How do you classify Combiner Deluxe Air Raid?
This is really only for those who care about taking note of new and reused moulds or classifying the toys in their collection. If you don't care how original or recycled a toy is, and just collect because it looks good or plays well, then this topic might make you roll your eyes in amusement.
There seems to be some dispute over what the classification of the Air Raid toy, in terms of new, redeco, remould/retool, etc.
They are both jets, but they have mostly different parts, and different transformation for the top half of the robot mode.
The two toys share - the thighs, the front half of the lower legs, the rubber tailfins & nose, elbows and combiner peg (about 30% of the toy).
They don't share - entire front/chest, back, upper arms, lower arms, tail wings, back of lower legs, cockpit/front of plane, wings, and head (about 70% of the toy).
(the gun & combiner foot/fist are the same but accessories are never counted when classifying toys as redecos or remolds - because when the redeco TFPrime Cyberverse toys would keep having different weapons, they were still called redecos, not remolds)
Considering much of the design process of Transformers toys are now done on computer, it's quite possible that recycling of parts will become more common to save time and money (like they do on CGI cartoons), with new parts designed to fit with the recycled parts.
So, if two toys share some parts but the majority of the toy has completely new parts, is it still classified as a remould/retool? If not, what would you call it, and what rough percentage would be the cut-off of new parts before you stop calling it a remould/retool?
For me, I'm thinking that when there is 50% new parts, it would need to be classified as "new mould with recycled parts", because if you keep calling it a remould or extensive remould no matter how much of it is new, it would mean that two toys with the same wheels or tyres would fit in that definition.
For example, Leader Thundercracker, Voyager Cyclonus, First Aid and Streetwise, all had some major parts that are different to an earlier toy, but they still have well over 50% of shared/common parts and engineering... so would qualify as (extensive) remould/retool.
My thinking is maybe a scale/spectrum from least to most changes, covering the elements of parts, colours and accessories...
Re-release - exactly the same
Re-release with new accessories - main toy is unchanged
Re-release with new head - rest of the toy is the same (often a running change)
Redeco - no new parts, just new colours
Redeco with new accessories - no new parts to the toy
Redeco with new head - rest of toy is the same
Minor remould/retool - very minor changes, like a little bit of re-sculpting.
Remould/retool - a small amount of changes to the mould, like whole parts that are new (up to 10% new - like hands, some minor panel re-sculpting).
Redeco remould/retool - new colours and some minor new parts.
Major remould/retool - 10-25% new parts (like new wings or significant panel re-sculpting)
Redeco major remould/retool - new colours and some significant new parts.
Extensive remould/retool - 25-50% new parts (like re-shelling the alt-mode)
New with recycled parts - more than 50% is completely new parts.
New with old accessories - the entire toy is new but the accessories are recycled.
New - the entire toy is made of new parts.
The last four categories don't have a "redeco" version because they are usually a completely new character or a "prefix" version of a character, so they either have all new colours, or the new parts (over a quarter) is enough new surface area with colouring, to need to have the entire colour scheme noted as a new colour scheme.
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