Quote Originally Posted by llamatron View Post
I seriously doubt this thing can genuinely sell 8000 units direct to consumers (no retailers) in North America. But I would bet heavily that it's going ahead no matter what and the target is purely there to help encourage sales and lock in as many orders as possible. Hasbro are in total control of the platform, they will just flip that number past 8000 on the last day if they need to.
I think you're right, I'm getting a feeling that this 'crowd funding' is just another tool to engage the fans. They have put in so much work and development to this already, there must be some kind of mould already created, maybe even a soft aluminium or silicon mould. Close up shots don't show any striations like you might expect from 3D printed parts. even if it's just the visible parts of each mode, that's still most of it. Yes there's probably a fair amount of NRE (Non recurring Engineering ) left to perform, to clean it up from a transformation perspective but to not proceed with this now would be a massive investment loss for Hasbro and Takara. Especially that the fine print does say that they will be looking for other avenues to distribute to the rest of the world once funded.

I love it, looking at the entire figure, the back is very well layered and the legs are wrapped by a part on the heel that will/should help lock all the folded panels in place. I was wondering early on if they could have fit more of the panelling/shell into the backs of the legs but in retrospect that would mean they would have to fold up much more leading to smaller parts and a more fiddley transformation. and more likelihood of manufacturing errors.

I really want to get it, I have enough saved up, I just have to figure out if I want to fork out the dosh to import it from the states in some convoluted manner or wait and hope it gets released here or accessibly in Asia.
I also currently have no idea here I'm going to display it. but that's a third world problem.