FuRyu Announces Transformers: Age of Extinction "Real Figures" Optimus Prime and Bumblebee

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. Suffice it to say, yes there is a long history of blaming mold degradation or "fatigue" for QC issues, especially if a certain mold has been released more than once. But, my point is not that molds don't wear out and become unusable, it's that they don't wear out and become irreplaceable. More molds can be made when the older ones wear out, and maintaining fidelity with the original product is easier than ever. 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. This is especially true of anything made in the last decade or so.

As for the original G1 toys, again, I suspect that it's a lot harder to reverse engineer them for some reason or another, maybe because the original molds are quite scare, so finding good "source material" to manufacture new molds may take a lot of resources. 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.

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. It's not just that a hole in the market is there to fill, it's that it's easy to fill, that makes it a worthwhile venture for knock-off manufacturers. However, I think you bring up an excellent point about the licensing, safety testing, and whatnot, that can increase costs on the R&D end of things. While reverse engineering a mold may not cost THAT much objectively, it may not turn enough of a profit for Takara/Hasbros bottom line (such things tend to upset the board of investors). Think of how many reissue G1 Sunstreakers would have to be sold to equal the profits from just "High Octane Bumblebee" from the Generations Age of Extinction line. That said, the modern molds that are getting a lot of use, Classics Optimus Prime, Classics Starscream (et al. Seekers), and even Bumblebee are cash cows for Hasbro, so yeah, it's worth it to keep replacing those molds to produce more product. Kids (and collectors) can't get enough of the big characters. 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.

ok that prime looks just like a gundam, swap out the head and its a dead ringer.

Megatron Wolf wrote:ok that prime looks just like a gundam, swap out the head and its a dead ringer.

...is this really the sorry state of Gundam designs these days?

Delta Magnus wrote:

Shadowstream wrote:

Megatron Wolf wrote:ok that prime looks just like a gundam, swap out the head and its a dead ringer.

...is this really the sorry state of Gundam designs these days?

Looks nothing like a Gundam. Looks pretty good to me- I just hope we get a better transforming version of this OP later down the line. I mean, chrome is all well and good, but dat backpack!

If it's the same one pre-orders are already sold out at BBTS

Just found this on Infinite Earth's Twitter. Looks awesome!

https://twitter.com/InfinteEarths/status/472149483434676224/photo/1

Nice! About time we got an actual, existing Dinobot Kreon.
Supposedly it's $25, which isn't too bad. But no alternate mode build?

EDIT:

it's not like they're going out of their way to make kibble, drift falls within acceptable kibble parameters. I really can't see what else they could have done without reengineering the movie version around the figure version. And it's not like Voyager Ironhide where he has most of his cab sides folded up on his forearms. This is pretty efficient kibbleing

william-james88 wrote:

durroth wrote:it's not like they're going out of their way to make kibble, drift falls within acceptable kibble parameters. I really can't see what else they could have done without reengineering the movie version around the figure version. And it's not like Voyager Ironhide where he has most of his cab sides folded up on his forearms. This is pretty efficient kibbleing

Now that I have witnessed RID Prime Vehicon, I dont find much of any kibbleing as efficient as I used to

That's a toy that as the years go by will be seen as a glorious exception and not a rule

durroth wrote:it's not like they're going out of their way to make kibble, drift falls within acceptable kibble parameters. I really can't see what else they could have done without reengineering the movie version around the figure version. And it's not like Voyager Ironhide where he has most of his cab sides folded up on his forearms. This is pretty efficient kibbleing

Plus, some of the kibble is actually movie accurate.

Seibertron wrote:Hasbro's packaging department seems to be confused about who AOE Strafe is supposed to "homage". Oops!

Indeed.

What most likely happened was that they looked in the archives for a piece of vintage "Strafe" artwork to represent the "classic figure" on the box, and came up with G1 Strafe's box art, not knowing that they should have been looking for "Swoop" instead.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case of weirdness from the new design team.