I was thinking that for the Masterpiece line, Takara likes to milk its moulds by offering lots of repaints/retools. You know which G1 character has lots of repaints? BRUTICUS
There’s G1 and G2 Bruticus, Battle Gaia, Ruination/Baldigus, etc. There’s loads of repaint potential with Bruticus/Combaticons, and I’m sure there’s a crazy rich collector out there who’d be willing to collect all the repaints (or more than one at least). If not, I’m sure there’s at least a market for some of the individual Combaticons like Swindle, Brawl, etc..
There hasn’t yet been a combiner in the Masterpiece line yet, and even though it could be quite an expensive set (take your average price of a Masterpiece and multiply it by 5); I still think it could be done.
From a consumer standpoint, buying all the 5 Combaticons in one hit would be convenient because you’d then be able to form Bruticus right away, but it’ll be very expensive. Maybe the way to go would be to buy them individually (if the Combaticons are offered as individual releases than a set), then buy them in piecemeal whenever you can afford one. From a Marketing perspective, Takara could release the Combaticons seasonally, i.e. Vortex in Spring, Brawl in Summer, Onslaught in Autumn, etc. At the same time they’d avoid their risk of the collectors buying all the Combaticons at once, then losing interest in Masterpeice after that. I’m sure they’d love to keep the consumer waiting for the next release and staying invested in MPs over a longer period. It’d be a penile move of Takara’s part, but it’d be a smart move.
So yeah, I think Bruticus/Combaticons would be a pretty smart choice for a Masterpiece release(s).
On a different note, should we remake this poll in another thread? It’s almost 2 years old, and few of the choices (Sunstreaker and Hound) are pretty much redundant.