Bowspearer wrote:Right so in other words, you don't own the figures and have no idea what you're talking about. If you did, you'd know that making claims of them being virtually identical and oversimplifying the transformational differences is sheer fallacy.
The fact is that the chest transformation on Jazz alone is radically different. On Jazz, you have to rotate the waist 90 degrees then slide the hood of the car back over the waist. That requires a radically different torso design to Prowl's.
That's forgetting about the radical difference in the sculpts of even similar parts on both moulds.
Furthermore, if there is such attention to detail in the Masterpiece line that Red Alert has specifically crafted upper arms, then why on earth would they cut such corners with a major character like Jazz?
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On the contrary, you have conflated the Masterpiece line's approach to the BT line and continue to. Your entire argument is an utter prima facie as you have failed to grasp both the engineering differences between different G1 moulds and the fact that every single Masterpiece figure's transformation has built on the transformation of the original as opposed to simplifying it (in fact the arm transformation on Sunstreaker is similar to Prowl/Jazz, rather than Wheejack). Considering that the line has turned into a gravy train for Takara, why on earth would they go against that unless they wanted to hurt their bottom line. Besides, Jazz has a Stepper retool that can be done from him so he automatically has retool value.
Heck even Red Alert had radically different upper arms to Sideswipe when they could have just used the toy design as an excuse to share moulds. Yet that never happened. That should prove how utterly baseless arguments about Prowl and Jazz sharing moulds is- let alone any parts sharing which cannot be justified as being in the best interests of the figure..
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You've just completely contradicted yourself here. The entire point of the Masterpiece line has been to produce "masterpiece" versions of G1 toys. As such the retools and reissues will only extend as far as something was a retool and recolour in the original G1 line.
Will we get the likes of Tigertrack? Definitely, as we already are. However we wont see recolours or retools of G1 characters that were not originally retools or recolours.
No need to start tossing in legal terminology or "debate team" lingo to try and boost your opinion. This isn't a court of law, and there's zero facts to base anything off from either side. There's no right and wrong at this point, it's all speculation! The difference about a courtroom and this is that in a court of law, you can disprove something. You can't disprove something that hasn't occurred yet, no matter how much you argue the case.
Look, I don't care if Jazz gets all-new tooling and hours wasted on semi-redundant new engineering or "reuses" some engineering from the Datsun mold, or if anyone else agrees with me at this point. I'm just enjoying the discussion, as silly as it is. You and those on your "side" of this argument could very well be right and Jazz will share zero similarities with Prowl, but I don't expect that will happen. I actually don't even own the vintage version of Prowl, but I've messed with it once or twice but I do own Jazz, and when I transformed my friend's Prowl, I even recall being like "Oh, it's sorta like Jazz!" The Sunstreaker/Wheeljack example was probably just a bad example. It was a casual one based off first glances with little experience with either vintage toy, so I wouldn't spend too much time trying to deconstruct that example.
Look, here are some things I do know, though, that folks keep bringing up from actual "fact" that isn't actually true, no matter how eloquently it's worded or how many debate-terms are tossed in to try and boost the argument. And I can say without a doubt, I know this from the Takara MP track record because I actually own every MP mold release to date...
• The point of the Masterpiece line is not to recreate the vintage toy with "masterpiece" articulation and design. It's to create a "masterpiece" version of the vintage figure AND the Sunbow cartoon appearance. The best of both worlds, literally. Sure, there are a few compromises, but they did a damn fine job finding the right middle ground for most of the MPs. As an example, Megatron is significantly different from his G1 toy, and while he had to follow the original's transformation somewhat, it achieves the visuals of the cartoon much more effectively than the original figure. Sideswipe's shoulders and wheels mimic the cartoon look, not the toy. True, the doors form the arms, but the wheels hide away completely.
• I'm not sure that the thing you said about Sideswipe and Red Alert's shoulders made sense to me. Did you mean the vintage figures had different transformations? Because the new ones have new molds for the shoulders, they're not exactly radically different, I don't think. The transformation is the same, and Red Alert has fake wheels on them. That's about it. If the transformation happened the same as the vintage figure, the actual wheels would be visible on both, and would've been the actual wheels on the shoulders, not tucked underneath the arms to form the bot's ribcage.
• Ultra Magnus (MP-02) was a total cop-out, and a huge "cutting corners" effort. So much in fact, that I didn't bother with MP-02. True, UM was originally a Prime repaint with a new suit-of-armor/trailer, but the end result looked nothing like Prime in robot mode once he was "suited up". While I do believe (well, really, really hope) that they'll make a new Ultra Magnus with trailer since they did completely retool Prime and not just scale him down (plus, this also milks the tooling for the main market, where not everyone will shell out the money for the Nemesis or "dark awakening" niche repaints), I feel like their efforts so far were just a cash grab. So I do consider that a cost-cutting, lazy cash grab. That's not Ultra Magnus.
Now, to jump to the other side, and argue FOR your stance, here's what is actually starting to sway my opinion, and it's nothing that's been said, really, but from the photos posted of the G1 cartoon models...
Jazz didn't have door-wings in the cartoon! And Prowl didn't have shoulder cannons! For Prowl, I think it could just be that they didn't include them in the promo shot, and we'll get them regardless with the figure. (Fingers crossed here, as I like the toy look versus the cartoon.) But it is cartoon-accurate. I think the MP version of Jazz will likely do their best to either hide the doors completely, or have them be able to be displayed with or without, so that little tidbit alone may require a significantly different transformation for Jazz, regardless of the leg transformation difference (which I personally think they have enough room to simply shift things around below the waist and still use a similar above-the-waist transformation for both Jazz and Prowl... but that's with my old thinking).
Stepper/Ricochet is also not a huge "repaint" draw from Jazz, I don't think. Sure, he can be repainted, but Stepper isn't anywhere in the realm of G1-must-have like Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen or the Seekers. If they do make Jazz, I fully expect to see Stepper, but not as an individual figure. He's more along the lines of Tigertracks or Sunstorm in terms of popularity, with the exception of Stepper actually having a vintage figure.
Anyways, enough speculation and discussion over future things. Takara's more than getting enough repaint potential out of the Datsun mold to even bother retooling it significantly for anything else. I still think we'll get an eHobby or similar repaint of at least Bluestreak in Diaclone colors, so there's also that. 4 figures out of one mold? No need to retool it.
Jazz very well could be a new mold. If it is, kudos to them, and that just makes my future collection even more awesome. I also hope to see a totally-unique Sunstreaker with an alt mode so similar to Sideswipe that I really step back and marvel at the engineering. I think that will be impressive as hell. In the meantime, I just hope they bring on as many Autobot cars as they can. There's plenty of repaint potential with slight retools to flesh out another 10 slots without even talking about significant retooling with just 2-3 new molds in the first place. I hope this line lasts till MP-50 or later.