Seibertron wrote:I'm pretty sure this is already something that Hasbro and Takara Tomy takes into consideration with each mold they create. I think if you look at the span of the Transformers brand since 1994 (starting with G2's new molds ... the 93 molds were carry overs from Europe, with the exception of Megatron (who was repainted in BWII)), you'll see that the majority of the toys have been repainted at least once or twice.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are the PERFECT example of Hasbro really thinking through the process of reusing a mold later on. I think they should do this on all character specific molds, such as Cyclonus. Something they should have done with Cyclonus' mold is figure out what to do with the "ears" in robot mode. If they had just gotten creative with the ears such as the ability to remove them to combine them as a weapon or to fold them back during the transformation process, it would've easily provided them with a unique mold to use as another character or two.
I must admit that I prefer drastic repaints over minor repaints released as the same character later down the road, though when I look at it from a marketing perspective, I get why Hasbro is doing minor repaints because it keeps the primary character on the shelf longer but with a different SKU (?) which keeps retailers happy because it's a "new" product.
They've done that with other models too, such as Ironhide/ Rachet. I'm sure we'll see a Swindle repaint out of Hound in Universe 3.0 or whatever they plan to call it, but I was just saying that it is nice to see molds designed specifically for one character, and really only that character. Universe Cyclonus is perfect to me and I like that his mold is unique like Astrotrains and Tankor's (Octane).