El Duque wrote:
A lot of people (not just you) bring up this issue of third-party companies not having to comply with safety standards, but no one ever points out what these third-parties are doing to that is outside of them. As I said before I own the FansProject Crossfire sets, MakeToys Giant, TFC Toys Hercules, and FOC: Bruticus. I'm not seeing anything on the third-party figures that would keep them from being produced by Hasbro/Takara.
Plastic quality? Hasbro could pump their type plastic into these molds. (although recently I would say third-party plastic is trumping Hasbro's) Sharp corners? Hasbro could round them off. Small parts? Hasbro figures come with small parts also. Drop test? I'm not going to drop my Hercules to find out, but can't image he would fare any worse than say Unicron. Overly complex design? Ever transformered a ROTF figure?
Not trying to pick on you. I've just never heard anyone establish just what these safety concerns are.
Yes, 3rd party stuff don't intentionally come with the tiniest pieces around to choke you. The trend with 3rd party stuff is that they are doing obscure toys, or toys that are "out of fashion". Take for example Hercules. Yeah sure, they look cool and all, but hasbro still has to market they line to kids, and now, all they want is TFP, or whatever the latest show/movie is. Then again with the scale issue of Hercules... Even my parents question the significance of a toy when I buy it, and I'm sure parents would ask the kid what this character is and stuff. I've seen many parents at malls choosing the figures based on their roles in DOTM.
Maybe a better example is FP's insectecons. They are deluxed sized. They COULD have fit into the Generations lines, since they are classics, but hasbro knows they wont sell. Especially since they transform into insects, and huge robotic insects aren't all the rage today. Heck, even Thunderwing who's plane mode looked abit off and less realistic, became a shelfwarmer.
For FOC bruticus, I'm sure they went this route to cut production costs with less plastic. It also seems like the Bruitcus mode suffers from a useless gimmick. Scramble City. They don't look particularly good in all sorts of combinations, so hasbro should really have just found 1 way for them to combine, and made it that way. As of now, all limbs have fists in them, and can swap between left/right just to accommodate the failed scramble city idea.