Encore Devastator

[reillyd]

The dinobot moulds are most probably lost, so I wouldn't bank on them being reissued. Fort max might still be possible because the mould was of course used for brave max. Problem is that encore omega supreme & metroplex reportedly shelf warmed, which would discourage tomy from reissuing other big & expensive city formers like trypticon... Let alone the biggest and ultra expensive toy like fort max. All we can do is vote with our wallets & continue to support encore if we wanna see more

You seem to be our resident expert on all things Japanese Goktimus . ,so perhaps you can answer a mystery for me about the molds. New transformers are created and sculpted all the time, no? Eg classics henkei Grims. So why isn't it just a case of creating a new mold for a toy that is a close replica to the original? Some of these knock offs don't quite get the mold right, so they must be rebuilt and not using the original molds. Is it that encore just doesn't have the same volume as say a Hasbro toy at retail, or that hasbro just isn't intested in Encoree?

[GoktimusPrime]

New transformers are created and sculpted all the time, no? Eg classics henkei Grims.

Yep. And it takes a considerable amount of time and money to develop new moulds.

So why isn't it just a case of creating a new mold for a toy that is a close replica to the original? Some of these knock offs don't quite get the mold right, so they must be rebuilt and not using the original molds.

It always costs more to produce something legitimately. Counterfeiting is easier and cheaper. Look at the costs of legit DVDs and Blu Rays versus the cost of buying pirated DVDs and Blu Ray discs -- you can get some pirated DVDs at a third of the price of the legit, and some of them are decent quality too.

And there's a lot more to producing a legit toy than meets the eye - costs that counterfeiters don't have to pay. e.g. legal costs (e.g. registration, patents etc.), marketing, design etc etc. And remember that TOMY is a company that employs professional engineers, maintains customer call centres, market researchers, illustrators, designers, cleaners, secretaries, human resource officers, liaison officers, web designers and all the other people who are on their payroll. And these people would be paid in Japanese Yen, probably on higher wages than bootleggers in China being paid in Chinese Yuan - and they would also have various other employer costs such as superannuation, sick leave, annual leave etc. Then there's the costs of maintaining their actual offices (there's one in Tokyo and one in Osaka) and all kinds of other additional costs like liaising with Hasbro in the U.S. (which would include international business class travel, accommodation, transport, interpreters etc.) -- while a lot of these costs may be tax deductible, it's still a cost that they have to bear. Then there's the costs of attending toy shows where they showcase their products to retailers.

Furthermore, TakaraTOMY have higher standards than bootleggers. They also have a strict budget to adhere to -- I don't buy KOs, but I've heard that a lot of them can be pretty expensive, whereas TakaraTOMY tries to keep their reissues relatively affordable.

Look at the reissue of the original G1 Optimus Prime toy (first reissued by Takara in 2000) - the G1 mould was too deteriorated or far gone to use, so they took the G2 mould. But the problem was that the arms were too deteriorated to use, so Takara had to rebuild new arms for Convoy from scratch. Takara have said that this was a _very_ expensive venture for them - and we've seen HasTak milk that mould for all it's worth with many, many times that they've kept reissuing that toy over and over again! But with Optimus Prime it seems to have been worth it as the single most iconic toy in Transformers. And that's just with a mostly in-tact G2 mould that just needed new arms! If the Dinobot moulds are even more deteriorated than that, or are completely gone - then I highly doubt that it would be viable for TOMY to reissue those figures.

Is it that encore just doesn't have the same volume as say a Hasbro toy at retail, or that hasbro just isn't intested in Encoree?

This is also true. G1 reissues are part of what Hasbro classifies as "high end collectables" - i.e. toys targeted at the adult collectors market, which is a niche market. As a result, toys like reissues, Binaltech, Masterpiece etc. are produced in much more limited numbers compared to their "mainstream" Transformer toys aimed at children.

This is also why when a Japanese reissue is shelfwarming, it's more serious than seeing a regular mainstream TF toy shelfwarming.

[kup]

I am not sure if I would buy all the Encore Dinobots if released. I already have all the originals complete. I would still like to support 'lost mold' reissues so I would at least try to buy a couple.