The Energon Pub

Okay, so I somehow found out that the Cybertron Hot Shot/Excellion Mold is 3 times heavier than the DOTM Roadbuster figure with his mechtech attached.

I know oil is driving cost up, but really? I'm paying $10 for a 1/3 of the weight of a deluxe from 4 years ago. By that standard, DOTM deluxe toys should cost about $3.50 a pop.

I shudder to think what the Voyager and leaders come out to especially since leaderclass Bumblebee is mostly mechtech weapon. I would actually put leader bumblebee at Ultra class size if you removed his completely unessecary mechtech weapon.

It's dumb. I'm worried this is going to become standard among all new Transformers lines.

Don't forget that you're also paying for engineering. I'll bet a lot more effort goes into movie figures than AEC with the complex transformation and huge amounts of detail.

Inflation is rather high these days.

Maybe you're paying for asian microengineering technology!

I previously posted a relevant but sort of controversial topic concerning potential side effects of having an anti petrol agenda of various world governments. Once petrol products become an uneconomical venture, the fall out on the plastics industries would be catastrophic..........what more our TF hobby. Time was we could have a leader class to voyager sizes, now, we may just have to confine our figs to the deluxe size.

fenrir72 wrote:I previously posted a relevant but sort of controversial topic concerning potential side effects of having an anti petrol agenda of various world governments. Once petrol products become an uneconomical venture, the fall out on the plastics industries would be catastrophic..........what more our TF hobby. Time was we could have a leader class to voyager sizes, now, we may just have to confine our figs to the deluxe size.

Not necessarily. Pepsi is moving from petrol-based plastic to a different type of plastic that I think is made from nature waste or something like that. So if they can do it, perhaps there's hope for our beloved Transformers?

Hopefully the plastic products would also be cost effective.

fenrir72 wrote:I previously posted a relevant but sort of controversial topic concerning potential side effects of having an anti petrol agenda of various world governments. Once petrol products become an uneconomical venture, the fall out on the plastics industries would be catastrophic..........what more our TF hobby. Time was we could have a leader class to voyager sizes, now, we may just have to confine our figs to the deluxe size.

Man, if the world moved away from oil-based petrol the price for oil would plummet.
The middle east and other oil producing countries would have such a massive surplus of product and would be begging people to buy their oil. That could only result in increased quality of Transformers toys as the plastics could be made with top notch oil at super economical prices.

Mkall wrote:Not necessarily. Pepsi is moving from petrol-based plastic to a different type of plastic that I think is made from nature waste or something like that. So if they can do it, perhaps there's hope for our beloved Transformers?

Awww, I don't want my Transformers to be made of biodegradable materials. I want them to last FOREVER!

Good topic.

I think the Pepsi-thing is the way to go here. It's not like companies won't make plastic products anymore, more likely the nature of it will change. If we won't need oil anymore, we'll still like money.

But oil/petrol products are drawn from god forsaken places like deep sea (Gulf of Mexico or somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean (like Brent Crude or something), the Arctic (near Alaska and Siberia) and the aforementioned Middle East. Needs a lot of incentives just to try to draw the black gold and the byproduct we all are talking about.....plastic .

If we start going environmental and by some miracle shift to something like energon, it makes me wonder if the plastic industry will have the incentive to "dig". Unless we can recycle all our plastic rubbish. Plastics might end up costing higher. (Ever think of that?)

Maybe HasTak could lead the way in recycling. They could start by recycling the various peg warmers we've seen clogging up shop shelves over the last couple of years.

Mykltron wrote:Don't forget that you're also paying for engineering. I'll bet a lot more effort goes into movie figures than AEC with the complex transformation and huge amounts of detail.

Inflation is rather high these days.

Maybe you're paying for asian microengineering technology!

I totally understand paying for engineering, and to me movie toys are just another look. The transformation may be more complex, but production costs and everything considered, Hasbro has to be making a killing using less plastic and giving the figures the appearance of being a deluxe.

