A lot of the problems you're talking about are simple mould deterioration.

Basically -- every time a mould is used it gets more worn out. So either the mould has to be recast or fixed up to produce a better quality toy again.

Nowadays there appear to simply be less castings of moulds produced and less mould touch-ups than in G1. Allow me to explain.

In G1 toys were produced for SEVERAL YEARS RUNNING. Seriously, a single mould could get flogged for *three years straight* if it was a popular character. All G1 toys saw at LEAST a full year of production run... which is why they're so bloody COMMON now.

It's insanely easy to get an absolute ARMY of Jumpstarters now, even though they haven't been produced for over 20 years, because they flogged that mould for two or three years straight.

Nowadays a toy like Optimus Prime will PROBABLY have one or two really well known variations. In G1 Prime was produced for about three years straight and he amassed a MASSIVE number of variations. That's because there were probably several versions of his mould, and his mould was touched up, improved, fixed or changed CONSTANTLY across that time to keep production coming.

You CAN tell the difference in quality between some moulds... and in fact one of the problems you can run into when trying to fix up G1 moulds is that if you get two toys from production runs far enough apart... THEIR PARTS WON'T BE INTERCHANGEABLE!

I've run into this problem myself -- I tried to fix up my Grimlock from three different Grimlocks, one UK Classics version, and two from the original run. I managed to get a complete Grimlock out of it... but the rest of the parts COULDN'T be assembled into a complete GRimlock because the parts WOULD NOT FIT TOGETHER.

This is because of mould variations -- the sort of thing that just doesn't happen nearly as much any more.

Ever get a second-hand accessory only to find your G1 toy's fist hole is too small or too big for the weapon?

Again, same thing. It's a GENUINE accessory... it's just that it's from a different production run of the toy. Metroplex is pretty bad for this, especially his knee caps... but Scramble City moulds are also bad for sufferring from this... with the smaller guys not being able to hold their guns.

--Jhiaxus
(It's not about where the toys are produced, really, but about a MASSIVE shift in how toys are sold, how production runs are done and the priorities for Hasbro and Tomy since the 1980s.)