The Energon Pub

I don't think uniting the brands is necessarily a bad thing. It seems like the Hasbro figures have included a lot more paint in the last year and most of the Takara figures haven't been enough of an upgrade to justify the import price. If Takara can either have more input on the figures or focus more on the MP line, then I will be happy.

I think having completely separate decos was probably a bit silly for every toy.

Hasbro making every deco based on the G1 toys was also silly. Compromise decos would be ideal, honestly.

And for certain figures, a "DX" premium version from Takara would be nice. And it would also be nice if Tribute/Platinum used those decos rather than employ the somewhat weird decos Platinum would sometimes choose to do. (Tribute's been pretty sensible. It was Platinum that sometimes did real headscratchers.)

ScottyP wrote:

william-james88 wrote:While the movie toys have already been very similar between brands in the past, having other lines be identical at the same time is indeed unprecedented.

'85 and '86 G1 would like a word

I think they meant since the changes between toys became a norm And since there have been more than just one line as well.

Seibertron wrote:I am beyond thrilled about this change. Amen.

I have always been intrigued and interested in this view point since you know so much more about the markets (and their history) than I do. Plus you have the points of view of both the consumer and seller. So, when you have a moment, please share your thoughts as to why this is such a sensible path to take, I would like to know more

Im cool with it if they eliminate stickers forever and no more toy accurate decos that homage gang molding (orange hot rod hands, purple blitzwing face, red ultra magnus thighs, etc.) Just go with toon accuracy 100%

This is the opposite of bad news. If Takara and Hasbro are making identical toys then we don't need to spend a ton to import the classically superior Takara figures because we could get the same ones from our own shops.

Does it make me a bad toy collector that I don't find PotP 'screamer as horrific as everyone else says? He's really not the figure I regretted the most buying at retail price when he came out.

I mean can't be as bad as the Toys R Us TLK version of Stealth Bomber Megatron. That thing I ended up regretting deeply simply because how small and flimsy it felt. But at least Starscream has bulk, fills a hole in my collection and can be a combiner torso! Or am I making excuses for what seemingly the entire fanbase has declared a crummy figure? Because he's still not the hottest mess in my collection, even counting all the Beast Wars stuff. ESPECIALLY when counting the Beast Wars stuff.

Looking at you Injector and Retrax.

I like this because I'm sick of spending more on the Takara figures. Now I only have to worry about Hasbro & save a ton of money.

But it makes me wonder about Blurr. Which version would we have gotten? The awesome Takara or that Hasbro abomination?

Disappointing. Takara's decos had been consistently better than Hasbro's, imo. And recently Hasbro has even gone with stickers over tampos for some releases. But I wasn't really going to get into the whole "Power of the Primes" thing anyway.

Aimless Misfire wrote:I like this because I'm sick of spending more on the Takara figures. Now I only have to worry about Hasbro & save a ton of money.

But it makes me wonder about Blurr. Which version would we have gotten? The awesome Takara or that Hasbro abomination?

Going by the TLK line I would assume it would primarily be Hasbro's vision of the toy...since those toys are mostly the same in both Hasbro and Takara versions and show lack of screen-accurate paint apps particularly on Wave 1 Bee and Voyager Prime's robot mode. Though in some cases at least the Takara versions come with more accessories like W3 Bee's hammer and Hound's shield/truck-backthingy. Past movie lines have generally had the Takara version looking improved in some way regarding paint apps and such. We know Takara loves cartoon-accuracy though but then that's complicated in itself cos some of us fans like more detail the original toys had and some prefer total toon-look and at least with the majority of the toys we had a choice even if the toon-fans had to generally pay a bit more to import. I'm usually one for the detail but even I bought Legends Blurr over Hasbro's just cos that Takara colour scheme was frickin' gorgeous and Hasbro's was super-drab.

I can get behind the unifying but only if it results in truly the best product. But even so I just don't see much in quality in the PotP line to begin with. I would prefer that Takara WOULD try improve on those toys considerably.

Takara if this was all one huge prank to screw with us fans my hats off to you...well played!

BUT if there is no humor involved in this disturbing outcome then I think we deserve some form of understanding to all this....please???

I will now accept this bizzaro-like reality and still hope that all this maybe some kind of research project to see how this might affect sales...'nuff said.

Bronzewolf wrote:It's unknown how these errors are occuring, but there have been no reports of Micronus or Vector Primes shipping without any Prime Masters at all.
Several Seibertron board members have expressed interest in documenting this strange anomaly, so if you run into any Power of the Primes figure that includes two Prime Masters please leave a comment in the Energon Pub Forums below. There might be some information on your figure that could help us track down exactly what production lot run these errors are coming from!

