Percentage of Repaints

[Verno]

Repaints.

I don't know what marketing genius came up with the idea, and I'm fine with the idea in small doses, but what sort of percentage of lines are either repaints themselves or have been subsequently repainted?

I'll use the example of my beloved Beast Wars: Transmetals.

Razorclaw (Repaint of Original Razorclaw)
Airazor (Repaint of Original Airazor)
Tarantulas (Fox Kids Tarantulas)
Waspinator (Fox Kids Waspinator)
Terrorsaur (Armada Terrorsaur)
Rattrap (WalMart Rattrap [PackRat])
Cheetor (Fox Kids Cheetor) (Armada Cheetor)
Rhinox (Fox Kids Rhinox) (Armada Rhinox)
Airazor (Fox Kids Airazor) (Armada Airazor)
Megatron (Armada Predacon)
Scavenger
Optimus Primal (BotCon Apelinq)
Rampage (BotCon Shakoract)
Depth Charge (Universe Depth Charge)
Optimal Optimus (Beast Machines Primal Prime)

15 figures in total in the line, 14 of which have been repainted at least once, and I'm sure I've missed a couple. And this is just the Transmetals, let alone the TM2's or Originals.

The Armada ones make me laugh. The idea was that the mini-cons enabled missiles to fire or some other hidden feature, but when it came to the BW moulds, they just clipped on and that was the end. Ridiculous.

So, taking a line like DOTM or ROTF, moving into the future, are we to see figures from those lines super-imposed onto other lines? Or have they already been repainted enough within their own line? Nightwatch Optimus Prime. What a load of bollocks.

I like repaints if they are a different character. Without them I wouldn't have Tigatron or Blackarachnia, but the percentage of repaints in the line seems to be getting worse and worse with time - by worse I of course mean more.

TF: Prime is the new baby. What can we expect to see from it? Starscream painted into every other seeker out of principle? A Megatron repainted into a Galvatron, even though Galvatron isn't even in it (yet)? An Armada Unicron repainted to appear as a TF: Prime Unicron?

It's a bad, and seemingly ever worsening, habit that Hasbro have gotten in to. Yes, there were repaints in G1, but never to this scale.

[Golden Phoenix]

Interesting idea.
Would you include remoulds as a separate statistic or as the same as a repaint?

[Verno]

Interesting idea.
Would you include remoulds as a separate statistic or as the same as a repaint?

That's a tough one, and depends a lot on the amount of work done. Wolfang and K-9 are more or less the same mould, but then again, there is enough to make them different to be individual figures and counted as seperate. Megatron Croc and Iguanus are in the same boat.

So major retools would be seperate for me.

[kup]

Since 2001, the line has begun to increasingly be dominated by repaints specially after the second of third wave of a line.

[griffin]

Unfortunately it's a necessary evil to keep the costs down. Each time they can re-use a mould and sell the redeco (or even a new headed figure), the total investment for those toys comes down due to the cost of design, development and most importantly, the cost of the Moulds themselves. We may not see the cost saving in action, but for a long time during that period size classes like Deluxe was pegged at the US$10 price point, and I can imagine that they tried to prevent it going above that for as long as possible, despite inflation, cost of oil/plastic and weakening US$.

I don't like it either, but I'm willing to accept it if it means the toys are 20%, 10% or even 5% cheaper.
And on the plus side, it can also give us redecos that might look better than the original deco, giving "selective" collectors better choice on purchasing the best version for their "quality" collection. Even me as a "have to buy them all" collector, I will sometimes have a later deco at the front of a display shelf because it looks better than the first version.

[Verno]

Having said that though Grif, have the toys gotten cheaper in price with the increase of repaints over the years? Most of you, from what I read, only buy them when they're on sale anyway, rarely at full retail price.

