Wolfman Jake wrote:Zobovor, you seemed to clip out certain bullet points from my post while neglecting the others that I believe would have answered your questions before you asked them.
For the sake of brevity, I only quoted the parts of your post that I wanted to address directly. I apologize if I seemed needlessly selective.
It's a non-issue not because it doesn't exist, but because it doesn't affect the manufacture of toys in the catastrophic way many fans believe it does.
I'm going to conditionally agree with that. I think it's also possible that, with the advent of innovations like gated molds, pre-planned alternate heads, etc. it's quite possible that Hasbro is now creating multiple molds deliberately for toys they know will enjoy multiple production runs. You just know that when they created Classics Starscream in 2006, they knew they would eventually turn him into Skywarp and Thundercracker, and perhaps Ramjet, Thrust, and Dirge as well. We got "regular" Decepticon jets after we got our first "conehead" jet, and there's no evidence that they were just retooling the mold every single time (like they did when they turned Cliffjumper into Hubcap and then back to Cliffjumper, or when they turned Hot Rod into a Targetmaster and then back again). There had to have been multiple molds from the onset.
For instance, Sunstreaker was never remolded or redecoed at all, so maybe the original molds are so scare, they've been misplaced over time. On the other hand, you have molds that never say die, like G1 Optimus and Soundwave, which have each gone through several revisions, but nonetheless, endure.
Sunstreaker existed in both a red Diaclone color scheme as well as a Prowl-like police car deco, so by the time we got him for G1 it was actually the third use of the mold. (He got at least one more production run after that as part of the Classics assortment for the European market.) Takara has specifically identified Sunstreaker's mold as one that was either lost, or too damaged to repair, which is why he's never gotten an official G1 reissue. It's obviously possible to reverse-engineer an old Sunstreaker toy to create new molds (that's how Zhong Jin produced their unofficial Chinese knockoff), but for whatever reason, Takara's not willing to do it. Maybe because he's not iconic or doesn't have enough redeco potential.
Incidentally, Takara did have to recreate the molds for all of Optimus Prime's die-cast parts before they came up with the first G1 reissue. It follows logically that if they can do this for a toy's feet and chest, they can do it for the entire toy. It frustrates me that the G1 reissues seem to be dead in the water.
Even if reverse engineering a mold takes money, it must still not be that prohibitive of a cost that knock-off/bootlegs can't turn a tidy profit. If it didn't, no one would bother.
They probably figure that after the initial tooling costs, they have to sell x amount of units to break even. It's got to be really difficult to determine what the demand will be for a specific toy, though. (I'm really surprised they've ventured into fringe toys like Grand Slam and Raindance. I wouldn't have thought there would be a market for them at all.)
So, you can see how eyes can roll when another retool or repaint of a popular mold comes along and people panic that it will flop around like a rag doll and fit together like a Sweedish CD rack, just because they've seen that mold before.
I totally agree that revisiting an old mold does not automatically equal a floppy toy. What I was mainly addressing, honestly, was what you and others seemed to be saying, which I essentially took as, "There's no such thing as mold fatigue! Can't we put that rumor to rest?"
Thanks for the interesting discussion. In practice, tend to stay away from the numerous message boards because my past experience has been that they seem predominantly inhabited by children. No offense meant towards anyone; that's just been my impression. It's nice to know there are folks here who can carry on a stimulating conversation!
Zob
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