Possibly we can find the errors are on specific production dates?

For those who aren't familiar with how Hasbro dates products:

My MAGA Jazz is numbered 72341. The 7 represents 2017, and 234 represents the 234rd day of the year. The 1 is a fairly standard on nearly all of their products. I don't think anyone has ever been able to track down what the 1 signifies. There are rare examples of GI Joe figures from the 80s ending with a 2 or a 3.

Skritz wrote:Does it make me a bad toy collector that I don't find PotP 'screamer as horrific as everyone else says? He's really not the figure I regretted the most buying at retail price when he came out.

I mean can't be as bad as the Toys R Us TLK version of Stealth Bomber Megatron. That thing I ended up regretting deeply simply because how small and flimsy it felt. But at least Starscream has bulk, fills a hole in my collection and can be a combiner torso! Or am I making excuses for what seemingly the entire fanbase has declared a crummy figure? Because he's still not the hottest mess in my collection, even counting all the Beast Wars stuff. ESPECIALLY when counting the Beast Wars stuff.

Looking at you Injector and Retrax.

Retrax is a bit iffy as he can't stand up well - but his action feature is at least creative. Injector I've always really liked and lamented that he wasn't offered in other colours - perhaps that is in part due to Beast Wars Neo's use of the mould - But I just like Fuzors in general.

I don't hate Starscream for his mould I have 2 objections

1) Elita-One has a way better body so why didn't they give him more of her's after all Starscream is supposed to be lithe.

2) The Stickers are poorly placed, cheesy in their details and of low quality. - If they'd been smaller and inset or on a optional sticker sheet I'd not even mention it - but now I have to ponder if I want to rip them all off & repaint the entire figure and possibly kit bash parts from an Elita One or not - which isn't really ideal.

Grimlock isn't much better he's just as horribly disproportionate as Starscream is ; But at least the stickers are more tastefully placed ; he's likely going to need a 3rd party tail extension to look anywhere near correct though in dino mode.

I really like the Legends - they are all pretty much terrific the Primemasters are adorable (though I wish they'd kept the belly screws for customising reasons)

The Deluxes are 'OK' in a sort of Combiner Wars like way ; as I said I actually like Elita-One's body design more than Starscream's though I would have preferred and entire team of females to combine with her rather than a mix of genders.

It's not the best line ever an perhaps the gimmick isn't ideal - Rodimus Prime needs killing with fire - but otherwise they are not hateful or anything like that - the Legends in particular are actually "Good".

So long as they still do additional unique items I don't mind them sharing the Hasbro products - I would however like the sticker issue addressed sooner rather than later.

I don't object to stickers so much as I object to BAD STICKERS. the ones they had as bonus sheets worked just fine for example. Typticon's stickers though were not great and he really needed some additional paint (like on the decks and ramps & his companion character).

Perhaps they could look into the idea of using coloured plastic inserts instead of the paint it might have some durability benefits too especially when it comes time to make things like Scorponok.

Oh there is one slight problem I see though for Takara and that might mean they have to carry on making the giftsets (namely Hydra & Buster) so perhaps the biggest issue (the Voyagers bad decos) might not be an issue at all if they carry on making Unite Warriors giftsets anyway.

Sorry about that there was a "Double post"

Carnivius_Prime wrote:I can get behind the unifying but only if it results in truly the best product. But even so I just don't see much in quality in the PotP line to begin with. I would prefer that Takara WOULD try improve on those toys considerably.

I agree with this 100%. They way PotP is looking right now, I'm really not interested. And I feel like some deco changes like Takara usually does would've gone a long way to improve these toys and make me interested in them

If the lines are going to be identical we may as well move all conversation into the Hasbro POTP thread.

King Kuuga wrote:If the lines are going to be identical we may as well move all conversation into the Hasbro POTP thread.

Eventually! Give me time to sort out stuff.

This move by Takara does seem to resonate with rumors from earlier in the year that they weren't doing so well financially. Hasbro may not be trying to acquire them, but Tomy is losing the Pokémon brand nest year and domestic (Japanese) sales are slowing. It makes sense that they may want to simply give us Hasbro's deco designs for two reasons. 1) Less paint is less money spent (fewer materials use and less labor in "man-hours" employed). 2) Less additional R&D to "fix" Hasbro's decos, which includes sometimes more than just fixing paint apps, but changing plastic colors, remolding parts, or reconfiguring the molds for different "gang molding" pairings.

