have hasbro/takara become lazy...

[Tabias Prime]

hi guys, i hope I'm not the only one who feels this way, I love my Transformers but I'm starting to get a little tired of the toy company's just rehashing old moulds and just putting a different name on the toy because they can't be bothered getting of their butts and paying someone to make new ones. it seems that the toy designers have run out of ideas and have decided we can't be bothered anymore, lets use this mould change the colours give him a different name and nobody will notice.i want to see something fresh, something that will catch me eye and go "wow i want that", not God not another one of those..I see more imagination from the people on this board and on others in there Customs sections than i see coming out of the toy company's. People with real imaginations who can give us transformers lovers something to look forward to buying. I don't mind paying a little bit extra for a little bit of extra thought and imagination. If I'm wrong I'll get off my soapbox and stop ranting

[Gutsman Heavy]

redecos have been a staple since G1, get used to it.

[Adzma]

Redecoes are cheaper to produce. Go figure.

[Paulbot]

It's cost effective for them to repaint these toys for a quick buck but I don't think they are lazy.

You can't look at the new toys from the past few years and think they have run out of ideas.

The Animated line is full of very clever new ideas and radically different robot designs (although not to everyone's taste).

The automorphing Movie toys have a whole different style of robot design and transformations (although not to everyone's taste).

And both of these lines are very different from the more traditional Universe/Henkei toys, which still bring great new designs to the mix.

I think between these three lines Hasbro/Takara are more creative now than they've been in a long time.

[GoktimusPrime]

As others have said, this is nothing new. Looking at G1 you have lots of examples such as:
+ Frenzy & Rumble
+ Buzzsaw & Laserbeak
+ Starscream, Skywarp & Thundercracker
...and the list goes on.

But for me, things started getting out of hand in 2003 with Armada's "Powerlinx" where they decided to "upgrade" all the Autobots and Decepticons by simply releasing repaints of them - then they chucked them in the show just for extra appeal. In 2000 we had the Super Car Robot Bros., but that was only limited to three toys. It wasn't as if virtually the entire CR/RiD line got "upgrade repaints" done of them. (-_-) Then the trend continued in Energon - to the point that we have Energon Hot Shot and Energon Energon Hot Shot. But thankfully died down by Cybertron.

Now while I can understand your frustration in seeing HasTak slap new paint on an existing mould and give it a new name to make a new character/toy out of it, I find these "upgrade" repaints much much more frustrating because they're not even new characters. It's literally like that episode of The Simpsons when Malibu Stacy gets a hat. (-_-)

Look at all the gratuitous repaints in Animated...
+ Lockdown: original, Stealth & Blazing -- they're all still the same guy. Why do we need 3 different variations? (and that's not including Bandit Lockdown)
+ Bumblebee: original & Elite Guard -- stick some different colours and call him "Elite Guard"... okay sure, they improved on the stinger weapon, but otherwise... pointless. I would've preferred a new wave of original Bumblebees with corrected weapons (like we had with 70s Camaro movie Bumblebee)
...and the list goes on.

Now I know that variants is nothing new to Transformers either. In 1984 we had both Bumblebee and Cliffjumper available in both red and yellow (and every other colour in S.America) and there's lots more examples... but these variations occured incidentally, not with the specific intent of milking more money from consumers.

Anyway - the best way to tell HasTak what we think about "pointless" repaints is to vote with our wallets. If you like 'em, buy them. If you don't, then boycott them. I usually abstain from buying what I view as "meaningless" repaints - although admittedly the concept of "meaningless" is highly subjective.

[jaydisc]

Yeah, I'm not seein' this either. There have been some amazing toys come out in the past 12 months.

[kup]

I don't mind a good focused repaint like say Dirge from the new Universe vs sets. However crazy stuff that makes no sense like Mudflap, the mentioned Animated upgrades, etc are just silly.

[Sky Shadow]

hi guys, i hope I'm not the only one who feels this way, I love my Transformers but I'm starting to get a little tired of the toy company's just rehashing old moulds and just putting a different name on the toy because they can't be bothered getting of their butts and paying someone to make new ones. it seems that the toy designers have run out of ideas and have decided we can't be bothered anymore, lets use this mould change the colours give him a different name and nobody will notice.

I totally agree. In fact, I've written about this very problem before:

I'm tired of the laziness Hasbro Bradley is showing in their 'Transformers' line. I can't be the only one who's noticed that the 'Starscream' toy is exactly the same as the 'Thundercracker' and 'Skywarp' ones, just in a different colour with different stickers. Speaking of lazy - they can't even be bothered to apply all the stickers in the factory and expect us to do most of them ourselves! If I'm going to be shelling out over fifteen dollars for a toy, I expect so much more. And do they really think we're so blind that we can't tell that the so-called 'Ratchet' and 'Prowl' toys are just Ironhide and Bluestreak with extra lights stuck on their roofs?

Also, 'Laserbeak'/'Frenzy' is going to be warming pegs for the next twenty-five years! I laugh out loud at that! Why would anyone want a blue Rumble and red Buzzsaw when they can just buy the normal ones that come with Ravage and Soundwave? And when it comes to these 'recolours', sometimes Hasbro Bradley doesn't even bother to rename the toy! Have you noticed that they've released 'Bumblebee' in red and 'Cliffjumper' in yellow on their normal cardbacks and just hope we're stupid enough to buy both? I don't think so, Hasbro Bradley!

With this level of laziness, there's no way this toyline is going to last into 1985.

[jaydisc]

GOLD!

[SilverDragon]

We're in an economic crisis. Repainting molds is cheaper than making new ones.

Also, they had to save SOME money to make new molds for RotF, which I think is why all the Universe Voyagers with the exception of Inferno were repaints/remolds.