Shadowstream wrote:megatronus wrote:Shadowstream wrote:Midnight_Fox wrote:Agamemnon wrote:megatronus wrote:Shadowstream wrote:After the failure of Colossus I'm not sold on the long term stability of this thing, especially with such thin plastic parts holding the arms on.
???
There were issues with cracking plastic, particularly around the peg holes on the arm connector, if I remember correctly. I don't have them, but I have just been displaying mine in a glass case for the last several years.
Not really fair to condemn a product on another product's 2nd or third hand info, IMO.
I'd like not to, but they wasted too much time on this one for my tastes, and in the end it seems just as fiddly and fragile as the last set, if not moreso.
Combine this with FPs propensity for quality going down with each subsequent release and I wouldn't give M3 the time of day.
I'm going to go ahead and say that's a matter of opinion. I've had no quality issues on my end, and don't think the Stunticons to be flawed - just fiddly.
Plus, have you not heard of the FP's Function X line? Now
that's a quality line.
I could make a list of all the problems I've had over time regarding FansProject products, but yes I do know Function X line, I even own Quadruple U, but I don't expect it to stand up to the test of time, because my track record with FP stuff has taught me to.
For the record there are several problems with Colossus aside from badly designed shoulder connectors: The ratchets all come loose, the fingers fall off, the backpack never fits right, the panel that the head sits on doesn't fold away right, and the parts that hold the finger guns scrape the paint right off the mini-con ports. The only thing I find redeemable about the set are the figures themselves and the weapons that actually look like weapons.
Combine all that with a D.I.A. Commander with loose parts, a Defender with weak knees, a Protector with splitting foot panels, and Thundershred's feet... well,
shredding to transform them and perhaps you can see where my lack of faith stems from.
Yeah, I've learned to be pretty delicate with all my FP stuff. I do my fair share of FP bashing around here because of the products I've owned of theirs that I've had major problems with (like the Insecticon that couldn't even hold together in beast mode

) but I still buy their stuff, or at least some of it (I'll never buy those tiny things they're trying to pass off as Classics Headmasters

). I mean hell, I'm buying 2 of each Stunticon because I love their vehicle modes so much, but I'll be the first to admit that their transformations suck/are too fidgety and that I find myself warping/bending bits when transforming some parts (even to the point of one of the leg panels that I thought was glued on popping off on not-Wildrider, but thankfully it clipped back into place).
Their stuff generally looks pretty cool and they have their own unique thing going on and for the longest time they were the best quality third party in the game. But with others like MMC, TW and PlanetX on the scene, I really think that FP is not the top tier with regards to quality any more.
Now that said, I believe many of the issues with their not-Bruticus add-on kit was simply that it was trying to attach to parts that weren't meant to be attached to anything, such as the backpack/cannons that never stay on (yes, I have the exact same problem with mine

), but that thin brown plastic they used for the hands and the shoulder connectors was definitely craptastic. It had that slightly hardened but still malleable wax feeling going on with it that always makes me nervous because of how it tends to give under stress and show stress marks with little effort. Thankfully most of the plastics they've used on their Stunticons is of better quality, although I will admit that some of the bits and panels on these guys do seem to be made of similar stuff, although thicker in most cases and I haven't had any actual breakage so far (fingers crossed). But of course, I've only transformed each one back and forth like twice and I have an entire other set still in the box waiting for Motormaster so that I can combine that set and use my out of box set for car modes.