My hope is that Takara doesn't just get steamrolled by Hasbro in this new "unified brand" venture. I would like Takara to be able to step in during the design process and say, "Hasbro, I know you want to do this as cheaply as possible, but if you cut your margins just slightly and do the figure THIS way instead, it'll be THAT much better of a product and a better consumer value."

So far, though, I'm not too worried with what we have already seen from Takara's initial PotP line-up. It consists of what is probably the best decoed of Hasbro's Wave 1 of the series. There really isn't anything to do to change Windcharger to make him more animation accurate. Beachcomber could maybe have the Autobot emblem on his robot mode chest and lose the emblem on his hood in vehicle mode, but that's really it. Slash is a new character, so her colors can't be compared to a G1 toy or cartoon model anyway. Jazz looks fine as is (minus "MAGA" eventually, I would hope). There's nothing really to "fix" with the Prime Masters. Optimus Prime looks nearly perfect except for gray hands. Same goes with Rodimus Prime, except again for a few tiny details (at least as colors go).

What we haven't seen so far from Takara for PotP is more telling, honestly. I want to know what they're planning to do with the PotP combiner teams. I've got a feeling we'll be pleasantly surprised.

Well, hey if that's the way they're gonna roll, I don't see a lot of point in importing the Takara figures with the exceptions of the exclusive ones they seem to get that we don't, or stuff like the upcoming clone sets.

I'll miss the extra touches Takara seemed to put into their figures though, as I'm sure we all know Hasbro is not about to go that route.

Such a shame.

Well if it means Hasbro will up their quality of paint and deco, then it's good news, but if Takara plans to downscale their deco and paint, then this does not bode well.

Leader class is available at the toys r us location in whitby.20% off sale with them all in baskets at the front doors.

Asepticon wrote:Well if it means Hasbro will up their quality of paint and deco, then it's good news, but if Takara plans to downscale their deco and paint, then this does not bode well.

I suspect it's the latter since Takara's POTP toys look exactly like Hasbro's, cartoon-inaccurate decos and foil stickers and all.

william-james88 wrote:Jazz for instance is a deluxe combiner which uses clear plastic and thus demands a lot more paint and the only combining deluxe to also need that was Groove which was a Takara design. So instead of seeing this as Takara lowering their standards for deco, it could be that this unified deco instead takes the Hasbro deco to higher stanards than before. What do you think? Let us know!

This is what I was thinking. sort of a middle meeting between higher quality, and cost based approach. So toys will be of slightly higher quality than in the past, but be a little more expensive, which we are seeing with PotP. So there is some good. But there is also some bad in that we probably wont see any unique toys to come from . In the past it was always fun to speculate on how would modify certain characters, or release completely new ones that chose not too.

Still...while the toys remain *exactly the same*, I imagine the packaging will still need to be region specific, and may offer some alternatives.

Back in the original series, while toys were the same, Takara still released gift sets for Bruticus, Predaking, Abominus...etc. that North America never got. I'm still hoping we may get Unite Warrior styled gift sets for PotP Volcanicus, Abominus, perhaps some of the other voyagers as well. Even if the toys are exactly the same, I'd go for the packaging in this case, which should be less expensive overall I would think, with this announcement, maybe $120-$130 range to import?

hushed wrote:

Bronzewolf wrote:It's unknown how these errors are occuring, but there have been no reports of Micronus or Vector Primes shipping without any Prime Masters at all.
Several Seibertron board members have expressed interest in documenting this strange anomaly, so if you run into any Power of the Primes figure that includes two Prime Masters please leave a comment in the Energon Pub Forums below. There might be some information on your figure that could help us track down exactly what production lot run these errors are coming from!

Possibly we can find the errors are on specific production dates?

For those who aren't familiar with how Hasbro dates products:

My MAGA Jazz is numbered 72341. The 7 represents 2017, and 234 represents the 234rd day of the year. The 1 is a fairly standard on nearly all of their products. I don't think anyone has ever been able to track down what the 1 signifies. There are rare examples of GI Joe figures from the 80s ending with a 2 or a 3.

If anyone wants to track them, my Vector Prime has a datecode of 72691.

(Back when I was a quality supervisor for a company that used date codes like this, we had much the same numbering system. If I remember correctly, that last number was the shift, or perhaps the run number. I would venture a guess that would be the case here too with a possible shift number. Or perhaps a running change to the mold would flip that number? Just thinking out loud with educated guesses...)

https://www.smythstoys.com/ie/en-ie/toy ... /164583004

Swoop has appeared on SMYTHS Irish site, not in stock and so far the only POTP Deluxe but at least we know they will be €20, which as will the Voyagers is cheaper that Titans Return