Geekee1 wrote:Mkall wrote:Dr. Heavy B wrote:WHY CAN'T HASBRO DO THIS. there combiners are five guys, made from three molds, and they don't even have elbows
It's not really fair to compare something like this to something Hasbro made almost 5 years ago with a much more limited budget than they do now.
I think if Hasbro were to get back in on the proper gestalt train, we'd all be impressed.
I really can't give Hasbro a pass on this anymore. I have a hard time believing that they have a more limited budget than these guys, it just doesn't make sense. I remember sitting at Botcon 2007 when they told us that the gestalts were just too complicated for their designers to do in their time frame. I'm gonna have to call bull on them. The transformations for Hercules are not all that complicated, but they are very effective. So Hasbro is telling me that they're paid designers can't do what a couple of guys in China who are basically doing what amounts to guerilla warfare with toys are doing.
Time to step it up boys.
I can't agree with that for several reasons:
1) Figure Size - Energon had scout-sized limbs and a deluxe core. These guys are making a combiner out of deluxe (in the case of Maketoys) and pseudo-voyager (in the case of TFC) figures. That's a lot of extra mass to play with
2) Workload and Deadlines - The wonderful thing about 3rd party figs is that we don't hold them to much of a release schedule, and for the most part they do a project at a time. I can't say for certain how it's done at Hasbro, but I suspect there's multiple projects going on at once with some fairly concrete deadlines that must be met. They are, afterall a business.
3) Budget - I have no concrete figures to back me up, but Hasbro said back at '07 that they could either make 2 combiners with 10 molds, or 3 combiners out of 9 molds. With all the revenue pouring in from the movies, I can only suspect and theorize that if the same concept were presented today, there'd be more money to throw at things like combiners.
4) Kibble (not the member) - I can understand why Hasbro wanted to keep accessories to a minimum, and make them large. For one, it fit the theme of Energon to have large colourful weapons. The other reason is that it would be less easy for kids to lose them. TFC's Herc seems to be doing a good job in this department, but FansProject is not, and only time will tell on Maketoys. I remember losing a fist and a footplate from my G2 bruticus when I was younger; it made me not want to use the combiner mode anymore.
5) Cost to purchase - Parents are far more likely to get one big toy and 4 smaller toys than 5 big toys. Hasbro is smart enough to realise this.
Hasbtro has come up with some pretty good combiners in the past. Look even further past Energon and you'll get the RiD series with two of the best combiners ever released: Landfill and Rail Racer. They still stand on my shelf today. I'm sure Hasbro can come up with some wonderful combiner ideas and designs. I'm sure that if they were not concerned with production costs, delivery dates, manpower and profit, we would see something on the scale of Hercules, maybe even better. But because Hasbro is a company and not a group of guys doing this because they want to, we are stuck with what we get.