Cobalt Prime wrote:

Mkall wrote:Not necessarily. Pepsi is moving from petrol-based plastic to a different type of plastic that I think is made from nature waste or something like that. So if they can do it, perhaps there's hope for our beloved Transformers?

Awww, I don't want my Transformers to be made of biodegradable materials. I want them to last FOREVER!

Imagine...

EVERY color degrades not just gold!

do not want

Optimum Supreme wrote:

Cobalt Prime wrote:

Mkall wrote:Not necessarily. Pepsi is moving from petrol-based plastic to a different type of plastic that I think is made from nature waste or something like that. So if they can do it, perhaps there's hope for our beloved Transformers?

Awww, I don't want my Transformers to be made of biodegradable materials. I want them to last FOREVER!

Imagine...

EVERY color degrades not just gold!

do not want

Yeah, I'll stick with fossil fuels for my plastic needs. I don't want biodegradable TFs. Especially with the amount I drop on them.

So now (though in my part a bit selfish)we can see the potential pitfalls of going full green/environmental.

It may look and sound good in paper...........

Make petrol prices higher so as to discourage consumption which leads to lower carbon emissions. But you can only charge the consumer oh so much that there will come a point when they just walk a way. This fate, I hope doesn't befall the TF franchise.

Could the high prices of petrol/oil be also a deciding factor why recent Primes don't come with his trailer?

robofreak wrote:Okay, so I somehow found out that the Cybertron Hot Shot/Excellion Mold is 3 times heavier than the DOTM Roadbuster figure with his mechtech attached.

I know oil is driving cost up, but really? I'm paying $10 for a 1/3 of the weight of a deluxe from 4 years ago. By that standard, DOTM deluxe toys should cost about $3.50 a pop.

I shudder to think what the Voyager and leaders come out to especially since leaderclass Bumblebee is mostly mechtech weapon. I would actually put leader bumblebee at Ultra class size if you removed his completely unessecary mechtech weapon.

You know what? I posted a thread of this nature back when TFA Leader Megs came out. I got shot down. Now I feel vindicated. Shame no one remembers it! Mind you, I think the main flamer got banned from here so maybe there's some justice! I'm not really ranting, just saying that I too have noticed the trend.

Waaaaaaay too much useless electronic gimmicks adding to the price. The size ever shrinking, egad, prices going up. Sometimes its indeed hard to get your money's worth.

fenrir72 wrote:Waaaaaaay too much useless electronic gimmicks adding to the price. The size ever shrinking, egad, prices going up. Sometimes its indeed hard to get your money's worth.

Where are the electronic gimmicks in my recent Generations Deluxes that cost twice the price of the same size of figures back in the Armada era?

I suppose I see the point people are trying to make here, in some respects, but there's more too it than weight of the materials. Take a mobile phone from the 90s compared to one released yesterday, for example. I'm no fan of increasing prices, and sometimes it does seem rather ridiculous the amount the price goes up by, but there are instances where I can't argue with the increase in quality of the product.

I was referring to Mechtech in the gimmicks department. Now that you mentioned Micron Legend/Armada, the first run of super pants Prime had severely limited shoulder movement due to the wiring for his light bulb (which did not translate well from the initial concept of lighting up Star Saber. So this light up gimmicks and sound effects kind of seem lame.

Generations/United in some aspects got the size right (the cars that is) but on the leaders like Megatron and Optimus(the WFC figs, size ill befits them), should have been on the Voyager scale.

Why is it that they could churn out Armada Megs' size back then and a wee WFC Megatron deluxe size now? Same can be said of Henkei/Classics Galvatron (that is water under the bridge but I just couldn't help myself by mentioning him)

fenrir72 wrote:I was referring to Mechtech in the gimmicks department. Now that you mentioned Micron Legend/Armada, the first run of super pants Prime had severely limited shoulder movement due to the wiring for his light bulb (which did not translate well from the initial concept of lighting up Star Saber. So this light up gimmicks and sound effects kind of seem lame.

Generations/United in some aspects got the size right (the cars that is) but on the leaders like Megatron and Optimus(the WFC figs, size ill befits them), should have been on the Voyager scale.

