The molds are made of steel, if they aren't being stored properly it doesn't take much for them to get damaged.
So I was taking pictures of my Encore God Fire Convoy, noting some of the changes and where the problems are... then one of my lights fell over the bulb broke.
I'll pick up a new bulb Friday, in the meantime here are a couple things worth pointing out.
First off the box is MASSIVE!
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Easily dwarfs the God Ginrai box and it's packed full. But it's also relatively flat, being based on packaging from a time when bigger packaging in Japan was supposed to be more attractive. They could have easily done them in a layer rather than stacking them on end and cut the height in half.
Out of the box the most glaring issue is Fire Convoy's chest.
chest.jpg
Bunch of problems with the chest. First it's molded in clear plastic now and they painted the back side blue making the screw holes and molding points now visible through the back side. No idea why they would choose to do this, it's not like you could see through his chest in the cartoon so being clear is entirely pointless. Also notice that the red parts that stick into the clear parts are just a blob of paint where the original had sharp lines between the blue and red. In fairness this is cartoon accurate, but the figure isn't molded for that. They should have molded this in red like the rest of the figure, painted the chest windows glossy light blue, and kept with the silver painted abs.
OK, so the big sticking point is his feet, but it's actually just his right foot.
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Can you see what's wrong here? There's actually two problems here thanks to a botched repair job. First off the gray part the foot is connected to, the hole isn't aligned properly. If you follow it from left to right they made the hole crooked. And it's not warped, the plastic is actually thinner on the right end and mine has a very small hairline crack in it even though the hole maintained its shape. It's likly the part of the mold that makes that hole was bent and not realigned. This is why you're supposed to do test molds!
Second problem is on the red part just to the right of the hinge. Do you see how you can see the clear plastic on the side of the joint where it connects to the red part? This is from a poor repair job, that red part is supposed to be a tiny bit longer if you compare it to the original to prevent the gap. The hinge actually slides side to side now thanks to the gap.
OK, that's all of the negative things I've noticed this far, here are a couple interesting observations. First, all of the screws are now black instead of silver, and on the battery door they've added an arrow showing which way to unscrew it.
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Second, and this is a big one, the hips are much, much tighter compared to the original which was the biggest problem this figure had. I just hope the joint can withstand the tightness.
More later.
Emerje
Licensing issues....... 
