a large chunk of the TF product for the best part of a year, with the Wreckers to come, and probably additional releases after that (Will be keeping a close eye out for Takara's take).
This could blow up in Hasbro's face. Swindle and/or Onslaught could easily outsell the others, meaning that retailers could have 3 or 4 pieces from a five piece case sitting on shelves. This would be bad enough in and of itself. But, when those pieces are made even less appealling by the fact that they are complimented by the missing piece(s), it could lead to the kind of back-log caused by poor sales of wave 1 PCC figures. (And, the problem is even more easily predictable and avoidable.)
As a result, the Wreckers set could be delayed, only released in limited numbers, or possibly even cancelled. (We know that Hasbro is not above cancelling waves of toys after the debacle of 2010.)
but I could not justify the $300+ NZD that it would come out to on the secondary market
Yeah. For that kind of money, the toy needs to have fewer obvious flaws. It needs to be closer to the game's colours. It would be nice if the game's colours were better in and of themselves. And, the joint issues that JT mentions need to be less pronounced.
It still seems bizarre to me that Hasbro's clearly talented team can stand to see their work so unnecessarily butchered, be it in default configurations or shoddy, incomplete instructions.
Poor execution of the designs has been an issue for about 2 years now. In some cases, the designs themselves have been seriously flawed to begin with.
As you say, this set does not represent the monumental leap forward that the years of engineering experience between this product and the last proper combiners would lead one to conclude it should.
C'mon and say it.
It has been over 10 years ("10 years!") since Hasbro has released something resembling a competent merge-team. And, the RiD Trainbots were not only "old" moulding at the time, the initial research and design work was not even done by Hasbro.
That was followed by the back-wards stumble of the "Energon" teams, which were recoloured far more than they should have been. Hasbro was unjustifiably proud of toys that were carrying some of the worst elements from 2 decades before....nearly 10 years ago.
I managed to forgive them for PCC because the toys had high fiddle value and I was expecting better things to come.
Perhaps it will be interesting to see if the third party manufacturers will produce anything to help extract the full potential from this set.
That is likely. From what I have heard, the big thing now is third party Stunticons. Hasbro has been stomping that fire pretty hard of late. But, they have not figured out that the best way to deal with the third party companies is to actually meet the demand they are....and do a better job of it.
The half-assery of SDCC Bruticus (and the mould-related toys) is just going to leave third party companies with the same opportunities that they have been exploiting for years.
There's really no ideal solution to the problem. Collectors would surely eat up a properly premium giftset, yet economies of scale mean exclusives cannot have any additional tooling.
You have been out for a while.
Hasbro is half-assing stuff that they used to get right. Look at the FoC toys. They do not seem bad, until you realize that they are billed as Deluxes, which is supposed to be the most solid and reliable price-point in the line. I *almost* want that Prime. But, I cannot bring myself to reward bad behavior from Hasbro. Jazz is mal-porportioned enough to discourage me from buying my favourite character. Shockwave has obvious screws and rivets on the front of the damned toy. They would be passable Scouts, but are no acceptable as Deluxes.
Economics plays a role. But, Hasbro is also getting lazy because they are assuming that they can. (In the long-term, this will backfire on them. But, that is at least another year or two off.)
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, here - It's frustrating to be a fan of the property and see so many figures come so close, and fall crucially short
Yeah. But, I wanted to cut back on toys anyway this year. So, Hasbro is helping me with that.
There are a few things that appeal. But, even so, much of that is custom fodder.
Dom
-kind of misses KO Toys.
