-Kanrabat- wrote:Convoy wrote:megatronus wrote:...please, please don't buy MP KOs. Be patient and wait for a sale. It will come. Buying KOs is a short-term solution that just hurts the long-term potential of the line.
I just wanted to parrot this.
Ditto.
Also, I consider buying a KO, meaning an exact copy (often at lower quality) of something, anything, to be the dumb thing to do. However, it's not the same as buying a 100% original mold from a 3rd party, even if that toy is closely based on an existing character.
As (probably) the biggest supporter of KOs around here, I'd just like to interject some pragmatic arguments into this moralizing.
I've bought KOs of MP Sideswipe, Red Alert, and Frenzy+Buzzsaw, and because these MP KOs are made from actual leftover factory parts, often deemed below the cut for QC, it's a crapshoot; you pay half price but takes yer chances. My Red Alert's head doesn't want to stay together, and his gun doesn't really notch into his hand, so I'm going to have to replace him with the real deal someday.
I bought the 2 cassettes because I got Hasbro Soundwave, but wanted a better representation of Marvel Frenzy; I'm RIR/FIB for life, but even I keep calling the blue/purple guy Rumble because he's (ironically) more show-accurate than Takara's all blue guy. While the figure himself is okay, he came with two of the same gun. Buzzsaw's paint is all messed up, but I just wanted him for spare parts in case a real bird breaks.
My KO Sideswipe, on the other hand, is perfect. And for the record, that KO is
NOT the same as the Takara MP because he has the better Tigertrack face (without Sideswipe's weird squinting), just barely nudging him into the same category as the CHMS Classics Seekers in colors Has/Tak has yet to do: The truly worthwhile ones for fans who want something there's no official option for. That's why I buy KOs: no matter how far Hasbro has come from the dark days of the '90s when it looked like they might just let the whole franchise keel over dead, there will always be a
few things they can't do (including reissues of toys whose molds are lost or degraded), necessitating KOs to fill the gaps.
But back to my main point here, if you buy too many of those MP KOs to the exclusion of the real ones, in the long run you'll get what you pay for, with little savings to show for it. They're made from spare parts, and many of them are only good for being used as such when your real TFs break.
That brings up a potential advantage of buying from your local TRU that I'm surprised no one has brought up: It's a tad easier to exchange a defective MP in person. Though I admit, I don't personally know
how much easier, since I've never seriously tried to return an online purchase, and exchanging it for the same toy isn't really an option for MPs like this year's Grimlock and last year's Soundwave that sold out immediately. In fact, I'd argue that buying KOs of the cassettes replace a few small parts is actually far more ethical than exchanging a figure as underproduced as that Soundwave, because sending that whole box of 6 TFs back defective means there's one less to go around; Hasbro could've cranked out twice as many, and supply still wouldn't have met demand on Sounders.
Yesterday, Westland MI's TRU got in 4 Sunstorms and 3 Prowls that sold out before noon, 1 of each by me, what with the BOGO (though that's mostly dumb luck; waiting for a TRU sale to synch up with them actually having the MPs you want might just be possible if you used layaway, but IDK the nuts and bolts of it.) Prowl has a paint defect on his hood, but I'll probably just sharpie it. If I want a more substantial fix, I can always buy the KO for the parts.
Side note: They also got that Joe "Danger at the Docks" set, which I thought was a SDCC exclusive, but then I wasn't paying close attention to any non-TF toy news.
And for the record, the biggest threat to the future of the MP line, and toy collecting in general, is not KOs, but rising plastic prices. F@#% the oil companies!