Animated Ratchet recolour multi-pack.

[kup]

Agreed. It's not like I'm buying a Big mac where ingredients, people and time can vary greatly to what the end product looks like. I'm buying something that has exact measurements in paint used and moulds used.

I think they need a reminder that they arn't selling fast food. I can only cringe at the thought on what next years movie toys will look like.

I have noticed a pattern with Hasbro. It seems that they will put effort into their toys if there is a third party attached or if they are licensing from an external company.

If you notice, their Star Wars toys overall have decent finishes and paint jobs because they are using a third party License to produce the toys. If they pee off Lucas, he could push for the franchise to be licensed to another company.

Transformer lines such as Universe and Animated are exclusively Hasbro owned, the toys don't have to be approved by anyone else nor would they disgruntle any of their partners if they cut back in manufacturing costs. That is why I think they are being lazy as hell with these Hasbro owned franchises.

However when it comes to the second Movie line, they will not just be dealing with their own but will be licensing the design of the alt modes from General Motors and other Heavy Weight companies and investors as well as the movie studios. So if they become slack with the finishes and quality, they would be harming their business relations and upsetting their license owner and investors. They will put the extra effort on the Movie toys.

The original movie line was actually pretty good in overall quality despite some questionable molds (Leader Brawl, Starscream) and I believe this is because the Movie line had other companies involved not just Hasbro.

[MV75]

We'll wait and see. My concerns are poor paint apps on clear plastic. Yea, that.

[Tiby]

Well, this kind of stuff is making my (enforced) decision to cut back and not be a completist so much easier. This would clearly be one of the figures that sit in alt mode behind all the others on the shelf where you can't see them... like half the movie line which I sadly bought before I knew better...

I'd rather save my money for obscure and far superior figures, like Universe Swerve which has pride of place IN FRONT OF my questionable and hide-able movie figures. I will NOT make the same mistake with Animated or Classics (Heavy Load?). Thanks Hasbro for helping me grapple with this difficult decision.

[MV75]

Glad to see I'm not the only one that's been "convinced" to be more select in what I buy now. I was afraid that I was getting too bored and bitter, but no, it's what's been put on offer that has changed, and thus I've reacted to it.

I loved the cybertron line. Pretty great quality all-round. I never had any issues with paint apps with any of the toys, they all look great. I have no regrets in buying most of that line (I've mould completed it). It pretty much set the standard to me on what I should be expecting from subsequent modern lines.

I'm only going to buy a very few select figures from universe (most will be henkei), and I've decided to steer clear of the animated toys altogether. I do like the animated cartoon very very much, I'm just very far from impressed with how the toys have turned out.

I'm shifting mostly now to the encore line instead.

[Thanatos]

Yeah, not a huge fan of this particular repaint. Like you guys have all said, it feels very forced and pointless.

Don't worry though, knowing Hasbro, our country won't even see this repaint on our shelves.

[Pulse]

After my initial clearout of a bunch of Cyb figures (I went overboard with that line ), I've actually found it quite easy to only obtain the figures from various lines that I want

I find it a total crack-up how some people have to obtain everything (I'm talking about every single pointless repaint... )

[GoktimusPrime]

If you notice, their Star Wars toys overall have decent finishes and paint jobs because they are using a third party License to produce the toys. If they pee off Lucas, he could push for the franchise to be licensed to another company.

I don't think it's just that. Hasbro can produce good toys if they choose to. Lord Zed was pointing out before that G.I. Joe seems to experience more consistent quality compared to Transformers - and Aaron Archer himself has admitted that he is personally a G.I. Joe fan (and not really a fan of Transformers) as a youngin'. Now I don't have a problem with Archer being a Joe fan - we're all entitled to our personal preferences and what not, but I do find it somewhat unprofessional that Hasbro seems to pay more attention to certain lines (e.g.: Star Wars, G.I. Joe) over others.

Marvel is a toyline that Hasbro's manufacturing through a third party licence yet it seems to be suffering from inconsistent quality and attention too. I find that Marvel toys really don't seem as good to me now that they're with Hasbro back to when they used to be made by ToyBiz. Take the toys from the first two Spiderman movies (ToyBiz) compared to the Spiderman 3 figures (Hasbro). IMO the Spiderman 3 figures are massive disappointments compared to their ToyBiz counterparts. I picked up Spiderman 3 Green Goblin (II) and symbiote Spiderman and I was disappointed with both of them to the point where I've been completely turned off buying any more Marvel toys.

Hasbro does produce some good Transformers from time to time - e.g.: their Masterpiece Starscream. But the problem is that for every success there's an epic fail. Their results are very sporadic and inconsistent - very much hit and miss. Takara makes mistakes too, but they're more consistent when it comes to improving on their failings whereas Hasbro just seems to jump all over the place... giving me the impression that they're not paying attention to what they're doing, which in turn makes me feel like that they don't care or don't really take pride in their work when it comes to Transformers.

And even Star Wars occasionally has some odd fails. I find the microphone on the new Clone Trooper helmet to be really poor and substantially inferior to that on the Optimus Prime and Darth Vader voice changing helmets. Although the helmet itself is very well made and snaps together very well. Unlike the Optimus Prime helmet both the Vader and Clone helmets actually cover the entire head properly.

[The_Damned]

for the love of god why wouldn't they repaint him as ironhide?

[GoktimusPrime]

That would make more sense than this yellow thing. Mind you, Ironhide would need a new head. And ideally the strobe lights would need to be removed too.


...a silver chrome variant of Animated Ironhide would be really cool as some kind of limited exclusive.