the Windcharger thread....

[Dominic]

Remember when "Generations" Thundercracker was announced, and the unspoken question of what I would complain about came up? (Well, it was an issue for me at least.)

Well, here we go.

Windcharger. Owing to Hasbro's bungling of case-assortments and retailers' inability to read demand, it looks like this figure is going to be absurdly rare and difficult to find. Windcharger is packed 2 to a case, with the rest of the case being recolours if not straight re-packs of figures. As of this writing, there does not seem to be any good way to get a Windcharger figure.

Now, I am not knocking the people who are willing to pay obscene amounts of money for Windcharger. (Remember, I am one of the sorry-ass fools who went out and bought Henkei Thundercracker a few years ago.) But, all things considered, I have to sit this one out. Part of it is price. Part of the problem is that paying more that BotCon prices for a figure that should have been general release bugs me. There is also the fact that Hasbro's quality-control has slipped so much in the last few years that I am afraid to buy anything blind. (Yes, I bought the last two waves of "Generations" blind. But, Windcharger alone costs nearly as much as a wave of toys.)

Thoughts?


Dom
-still gets annoyed with the quality control on Henkei Thundercracker.

[Shockwave]

It figures that Hasbro would pull something like this. I think they're intent was to have Windcharger boost sales of the other figures, but I can't help thinking a better strategy would have been to just make him deluxe and throw him in with the Warpath case.

[138 Scourge]

Or maybe just have less repaints in that first few waves. Yes, I know it's how they recoup their mold costs, but dang. I don't think anyone wants that "Backfire" mold by now. Or the crappy "Crankstart" thing. In both cases it's "molds look dumb" and "been out twice before already anyhow so whatevs". Of course, Hubcap and Brimstone seem to be shelfwarming something fierce around here, so it's entirely possible I dunno what I'm talking about.

[Dominic]

They also could have put more Windchargers in a case, making it more economical for both stores and collectors to buy cases.

Dom

[Shockwave]

And they could have released Rumble and Frenzy in the same wave, each at the scout price point, essentially filling out the wave a bit, but they didn't even do that. They really should have released these with the other toys in the case to begin with or just waited until the next go round but this half assed thing just feels... half assed.

Shockwave
-Tuchus.

[Mirage]

I hate to categorically label anything as a failure, because that seems to be a pretty fanboy thing to do. That said, I have no choice but to do so for the Scout-class Hunt for the Decepticons line. The rest of the line was fairly balanced, but the scout size simply had too many repaints from the get-go, and repaints of figures that weren't that popular to begin with. Hell, Backfire is the third run on that mold in less than 2 years, and it's a pretty iffy mold to begin with. So having to lump the Reveal the Shield scouts in with the HTFD ones was a move that was pretty much doomed to fail. The rest of the size assortments managed NOT to do this, so... yeah. Mismanagement, and I'm sure someone at Hasbro's kicking themselves over this, but it's a done deal at this point.