A little bit of love for Henkei Hot Rod.

[kup]

I'm just saying that corporations will do what they believe will sell in the market and the market shall therefore vindicaate them. And obviously it worked. What you or I want to say about philosophy or mentality are moot points.

They're philosophical but they're hardly practical. A business at the end of the day has cost/benefit considerations - not just considerations based on the desires of particularly small segment of its overall market. I'd love more technical transformations too but I realise and accept that this is predominantly a kids market and whatever satisfies that market so as to generate the highest return would appear to be the best avenue.

Forgot about this thread

Yes you are right that corporations will do what they think will sell, why would they do something they know wouldn't sell? Therefore that in itself is a moot point since Universe Hot Shot has been made by the same corporation that did the original and primarily aimed at the same age groups.

The bottom line is that Hasbro thought that the original Hot Shot would sell (and it did) and it also thought that this new Universe Hot Shot would sell too or it would not have seen the light of day. However you can still notice a different design philosophy in both - One prefers to use the gimmick as the main attraction of the figure while the other one relies on an interesting design and playability based on articulation and poseability. From a business point of view neither is right or wrong as they were both created to sell but their design mentality is clearly different in both.

When it comes to 'what the market can tolerate' that is also a moot point. Clearly Hasbro thinks that the market can tolerate a well engineered toy with no overbearing gimmicks or this toy would have been released as an electronic box with arms and legs instead. So basically it is up to the 'philosophy' of the designers if they think that a more fun toy is one which is a gimmick first and Transformer second or one that uses engineering and articulation as its main attraction.

Apparently Hasbro thinks that toys without 'big' gimmicks can sell or Animated would of ended up being another gimmick fest line and so would have been Universe and the Movie so its up to the designer to choose which is the best way to go based on his design philosophy as Hasbro appears to not care as long as it thinks it can sell it to the stores and is not cost prohibitive.

Clearly the Designer of Armada had a radically different design mentality than the one one who did Classics/Henkei as the latter are prioritizing on the playability and design of the toy itself rather than the gimmick. However to be fair we have to also keep in mind that Hasbro did impose the gimmicks of each toy which limited design freedom but even so, several Armada toys are 'restricted' not necessarily by their gimmick but their design alone.