Sadly, I suspect the cracking of plastics is - at least to an extent - a by-product of the cartoon-accurate ambition. Hound has a lot of very thin pieces of plastic on active transformation joints.

I'm not being critical of TakaraTomy when I say this... but yeah, the less ambitious more toy-inspired equivalents like Sideswipe and Inferno seem to be fine.

Luckily for me, I prefer the toy-accuracy. But... I mean, I still have a cartoon-centic Hound because... well it's not like there's an alternative,