TakaraTomy Premium Finish series

[JJJ]

Like I said last week - we're getting stuck with the Australia tax.

[griffin]

The 4th wave is now officially revealed, and also now on EB Games - WFC VOY Starscream at $120 and SS DLX Ratchet at $78.. for release in January.

[griffin]

The more of these that are revealed, the less interested in them I am getting because of the price, based on what "extra" we are getting for toys that are 2-2.5 times the price of the original versions, which already had significant amounts of paint on them.
The first four pair up nicely enough to keep, but the next four just haven't got any "wow factor" for me, or "bang for my buck" for that amount of bucks they are asking.

[JJJ]

Yeah. I took a look at the Starscream because he's a favourite character and the Siege mould is one of the very best things that HasTak has ever produced, perhaps the best.

But... it's pretty much the same thing. Less battle damage paint (but still plenty there on the alt-mode), and, if the renders are accurate, different shades of red and blue (not so plasticy). Wow. Not worth buying the toy again; absolutely not worth paying more than twice as much.

Takara prestige? Stick it.

[JJJ]

Okay, someone is taking the absolute piss with the pricing on this stuff.

That Starscream can be had from Singapore for SGD 50. That's AUD $50.31.

[griffin]

Official images of a Ratchet sample, which I would imagine is a hand-finished sample, as the toys wouldn't be in production yet, and this sample has some rough bits and scratches to it.
It looks really nice and vibrant, but not enough different to the Studio Series toy to be worth the expense to me.
(and the hinge on the side breaking up the word "Department" really bugs me... almost like it should have missed letters just to look right)

[griffin]

A couple of images of Starscream from TakaraTomy.

I think if the regular release of this Siege Tetrajet was "clean", this premium version would actually look like it is more expensive with all of the extra paint... but as it is, it just looks the same with the grey splotches in different spots.

[griffin]

The first two are now out in Asia, and some photos of them compared to the regular toy versions have surfaced - Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.

This October pair was officially revealed in May.
The November pair was revealed in June.
The December pair was revealed in early July.
The January pair was revealed in the last days of July.

There are supposed to be another four in this series, and we should have had those remaining four revealed by now (two in September and two in October)... so I'm wondering if the pre-orders have been so bad on these that the line was cancelled after eight.

[griffin]

The second pair are out this month in Japan, and a couple of images of the actual Megatron toy have been posted... and I think the pixellated painting is really bad.

[JJJ]

Uh, wow.

I thought you meant that the image was somewhat pixellated, but no, they've actually gone with a halftone appearance to the tampographed details. Which is absurd; halftone is a method used to overcome the limitations of off-set multi-colour printing processes (several passes, each with one colour), and can look good in spite of the production method (because of the size of the dots and how the human eye works). This is completely un-necessary for something that is a) monochrome and b) produced by tampography.

This is just ugly, and I cannot understand why they went for it. But now I start to understand why they jacked up the prices (apart from the status symbol thing); this must have hugely increased the number of paint applications.

Oh, and it was originally being advertised as all painted silver (or maybe silver plastic), not bare off-white plastic with a few tampos...