have hasbro/takara become lazy...

[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.

[Tabias Prime]

I think what GoktimusPrime said pretty much what i was trying to get at. the pointless repaints and the different variations. Quoting GoktimusPrime (It's literally like that episode of The Simpsons when Malibu Stacy gets a hat.)how many different version of one character do you need.

[Tabias Prime]

i think what set me off to start this thread was the fact that i saw the other day was a Primal Prime which was nothing more than retool of Cybertron Leobreaker with a new head and redecoed in blue and red,but like GoktimusPrime said you can always vote with your wallet and If you like 'em, buy them. If you don't, then boycott them. having a rant isn't going to change this but i just wanted to get other peoples thoughts on the subject more than anything. They've been doing it the last 25 years so i guess there isn't much we can do but choose what we buy..

[Paulbot]

In the case of Leo Prime getting a new head actually means they made a bit of an effort. Not much of an effort but it's more than goes into a lot of recolours. The way they designed toys like Sunstreaker, Prowl, Ironhide to be repaints with new heads and/or other slight changes is a nice thing compared to the reuse of Energon and Cybertron toys unchanged over and over again.