The Energon Pub

Not counting the HasTak MP TF toy line into this discussion. As I Think the MP TF toys are HasTak's best work.

I don't only blame the HasTak TF toys Spending Budget. Blame more, the badly done TF Ideas and TF art sketches that get further badly translated into TF CAD images. Just don't think any amount of help can turn those badly conceived ideas and ugly drawn art into awesome TF toys. I'll use the Beast Hunters toys and the AOE toys as the ultimate examples here.

Just think most 3rd party not-TF companies artist and CAD workers create much more beautiful art sketches. While I also think the 3rd party companies CAD workers do much better jobs turning those art sketches into greater CAD images.

Think another huge problem with HasTak. Is that their is way too many cooks in the kitchen. Often times their are dozens of Hasbro Artist and CAD workers constantly changing and adding on to another workers art designs or CAD images. Sometimes adding Spikes, Changing the face design, changing body parts, color changes, over detailing can ruin a toy.

Budget range and the lack of safety limitation most likely. Plus, as mentioned in a previous thread you started, ex Hasbro employees were kind of hamstrung into a certain scale/mold/design/template to fit the corporate buttom line.

Not to mention wtf does Hasbro have to always resurrect the TFA flat faced, noseless, chinstastic art style/design anyway? Good thing that CW has avoided this and returned to the somewhat Japanese super robo anime style of it's original incarnation (Diaclone etc).

Maketoys, FP, etc really take the original source materials to the next level and I salute them.

But lumping in Tomy MP into the mix is kind of stretching it tsu. Aside from the structural issues of Rodimus Convoy and the 7-14 day "birthing" of MP-05, a lot of the MP releases were awesome!

MP's price range more than ofsets the design limitation but in UM case, the cost consideration was one of the reasons why we don't have a white naked Convoy as the core robot.

fenrir72 wrote: But lumping in Tomy MP into the mix is kind of stretching it tsu. Aside from the structural issues of Rodimus Convoy and the 7-14 day "birthing" of MP-05, a lot of the MP releases were awesome!

MP's price range more than ofsets the design limitation but in UM case, the cost consideration was one of the reasons why we don't have a white naked Convoy as the core robot.

I just re-edited my thread to reflect this disclaimer. Think the MP TF's are HasTak's best work.

In Tomy MP situation, sure it's Masterpiece but even the engineers are more or less given a memo to not break the bank (as also indicated in the MP UM interview)


3rd party products too have it easy AND hard. Easy as no safety issues and royalties to pay. Hard is that they have to make a best seller to even make a profit. Plus they are not boxed into a corner to fit a particular shelf space.

This is no love fest for Has Tom but on the plus side, both companies make products withing SRP. That's one big advantage aside from being official.

Ultimately, I think it's the market the figures are intended for. While attempting to keep up with the times and other toy competitors while at the same time trying to make a huge profit. Naturally, some figures could be incredible, but HasTak isn't trying to create works of art. They're trying to create a marketable product which is cheap for them to make and eye-catching enough to promote impulse purchasing. Which, considering the intended market, must not be too hard to do.

Everything people have already said is true. I don't think anyone at Hasbro or Takara is less skilled than anyone at a 3rd party company. It's the restraints on Hasbro that 3rd parties don't have,

- Budget. 3rd parties can devote more money to a single project. They need that home run. Hasbro makes wave after wave in multiple toy lines. Not every single figure needs to be shot out of the park. What's more 3rd parties can add more detail and up the price to cover that. Hasbro needs to keep the price level and take away detail, be it complexity or paint. One deluxe can't cost more than another.
- Time. 3rd parties can take as much time as they like. Hasbro needs to get product to stores at the right time or they're screwed.
- Packaging. Figures must fit inside certain dimensions. 3rd parties can design the box around the figure instead of vice versa.

It's important to remember not all 3rd parties are made equally too. They make their share of mistakes and it's far more costly to them than a mistake from Hasbro. Impossibletoys, BTS, and even Fansprojects have all made costly mistakes.

Think a lot of members in this thread bought some interesting points. Most of them that I agree with.

Generally I'm fine with Hasbro's head/face sculpt. Some of them looks pretty good. Only one I don't understand is this.

That face is not showing tough, angry, or mad as on the cover art, it shows frightening or panicking like when he got dragged in to the dead universe. Which might be fine but it just totally doesn't fit the general toughness of his body design.

For art designs (especially the movie ones), I still don't understand why Hasbro let the art/CGI designers drew whatever they like and then the toy designers had to scratch their heads on how to make toys base on that. Sometimes praise them that they really made that happen. But some of the designs are just impossible. Transformium for example, they are basically doing what Kre-O/Lego bricks do. For action figures that transform, we got that Galvatron (which is not that bad if you ignore the backpack).

Also, like Gauntlet101010 said, not all 3rd party products are good.

fenrir72 wrote: Not to mention wtf does Hasbro have to always resurrect the TFA flat faced, noseless, chinstastic art style/design anyway? Good thing that CW has avoided this and returned to the somewhat Japanese super robo anime style of it's original incarnation (Diaclone etc).

Think This example might be able to get blamed a bit on the Hasbro artist personal taste and not budget.

It just seems like certain Hasbro employees are fixated on recreating the same art style in the form of TFA, TFP and 2015 Rid toys.

Surely making newer HasTak TF toy lines with ugly designs can't be much cheaper than creating TF toy lines with more beautiful looking toys in them.

Do kids these days and retailers really begging HasTak to create ugly and deformed looking TF toys? Just think Hasbro is overly pushing a art style that most don't like.

Speculating the reasons why 3rd parties are growing, getting more popular and more orders. Is because they are creating art styles buyers like.

paul053 wrote:Generally I'm fine with Hasbro's head/face sculpt. Some of them looks pretty good. Only one I don't understand is this.

That face is not showing tough, angry, or mad as on the cover art, it shows frightening or panicking like when he got dragged in to the dead universe. Which might be fine but it just totally doesn't fit the general toughness of his body design.

For art designs (especially the movie ones), I still don't understand why Hasbro let the art/CGI designers drew whatever they like and then the toy designers had to scratch their heads on how to make toys base on that. Sometimes praise them that they really made that happen. But some of the designs are just impossible. Transformium for example, they are basically doing what Kre-O/Lego bricks do. For action figures that transform, we got that Galvatron (which is not that bad if you ignore the backpack).

Also, like Gauntlet101010 said, not all 3rd party products are good.

The reason why Kup's face is weird..........similar to the issue plaguing MP "Exhaust" aka Malboor WJ. In the Tomy package of "Cha"aka Kup, he's got a "cygar" stuck to his mouth.

Most probably, not to create controversy of encouraging "smoking" to "kids", it was ommitted but still made it to the Japanese package font.

So can we all agree that art and CAD model are a silly angle to tackle the underlying question from? No one here knows or can assess the artistic or CAD modeling skills of HasTak or 3rd Party employees.

Want to talk why some 3rd Party figures are better than Hasbro figures, or vice versa, sure. But there's not rule of thumb either way, and speculating about something we can't possibly know (and are unlikely to know in the future) seems rather pointless.

Am I a buzzkill?