The Energon Pub

I'm a bit saddened by this news. I've used twistys in several kitbash projects as well as cable ties. They come in useful for various things around the home so I'll be disappointed to see the back of them.

Finally, no more plastic/metal twist ties!

Would have been nice if Hasbro did this before they yanked up the prices.

I want to hear about how removing them is. I've been able to untwist most of the wires in the past without cutting them, are these easy to un-knot? I do not like bringing sharp things near my toys.

Wow. I'm surprised you guys aren't using wire-cutters. I've been using them for a few years now. Makes opening a Transformer a piece of cake. I use a pair with a thinner head than what's pictured below, but you'll get the drift. Should be available for a few dollars in the hardware area of your local big box store.



For those of you looking for clam-shells in the US at some point, you won't see it here in the US. While Hasbro doesn't publicly mention it, I'm pretty sure the twist ties are a form of theft-deterrent to help retailers keep their stock from being stolen. Notice I said "deterrent" ... this doesn't meant that it always works but it certainly makes it more difficult for someone to steal a figure than it would be to pop open a clamshell. Japanese toy stores are different than American toy stores so they cater more to a collector's market.

I noticed this to it made it much eaiser to cut the twine then pull out the figure , insead of removin the plastic from the cordboard back ground thanx hasbro

How about NO twist ties?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! No more twist ties? Are you kidding me? Those things are so damn useful around the house. Transformers were my #1 supply of them. All you had to do was cut down on them hasbro not get rid of them. Now that i think of it those of us who keep figures in the box are screwed, rope deteriorates so after so many years the figures are going to be bouncing around in the box. This is not the way to go hasbro, what you should do is keep twist ties but replace the plastic with paper or something. Paper is biodegradable and metal will rust away to nothing. Id also like to add the twine looks like crap.

Megatron Wolf wrote:Paper is biodegradable and metal will rust away to nothing.

Yep, and what happens if 10 to 20 years down the road, the collectors end up MISB robots bouncing around twist tied to remains of ruined paper inserts?

Seibertron wrote:While Hasbro doesn't publicly mention it, I'm pretty sure the twist ties are a form of theft-deterrent to help retailers keep their stock from being stolen.

Yes, it is. NPR ran a story Christmas 2008, e-tailers such as Amazon were working with toy companies to not have twsty-ties, (A seperate packaging) since there wasn;t the risk of shoplifting, and families didn't have to waste Christmas morning trying to untie Junior's new tool until Christmas of 2009...

Of corusse, then you have the cost of two packaging styles.

The above guys are right, the twist ties were handy. Stockpile now! That said, I stopped trying to cut them when I discovered I was flaking color off of some of the figures, Dad wanted some, and I couldn't gety a decent enough cut angle, or enough slack to cut them, on the back. Other than the Titaniums, it's not so bad. And actually, if you can pinch them good, you can untie them that way with a pair of pliers.

I'll be glad to see those things go.

I once scratched a Titanium Thundercracker trying to cut the tie. When I woke up 5 hours later from fainting he was still in the box.

wire cutters take care of those twist ties like there's no tomorrow!!!

Wire cutters are good at it, but Sprue Clippers are smaller and more precise than wire cutters.

Plus, I have a whole bunch of them already laying around thanks to my wargames addiction...

Why not just get rid of the ties all together. This is not the 80's where kids used to break into packages and pocket the toys. Security camera domes put a stop to that. Just use the fitted plastic like they did in the Insecticons and Perceptor re-issues.

I'm actually very excited about the Transformers using paper ties instead of using those nasty plastic ones. I'm usually in a hurry to take my TF's out and I don't want those pesky buggers in my way!

http://www.mechabooks.com

mechabooks wrote:I'm actually very excited about the Transformers using paper ties instead of using those nasty plastic ones. I'm usually in a hurry to take my TF's out and I don't want those pesky buggers in my way!

http://www.mechabooks.com

Please Check the Rules regarding advertising.

Thanks.

Shadowstream wrote:Dear environmentalists, please stop.

Don't need to be an environmentalist to know there's far better uses for a finite resource like oil than holding a kid's toy to the package it comes in.

starfish wrote:I mean really, how much plastic and metal is there in three-or-four twisty ties?

I think the better question is how much metal and plastic is in three-or-four million twisty ties? Certainly enough to make a shitload more Transformers instead. Unless you collect Transformers just to get the twist ties, then hey, sucks to be you now I guess...

I wish people would try to look beyond knee-jerk rhetoric and see that sometimes "environmentalism" can can actually be practical.

Seibertron wrote:
For those of you looking for clam-shells in the US at some point, you won't see it here in the US. While Hasbro doesn't publicly mention it, I'm pretty sure the twist ties are a form of theft-deterrent to help retailers keep their stock from being stolen. Notice I said "deterrent" ... this doesn't meant that it always works but it certainly makes it more difficult for someone to steal a figure than it would be to pop open a clamshell. Japanese toy stores are different than American toy stores so they cater more to a collector's market.

