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.

[kristofferrer]

I think it really comes back down to business. The bottom line is that Takara and Hasbro are out there to make money. They can either:

* Design something quickly and to a high standard, but then it will not be cheap. or
* Design something quickly and cheaply, but it will not be of high quality (e.g. repaints). or
* Design something with high quality and cheaply, but it will take a long time.



The price they sell their figures is what throws me off. As a fan I'm barely ok with repaints ... What really throws me of is when they repaint it and sell it for 100000% plastic value.... here's an example

[Sky Shadow]

Nobody ever has to buy a repaint. The only force impelling anyone to be a completist is him or herself. There are more than enough Transformers out there for people to buy without ever having to buy a repaint. And then people could even spend the extra money they save on luxury items - you know - like clothes or rent or food.

[GoktimusPrime]

kristofferrer, I don't think your example wasn't a very good one as Gentei Wildrider is a rare and limited convention exclusive toy. The reason why exclusive toys are typically repaints (and occasionally a slight retool). Because they're manufactured in such small numbers and have limited distribution, it's not justifiable to manufacture entirely new moulds engineered from scratch for such limited production runs. They're also only available through limited exclusive means of distribution such as attending an event (e.g. convention), competition prize (either through merit or random draw), store exclusive (including online store exclusives like e-Hobby) et al.

Also, exclusive toys are sometimes organised by people outside of Hasbro/Takara; like TF fans (such as the Hartman brothers, Glen Hallit, Ichikawa Hirofumi, Akiyama Fumihiko etc.), in tandem with Hasbro/Takara - so they represent toys where the repaint/retool and characters are made by fans for fans, and not expressly for personal corporate "greed. A lot of these characters/toys wouldn't sell in the regular market because they only appeal to hardcore fans -- most more casual fans and kids wouldn't even bat an eyelid to toys like...
+ Road Hauler
+ Crosscut
+ Cybertron mode Beast Wars TFs (Timelines)
+ Alpha Trion
+ Fracture, Bug Bite and other Gobots
...etc.

Exclusives have recently also allowed some toys that were cancelled for release in the regular market to be made available to collectors as exclusives. It's not as nice as having them as regular releases, but it beats nothing. BotCon Dirge, Thrust & Thundercracker as well as Henkei Thundercracker, Skywarp and Gentei Dirge and Thrust are examples of this.

So I think exclusive repaints are in an entirely different league from other repaints, particularly what some might consider to be "frivolous" or "meaningless" repaints: i.e.: a repaint for repaint's sake just to milk more money out of fans. Like yeah okay, the endless numbers of black and clear limited repaints Takara do is pretty crazy, but the fact that they're limited (and sometimes chase figures) puts them in a different category from "Malibu Stacy with a hat" Transformers like say Activator Bandit Lockdown or the Mini-Con Sea Team in blue... how long did they shelf warm for!