conartist wrote:Finally found him this morning at a Ft. Lauderdale TRU, right off the truck. I can relax now, and stop being jealous and angry at everyone who had him, stop the murderous thoughts about scalpers, etc. He was my first TF back in the 80's. Now over 600 figures later, the cycle is complete. I can get out the game.
That being said, I think that Hasbro has heard the outcry over the demand...and they are feeling the pressure to rush more of these into production because now that I have him, I have to say that this is the WORST QC I have EVER seen on a TF toy.
I can imagine the Hasbro factory in China, with hundreds of workers suddenly forced to crank these suckers out double-time, whips cracking, no bathroom breaks, no sleep.
There are spots of silver and red paint all over his head and other body parts that should be blue. Joints too loose or too tight. Plastic parts quickly snapped off of the mold rack and not sanded down, chunks of discolored plastic just sticking out at these places, or a gouges. Not just on Soundwave, but on the cassettes as well. I see the glue under the visor. Unbelievable. I have no intention of returning it and I'm happy I finally got it, but I expected more care and consideration to be taken in a MP figure. Is anyone else noticing this?
No one who has a TRU MP Soundwave has reported anything near what you've seen on your MP Soundwave.
As far as Hasbro responding to any sort of outcry, I doubt it. They plan their production schedules months, if not years, ahead of time considering it takes 2 years or so to develop a Transformers toy.
So I doubt there's any sort of rush to produce the TRU MP Soundwave figures as you envision in a Chinese toy factory. It's not as if someone picked up a phone at Hasbro HQ and says "Get me China. I need some Masterpiece Soundwaves produced on the double!".
As far as QC, TakaraTomy uses the same factories as Hasbro. There's also no indication that there are two distinct conveyor lines with a TakaraTomy QC specialist team at one and a Hasbro QC specialist team at the other.
You seem to be a victim of bad QC, not specifically bad Hasbro QC.
megatronus wrote:Can you post a few pictures so we can see what you're talking about?
I'd like to see pictures as well. If it's in as bad a state as described, it should be returned for an exchange. It sounds like a Junkion had its way with MP Soundwave.