But...wouldn't they still have to open the box completely to get the toy out? That process would at least take a couple minutes, they couldn't catch someone by then?

WhiteRabbit wrote:

Shadowstream wrote:Dear environmentalists, please stop.

Don't need to be an environmentalist to know there's far better uses for a finite resource like oil than holding a kid's toy to the package it comes in.

Well, if people are that interested in preserving the planet's finite reserves of oil, then maybe we should just stop buying Transformers altogether, eh? As long as the plastic can be removed from the twisty ties with wire-cutters and be recycled, where's the problem?

WhiteRabbit wrote:I wish people would try to look beyond knee-jerk rhetoric and see that sometimes "environmentalism" can can actually be practical.

Bah. I'm sure some scientists somewhere will invent synthetic oil before the supplies of the real stuff run out. I mean, how hard can it be to bung a load of hydrogen and carbon molecules together, eh?

Whew!!! I never thought that a piece of paper twine can cause a lot of furor and rhetoric!

Megatron Wolf wrote:Those things are so damn useful around the house. Transformers were my #1 supply of them.

Yeah...IF you could reuse, then its probably worth having. I just wonder how many people do that! I tried it once to train the stems of a bonsai!

Well, I'm not an MISB collector, so I still give KUDOS to this "new twist"!

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I bought this set back earlier this week, and had absolutely no problems getting them out of the package (compared to the Darkwind I bought which had the old stytle twisties. argh). They were easy to untie, stiff enough to hold up to yanking, but not tightly knotted.

They won't biodegrade that fast, they seem to have a light wax coating on them, which would help prevent degrading in a sealed (box) environment.

I'm actually pretty good at untwisting the twist-ties, they're just annoying, especially where there's a ton of them for a figure that's not all that big. The thing that gets me? Those little clear rubber bands. In the right spots, you can completely miss them and then they come flying off and hit you in the face or the collarbone.

And this set? The rubber band around Bumblebee's upper chest was *triple* wound, and I had to take off his head and flip up his shoulder panels with the cannons in order to take it off.

Ravage XK wrote:I hope that these DO NOT break easily. Twisty ties allow you to repack figures easily. I dont want paper ties that break or crumble or rip! I'd rather they use the close fitting clam shell type as seen in Alternity or Binaltech (just without the single long twistie).

These new ties will *not* break easily, trust me. I'm a buyer of the Hasbro Star Wars vehicles and the new ones have adopted the new paper ties. As anyone else who buys them would probably tell you; they are really strong for what they are. I was really surprised actually (first to see them and second to notice their strength! Thought it was paper surrounding a wire until I managed to cut through it!)

By the way, why the hell do people need to use clippers on their twisties and risk damaging your beloved Transformers? This may be a personal thing, but I'm perfectly okay with untying them; it's the only way to get them out decently...Thing is, when you do, you have to make the tie ends 'reverse the coils' if you know what I mean.

Seibertron wrote:Wow. I'm surprised you guys aren't using wire-cutters. I've been using them for a few years now. Makes opening a Transformer a piece of cake. I use a pair with a thinner head than what's pictured below, but you'll get the drift. Should be available for a few dollars in the hardware area of your local big box store.



For those of you looking for clam-shells in the US at some point, you won't see it here in the US. While Hasbro doesn't publicly mention it, I'm pretty sure the twist ties are a form of theft-deterrent to help retailers keep their stock from being stolen. Notice I said "deterrent" ... this doesn't meant that it always works but it certainly makes it more difficult for someone to steal a figure than it would be to pop open a clamshell. Japanese toy stores are different than American toy stores so they cater more to a collector's market.

exactly
wire cutters cut wire. duh?
i use the same thing, Seib. Home Depot. 2.50
why would you not logically conclude this, people?

Swiftknife24 wrote:
By the way, why the hell do people need to use clippers on their twisties and risk damaging your beloved Transformers? This may be a personal thing, but I'm perfectly okay with untying them; it's the only way to get them out decently...Thing is, when you do, you have to make the tie ends 'reverse the coils' if you know what I mean.

Couldn't you just clip from behind the card/bubble, thus avoiding any damage to the figure?

I always have to chuckle when twist ties become such a huge issue. Nail clippers are under a dollar folks. Fuh reals.

Well, I never really had a problem with the twisty ties--a good pair of tweezers to untwist, and needlenose pliers to jerk the loosened ties away from the toy.

Until: Devastator. Seriously, I have never seen so many twisties on one toy. He IS big, but crikey-ay, there were twisties where they made no sense (the one around his neck? What, is he into kinky asphyxiation or something now?) Oh, it was MADDENING!!!

(Plus, he kept going 'raaaaaarrrr' if I touched him wrong.

HK, but on the plus, I now have 4 bajillion twisties.