Why is it that they could churn out Armada Megs' size back then and a wee WFC Megatron deluxe size now? Same can be said of Henkei/Classics Galvatron (that is water under the bridge but I just couldn't help myself by mentioning him)

Armada had a cartoon to support it by brainwashing kids into wanting toys based off of the characters, while Classics/Universe/Generations does not.

The thing is, Hasbro is trying to not increase the price of the size classes, but since producing the stuff gets more and more expensive they have to cut corners where possible. They even said so themselves in regards to why figures come with less weapons and accessories nowadays.
Figures have been decreasing in weight, size and accessories since Energon. Your average Energon deluxe had about as much mass as a modern day Voyager.

It's ether this or annual price increases, which we in Europe get anyway.

Lighter figures to me are better for transport. But it's a bad downgrade in cost. I'm on the edge here.

Guess what I learned everyone! After talking to some people in the injection molding industry and learning the process for plastic, I found out some fun stuff about oiil prices.

Oil prices as we see them are for sweet crude oil. That pure stuff that is good for making the fuel in our cars.

Plastic is made from Heavy Sour Crude. This stuff is the nastiest stuff you can get and is really expensive to refine into fuel. It has a lot of sulfur in it and it just nasty. However, it is good for plastic and so much of it is drilled that it's dirt cheap. Think like $20 a barrel which was has been the constant price for like 10 years.

Basically, Hasbro is just cashing in on the idea that oil is rising so they can fool everyone into thinking that they have to raise prices.

Oil prices are rising, but not the oil used for plastic.

robofreak wrote:Oil prices are rising, but not the oil used for plastic.

That's some interesting investigative work there robo, hats off to you.

it may not affect the cost of the plastic, but there's still the cost of oil that goes into the boats that are bringing the stuff over from Asia to here. Not saying it's a full justification, but just because one aspect isn't affected doesn't mean the whole process isn't immune.

Still it will make for an interesting question at Botcon, thanks.

You gotta take into account as well though the price of fuel to actually ship the figures everywhere. It takes a hell of a lot of transformers to justify shipping containers full of them from the plants in China to here. Then the price of moving them from the ports to semis bound for distribution centers which are then bound for stores. Lots of fuel costs involved with just getting the figures to market. So it may still be oil prices to blame.

Smaller figures also mean they can pack that many more onto a shipping container. If you even averaged one more deluxe per box, or saved 1 cumulative pound per box by reducing each figure's weight, it can all add up when there are millions to be shipped.

Once you analyze the engineering costs, the manufacturing and materials costs, the labor costs to assemble, package, ship, and sell the figures, the marketing costs to draw customers in, and still have room for good ole fashion corporate greed (profit in more realistic terms), it's amazing we're getting them at the prices we are at all.

Another forgotten point is that China is in the midst of a working class revolution. The average salary is finally increasing so that they have a middle class. They aren't stupid, they know the world craves their products, all of them. Capitalism has found a foothold there with industry, and private ownership of cars and more western styled living has exploded. This is probably the reason Hasbro has been looking to move production to less industrialized areas like Vietnam. Cheaper then China now.


*Edit - Mkall beat me to the punch pretty much while I was typing my long winded response. lol

Mkall wrote:

robofreak wrote:Oil prices are rising, but not the oil used for plastic.

That's some interesting investigative work there robo, hats off to you.

it may not affect the cost of the plastic, but there's still the cost of oil that goes into the boats that are bringing the stuff over from Asia to here. Not saying it's a full justification, but just because one aspect isn't affected doesn't mean the whole process isn't immune.

Still it will make for an interesting question at Botcon, thanks.

OCD compels me to know everything about my hobbies. Just glad I could share.

I was thinking about shipping cost and weight. It still doesn't add up. Oil prices are high, but the shipping cost is determined by volume and weight. They should be able to get a good sized discount for shipping them in mass and outweigh the cost if they shipped enough.

I'm wondering how much of a washed out answer we'll get from Hasbro about it.