Jelze Bunnycat wrote:Rtron wrote:Jelze Bunnycat wrote:Polyoxymethylene (POM) is the main plastic used for structurally important pieces because of its strength, resilience and slipperiness (read: lack of resistance) and can't be painted with the stuff Hasbro uses. Had that off-colored piece on Sideswipe been made of regular ABS like the rest of the figure (read: moved to a different sprue), chances are we'd have seen reports of breakage before long. That plastic is restricted to one mold/color per tooling.
This comment warms my product designer heart. It's not necessarily what actually happened, but it's a good guess among all the strange theories people post all the time.
Some people just don't believe in "necessary evils"
It's not that whatever happened Hasbro actually wanted, but it was either that or waste time redesigning some aspects of the figure. We've seen what happened with PotP Jazz with its clear MABS car shell, so...
Yeah. I get where people come from, though, because there's Siege Sideswipe here, but then you get the case you mention, or Studio Series Jazz, or the Earthrise Datsun mold.
But sometimes there's so much things to balance that you are forced to make a choice that may end up being a bad one in the long run. Like having to give the car mode clear plastic windows, but not having enough of a budget to make them a separate piece, so because of the transformation scheme you're forced to have clear plastic on knees or transformation hinges.
I don't own any version of Sideswipe, but another possible explanation (assuming they are actually paintable plastic) could be that moving those pieces just isn't on the budget, or maybe it would force them to also modify a paint mask. Who knows. His ankle joints are also black, so are his fists and his "spine and shoulderblades", so it's possible you're correct.
Edit: After comparing both Siege and Kingdom Sideswipe pictures, it seems like the remold only affects the red parts of the toy. So it is very very likely that they said "Okay, this toy gets ONE new die". So the mold they changed was obviously the red one, because that's the one that holds most of the parts that are relevant to the look of the car mode. Thus leaving that tiny black part out.