donnie_707 wrote:how exactly is hercules a rip off? he stands 12.5 inches. looks bad a$$. each robot is a triple changer that is fully poseable. just because some companies choose to jack the price up(no names here but you know who you are) doesnt discredit TFC for making THE baddest combiner to date
So turning into a robot, a dump truck, and a crotch is triplechanging now? Okay let's break down Hercules (no horrible QC/they already are broken pun intended) and compare it to Classics Devastator. Yes, the one that was from Walmart. First, fists. Everyone went gaga over the Herc fists filling the massive hole in the back of the vehicle mode (edit: after rereading this before I posted, I can thing of no better metaphor for Herc!
) but in robot mode you have to options: either they have fists nearly as large as their torso having off their backs giving everyone the finger or they still have the "fist from nowhere" problem. If they were going for the AHM forearm look they could have made the fists do a split and fold like WFC Megatron's hands did. Now, the Classics one didn't have hands per say, more of claws. They attach to the vehicle mode, were used as weapons in robot mode and could grab things as hands.
Number of robots: Herc- 6; Walmart- 5.
Toon accuracy: Herc- right vehicles, didn't even f***ing
try on the botmodes; Walmart- Energon was a toon, right? Doesn't count? Damn.
Quality control: Herc-
. Walmart- for all the gripping that has been done about this mold, I have never
EVER heard any complaints about it being broken or of a single bad paint app. I personally had the thing drop 6 feet off the top of my shelf and didn't even come apart.
The wait: Herc- nearly a year with no assurances in the beginning that they were ever going to finish it. They did. What big boys. Walmart- All in one box. If you saw it and had some money on you, it was yours!
Height: Herc- 12.5 inches (less than half an inch taller than MP-01 Optimus); Walmart 10". So Herc has the height advantage by literally [_____________________] <- that much on my monitor. Is that enough to justify...
the Price: Herc- average $600+ and that's without shipping it. Walmart- $30 and whatever sales tax was applicable where you were. Bonus points for buying it from Delaware.
So for the original cost of Herc and the original cost at Walmart, you could have bought
20 Devastators per Hercules. Or paid your mortgage, rent, car payment, Botcon trip, what have you. "But Zod, Walmart's not GeeWun enough!" Encore Devastator is $125 at BBTS so you can get nearly
five of them to full your G1 craving. Hell, as much of a rip off as everyone agrees CrazyDevy is, you could get the Encore and every single CD upgrade for it for $360 (prices taken from BBTS, includes the out of stock CDMW-09) and still have enough left over for
eight Walmarts at original price. So in the end is Hercules > G1 + CrazyDevy + 8 Classics Devastators?
It's easy to look at something and say "I'd pay six hundred dollars for that!" It's quite another thing to have to look at everything else you can get for that and still say it's worth it.
And notice how I never even once had to compare it to Maketoys Giant.