The Energon Pub

News Credits: 15 · Wed Jan 06, 2016 11:04 am

We have all noticed that our Transformers have become decidedly simpler and more hollow that in previous years and I think I remember that being blamed on the cost of plastic and oil prices.

Now that oil is at an 11 year low, do you think that we could start seeing more complex/complete mainline figures making a comeback?

News Credits: 174 · Wed Jan 06, 2016 11:07 am

Ravage XK wrote:We have all noticed that our Transformers have become decidedly simpler and more hollow that in previous years and I think I remember that being blamed on the cost of plastic and oil prices.

Now that oil is at an 11 year low, do you think that we could start seeing more complex/complete mainline figures making a comeback?

Doubtful, all this means is that hasbro can just keep upping the price and lining their pockets. About your other point, hasbro didn't back off from complicated figures due to oil prices (well not overtly anyways) but due to feedback from parents about the obscene complexity of the figures from the RoTF era.

Another way to look at it, is, unless hasbro budgets the oil with the designs (it takes about 2 years to complete a tf design) by the time hasbro does put a figure on the market, oil prices could have risen in the meantime, and hasbro is stuck paying through the nose for a more complex figure.

News Credits: 60 · Wed Jan 06, 2016 6:40 pm

As long as Hb is targeting the kids demographic with their TF line, expect more hollow parts unlike the uber big@ss beefy GF/Cybertron line.

The low oil prices for Hb/TT just means a larger bottom line for them unfortunately and higher costs for us .

News Credits: 4877 · Wed Jan 06, 2016 9:22 pm

Ravage XK wrote:We have all noticed that our Transformers have become decidedly simpler and more hollow that in previous years and I think I remember that being blamed on the cost of plastic and oil prices.

Now that oil is at an 11 year low, do you think that we could start seeing more complex/complete mainline figures making a comeback?

No because the price you are referring to is of oil that is not used to make toys. The oil your price is referring to is used for fuel exclusively. Plastic is made from a chemical compound derived from a different type of oil, whos price fluctuates differently.

News Credits: 656 · Mon Jan 11, 2016 9:57 am

First, what Will said. Second, different types of plastics use yet still different mixtures of chemicals, so while sometimes ABS is cheaper, maybe Polystyrene goes up. Polyethylene may be in the pits, but then polypropylene spikes insanely so no savings are achieved. That's just throwing out plastic types and scenarios at random, but if you think they bother to sit and forecast that when designing these things, nah, not to any insanely detailed degree. They certainly try to anticipate which resins will be the most economical and practical, but outside of some basic high-level Futures analysis playing a role the actual pricing of materials doesn't have quick, big shocks to the toys we see. Long term down turns like the global recession led to the very small (comparatively) DotM/FoC/Prime RiD stuff and I'd say we're just now turning a corner from all that.

The bigger pricing variable right now is labor cost, which is also why more and more of our Transformers are being made in Vietnam rather than in China.