gantzrunner wrote: These hurt, but imagine getting prime 3.0 and having something like this happen. At his price it's unimaginable.
So much this. Coming from someone who's loved the franchise my whole life but only really started collecting recently as an adult (as in, restarted with Titans Return - yes, that new), I have some fresh perspective on the "are we getting what we're paying for?" angle that every collector frets about with each new wave. The Prime Wars trilogy - while exciting for me since these were the first toys I gazed at for any length of time since I was a kid - was horrendous for skimming the margins with the use of stickers and shoddy engineering (looking at you, floppy Octones and Twinfires of the world). Overall quality of the characters suffered mightily as huge compromises were made for the sake of a combiner gimmick that - while nice - pales in comparison to what a good quality combiner can be. How do we know this? Because 3P has done it, and is where all the passion was prior to this latest burst of Studio Series/Siege releases. What is so great about Siege with me is the attention to quality at the deluxe/voyager/presumably leader level. No compromises made on articulation (within obvious reason), tight joints (overlooking one quibble with Megatron's head), firm tabs everywhere. Someone at Hastak got tired of the game and said, "See this 3P I bought last week? It makes our Optimus/Octone redeco look like a joke. Why can't I make more like this Generations Toy or Perfect Effect or Magic Square?" And Hasbro said, "Ok, let's do it. The line will be called Siege." And collectors saw that it was good, and finally got toys with the quality of what Masterpiece should have always been and consistently fails to achieve.
Someone's MP-44 is GOING to break, or arrive broken, or unable to transform because the diecast is just torqued over enough that the pin won't rotate to get the tab in (happened to my MPM-5, was furious, and I only paid $50). Toy is ruined, out of the box, before you even got to know it. Manufacturer maybe can make it right, but man - you're going to love packaging your beloved bot up and sending him away right after you meet him. Or maybe he'll arrive with paint screwed up all over from a simple ride in the plastic (happened to my MPM-4). What would be excusable at the $30 price point, possibly, is ridiculous when you're paying for a Masterpiece. What Hastak doesn't get is that people aren't just paying for the mold and the deco - they are expecting zero QC issues. That's what Masterpiece means to me. Since Hastak couldn't hack this, 3P thrived. Have you seen the attention to detail and mindfulness that goes into something like Generations Toys "Tyrant" (IDW Megatron stealth bomber). Every 3P I have ever payed more than $100 for has arrived FLAWLESS, in packaging so nice I feel like I could throw it around in my house and the toy inside would be fine. In the case of the latter, the display stand alone was the best I have ever seen in my life. Amazing! Let me know when Shockwave or Ultra Magnus will ever come with a display stand, let alone whatever the next Titan Class you're getting ripped off for is.
Hasbro chose to go after the worst infringers while keeping the market open for honest effort attempts at toys they don't intend to produce anytime soon (or don't have the imagination to - looking at Jetpower Revive Prime). This is commendable. The problem is that the loser in this case was a beast of their own making. They had to have seen the writing on the wall - huge markup MP's with very high demand - and known the risk a well-produced KO could make on their bottom line. And the risk exists for precisely the reasons we've described - because when you see a seller on eBay or Amazon (the only place you can find these toys anymore given the horrendous distribution and store closings), these are written as KO (you think Grandma understands what that means? She sees awesome toy for much lower price than anywhere else, perfect for little Jimmy) or as "reissues". Hasbro had to come after them with a machete. Won't faze most of us who already see MP quality in 3P versions everywhere. Will be disappointing to people who get the typical Hastak QC on their $300 toy and are left wondering how to make it right. Hastak's customer service in these regards can be good, but often so slow that "buyer assumes all risk" is pretty much spot on.