There is a lot of lamenting in here about the excessive re-use of molds going on in Combiner Wars and I'd like to throw out some idea's I have been kicking around in my head to help myself reconcile the re-paint/re-tool mayhem.
It's important to look at the bigger picture. Each of these toys is merely a piece of a greater concept. The concept here, is the play pattern. Combination. They are all neat enough and well made enough toys to stand alone, but they are more than that. In essence each of these toys is a triple changer. Heck, the deluxes are quad changers. It takes a lot of design and engineering to bring that all together and make it work. Some corners may need to be cut.
Here are few of my thoughts as examples.
1. Jigsaw puzzles.
At the puzzle factory they probably have lets say 35 dies in varying sizes from which to die cut their puzzles. You don't hear the folks down at the retirement home complaining that, "this here dang Grand Canyon puzzle is the same as the dagblasted Arc De Triumphe puzzle we put together last month". All 450 pieces are the same, but by changing the picture you get a whole new puzzle.
2. Legos
For the last 50 years Legos have remained virtually the same thing. The same bricks in a rainbow and beyond of colors. What makes them so special? Play. It's what you do with them, or how you play with them, how you, combine them, that keeps them interesting.
Bare with me here. I swear I'm bringin' it home.
3. Blockman by Takara (also known as Robolinks)
There were two not that different Blockmen, cast in a small variety of colors. Every set came with the exact same robot block action figures but you could combine them and a limited library of other pieces into anything you could imagine. I personally spent hours as a kid trying to make the best giant robot I could, and I had two sets with 12 total Blockmen.
Hasbro is doing a bang up job with Combiner Wars. They have created a really nice modular system that promotes the combining interplay across the entire line of toys. They've engineered fully articulated transforming action figures, that ya, all pretty much share the same form, but that make up an entire system. All this re-painting, re-shelling, re-tooling, re-hashing is giving us some pretty good diversity. They are a hell of a lot more interesting to look at than Blockman.
Hasbro isn't selling us these toys so we can fill holes in our collections. Their selling us a whole new concept to collect. An entire WORLD OF COMBINERS. And their world is at war.
peace
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