Quote Originally Posted by philby View Post
do we know anything about takara's level of involvement with these? some people, especially on the tfw2005 forum seem very vocal about how bad hasbro is at everything and takara is always better. from what we can see apart from groove, hasbro is basically doing everything here and then takara takes it and slightly adjusts paint apps etc. it doesn't seem very fair to say hasbro's version sucks when maybe there wouldn't even be another option without them doing this line.
This seems to be the prevailing attitude, grass is greener and all that, but Hasbro releases first, and Takara charges more, so yeah, it's going to be "better."

However I think from memory one company will start the design process (either Hasbro OR Takara) and then it bounces between the two companies in terms of moulding/transformation etc, the each company chooses their own paint budget and designs accordingly. Occasionally one of the companies will do their own thing (see Groove and the Prime Jet Vehicons) that the other can't/won't use, for cost/safety/market reasons.

I believe in this case, Hasbro started the Combiner Wars thing rolling, based on Takara's "surprise" at Alpha Bravo's inclusion.