The Energon Pub

I feel that the exercise of repainting and retooling has gotten exponentially better over the years. But back in the day, they could be quite lazy which has caused my complaints. But I've been thinking lately... could those old lazy repaints have a new lease on life?

Let's go through the exercise:
New mold is made of popular character X. Mold is then re-released as a straight repaint/retool as a completely different character.

I know that these days the equation is sometimes backwards, but it usually has mixed results. People crying "LAZY!" or people simply happy that an obscure character is being made period. The main argument for those mad are that they don't want everyone on their shelf to look so similar which is perfectly valid.

But now consider this:
Popular character X is due for an update. He's released in a new line with a new mold, and might likely replace his predecessor. Now the repaint/retool of his previous mold stands on his own!

Since this is my discussion you'd think I'd have a plethora of examples, but I have some serious writers block. All I can think of is Kup: Generations, Titans Return, and GDO Swerve.





I highly doubt anyone is using GDO Swerve as their definitive C/G Swerve, but bare with me. How many people looked at GDO Swerve and thought "no thanks Hasbro, that's Kup". And how many people looked at TR Kup and thought "bye bye Generations Kup!"?

Personally, I think it changes the game.
The next time you see a popular character "lazily" retooled/repainted into someone else, don't instantly dismiss it. Because that popular fella will indefinitely return in a couple years sporting a new mold, while obscurity McGee has to wait another decade

I don't have either figure yet, but for this very reason I'm even more into the idea of getting Takara Nightbird than I was before. I much prefer TR Arcee to Generations so I'd use the former over the latter for her; which means that if I got Nightbird she'd have a more unique look to her!

Unpopular since most actually want most of these to be the same mold; but I like to take advantage of just how many Seekers there have been to create a unique lineup. So for instance I use T30 Armada Starscream for Starscream; I use the FoC mold for Skywarp; etc. I still need to work out something for the other three seekers I want; Thundercracker, Sunstorm and Dirge

Kurona wrote:I don't have either figure yet, but for this very reason I'm even more into the idea of getting Takara Nightbird than I was before. I much prefer TR Arcee to Generations so I'd use the former over the latter for her; which means that if I got Nightbird she'd have a more unique look to her!

Yes! This is exactly what I'm talking about. Thank you for the much better example

Kurona wrote:Unpopular since most actually want most of these to be the same mold; but I like to take advantage of just how many Seekers there have been to create a unique lineup. So for instance I use T30 Armada Starscream for Starscream; I use the FoC mold for Skywarp; etc. I still need to work out something for the other three seekers I want; Thundercracker, Sunstorm and Dirge

How about these?

Kurona wrote:Unpopular since most actually want most of these to be the same mold; but I like to take advantage of just how many Seekers there have been to create a unique lineup. So for instance I use T30 Armada Starscream for Starscream; I use the FoC mold for Skywarp; etc. I still need to work out something for the other three seekers I want; Thundercracker, Sunstorm and Dirge

Wait, I'm not the only one who likes the idea of the Seekers looking distinct from each other beyond colours? Marry me.

In all seriousness though, ROTF Dirge is a definite, I want him myself. I'd have to recommend against the Sunstorm redeco of Armada Thrust, if only because Thrust is not a great toy. A shame as I love his design. One you COULD use as a Sunstorm if you feel particularly cheeky with your repurposes is ROTF Terradive. He's (AFAIK) got no personality of his own and is a fantastic figure, and he's mostly orangey-yellow. As for Thundercracker, how about getting a BM deluxe Jetstorm and putting some Decepticon stickers over the Vehicon symbols? The mold was redecoed into Skywarp after all, and it's a good figure.

They've always had life for me because my imagination goes beyond the boundaries of G1

With that unnecessary hot take out of the way, yeah, the retroactive repurposing of older stuff is a good source of fun. Always nice to refine an entry in a collection, but it doesn't mean others then have to go!

I like to imagine that the old Universe 2.0 Onslaught is one of the Combatrons, a resident of a planet that didn't end up happening in Cybertron/Galaxy Force. The Ultra Class Powerglide from the same series works for that too, I think.

More to the actual point of this thread, getting CW Onslaught made Botcon Clench really start to own that Universe Ultra Class mold.

I'm kind in the exact opposite of what you are intending. In my case, the newer figures were repurposed instead of an older one.

If anything, I think Titans Return upped the game so to speak on re-purposing characters. The easy one off the bat is pairing the Thunderwing die cast head with TLK Nitro. But the fun only started there for me. I have both CW leader and TR voyager Megatron. So CW Megs is my collection's megs, and TR megs now has Nitro Zeus' head and is a new character Nitro Zeus, who is sort of a Megatron fanboy and basic decepticon grunt.

I have Thrilling 30 Blitzwing, and don't really mind the mold, wonky shoulders and all, so he stayed my Blitzwing, while I paired TR Blitzwing with Flywheel's TR head to have a Flywheels in the collection.

So TR gave us 2 versions of a mold that already had somewhat recent characters an I managed to repurpose both by keeping the previous characters and adding new heads to the new figures.