[griffin]

But that's us here, who are being shafted with the prices... but I don't see redecos making toys cheaper, it just offsets a necessary price rise due to rising costs of production or weakening exchange rate.
If there really is any cost saving for hasbro to do redecos, imagine how much more expensive the toys would be here if they didn't do redecos.

I'd imagine that the only way to know for sure is being on the Hasbro board, or accessing their corporate archives, to know the reasons for redecos... so is all just guesses from me.

I did have a look at some figures though, to see how price has compared to inflation. Compared to inflation of about 34% in America since 1996, the rising cost of primary resources and fluctuating US$, a Deluxe class figure has (only) gone up 20% in that same time in America.
It's more difficult to assess that for us though with Hasbro America dictating our prices and everything being paid for in US$ before stock arrives in Australia, but Deluxe prices for us were at $20 during Beast Wars, went up to about $30 a few years back, and is now sitting at $25-30 at the major stores.

[SkyWarp91]

Sounds like not only are you not fond of repaints, but all other lines that aren't BW

[Verno]

Sounds like not only are you not fond of repaints, but all other lines that aren't BW

That's not true. I'm not a fan of other lines bastardising BW moulds. I quite like the look of Alternators and really think that, coupled with RID, gave birth to G1-esk figures of goodness that we're seeing now in Generations, which also look quite snazzy.

I question why it's BW specifically that's been so heavily borrowed from? BM has 40-odd moulds that could have been reused in the time since, but even that line wasn't devoid of borrowing from BW: T-Wrecks, Dinotron, Rapticon, Terranotron... It's a smaller percentage, but they couldn't resist repainting their rider figures.

[GoktimusPrime]

I don't mind repaints if there's some creativity behind it rather than just complete randomness. I tend to prefer repaints where the repaint is a new character instead of a variant of the same character.

Look at the CHUGUR Seekers for example - they're all repaints (and retools in the case of Ramjet, Dirge and Thrust) of the Classics Starscream mould, but people like to collect them because each one of them is a unique individual.

I don't want more versions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee... I want more new characters! Instead of giving us another repaint of Movie Optimus Prime, why not paint him white and finally give us movie Ultra Magnus? We had Recon Ravage and Sea Attack Ravage pegwarming badly... why not repaint Ravage as movieverse Glit and Howlback? Or heck, even Steeljaw would have been preferrable.

Transformers Generations did pretty well in retooling/repainting certain moulds to give us new characters. e.g.: Drift/Blurr, Darkmount/Skullgrin, Sunstreaker/Red Alert, Tracks/Wheeljack, WFC Bumblebee/Cliffjumper, and the upcoming Junkheap (from Wreck Gar).

And we saw that there were other potential retools/repaints that they had planned for Generations but for some reason didn't happen (but it would've been so awesome if it did), e.g. Thunderwing/Black Shadow, Kup/Gears... and there's a lot of other potential repaints they could do with Generations that I reckon would sell, e.g. WFC Optimus Prime --> Ultra Magnus, Scourge --> Sweep, Cyclonus --> Armada, Warpath --> Treds...

And there's potential in RTS too like Jazz --> Ricochet, Windcharger --> Tailgate (just needs a new head), Perceptor --> Reflector etc. And Legends Starscream could be repainted five more times as the other Seekers and Legends Prowl could be retooled/repainted as Legends Bluestreak.

...there's a LOT that Hasbro can do with repaints to make them interesting and appealing with creativity instead of just random and banal with things like "Yet Another Bumblebee." Boo.

And Beast Wars did pretty well in this department - sure we had repaints and retools, but often they became different characters.
e.g.:
Cheetor/Tigatron(/Shadow Panther)
Terrorsaur/Lazorbeak
Waspinator/Buzz Saw
Tarantulas/Blackarachnia
Dinobot/Grimlock (Grimmie needs a GPS free reissue stat!!)
TM2 Cheetor/Tripredacus Agent
...etc. Far more imagination and creativity at work there instead of "Nitro Cheetor." Erm... okay.