After they bothered to remold so many other figures, I don't find that a terribly compelling reason. Again, nobody cares about cartoon Misfire anyway.  

I have to wonder what the line of communication is between Takara and Hasbro on stuff like this. Seems like a bit of coordination could go a long way.

Hardly. Even when they released it, Brainstorm was lame. His bot mode is decent, but his alt-mode was so painfully just Blurr with tiny wings and some minor superficial bits.

Considering that they only released Brainstorm as an exclusive, I'm not sure that reasoning holds. That also sort of implies that they don't know what molds they have in the pipe one or two waves down the line, or that the molds aren't finished yet. They could have released the Triggerhappy base mold first as Brainstorm, then Triggerhappy as a 'remold.'

Of course, I'm sure Hasbro has some internal rubric for how many times they have to re-use a mold in order to judge it "profitable" and stuff... but sometimes the character choices suffer for it.

zmog

 

If anything the method you proposed is probably the reason they didn't. A brand new mold would have been expensive. Brainstorm was probably selected as the Walgreens exclusive because he was a remold and met the specific costs they (Walgreens) were willing to pay for an exclusive toy at that specific time.

 

That makes sense and being one of the original four Headmasters is the incentive needed that would warrant interest in the exclusive, whereas if it had been Breakaway, it could have been easily ignored.

 

Nautica was and Arcee looks even worst.

 

I never said anything about a new mold. I said that they should have remolded based on the core Triggerhappy mold. Because ultimately, what's really the budgetary difference between remolding Blurr to get a mediocre Brainstorm, and remolding Triggerhappy to get an awesome Brainstorm?

That would almost makes sense, if not for the fact that Hasbro has demonstrated on many, many, many occasions that they feel no sense of urgency whatsoever when it comes to completing subsets of characters in a timely manner (Seekers, Frenzy/Rumble, Insecticons come to mind)... in light of that, waiting a wave or two is nothing.

Which is not to say that Hasbro is completely capricious, and has no reasons for what they do. I'm just saying that they have no GOOD reasons for many of the choices they make, and the outcome is often that we end up with an undesirable or sub-optimal result.

zmog

 

Gods I want that combiner wars Spinister & Needlenose something fierce... /drool

 

At that point in the timeline, the Triggerhappy mold probably didn't exist and could absolutely be considered a new mold. The costs for developing and creating that mold likely would be borne then by the exclusive toy however as with many prior exclusives and boxsets the funding for creating entirely new deluxe molds was just not something that the retailers paying for exclusives were willing to pony up.

 

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure a good chunk of the line is ready to go ahead of time.

 

They are, a good chunk of this stuff has to be packed and warehoused before they hit shelves. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a ton of wave one and a good chunk of wave two before they ship anything out.

 

Quake solution for Flywheels is creative, although since im an asshole my plan is just to leave him as a headmaster and put him inside of MMC's Tesarus' chest

hmmm, good thing they made a titans return Krok, that way I just need to pay aftermarket prices on spinister and not spinister and krok...

 

I wonder if the Ptero head would work on him with black arms...

 

The Triggerhappy design and mold absolutely existed at that point. These lines are planned out way in advance. It's not like they're just coming up with new molds every 6 months and packing them off directly to the shelves.

Was the mold going to be ready in time? Did they have it in their manufacturing schedule to produce that many molds during a single wave? Maybe not.

But then, the simple solution in that case would be to just wait and release Brainstorm as a character with the better mold a wave or two later, rather than as an isolated store exclusive.

Hasbro makes weird, screwed-up decisions sometimes.

zmog

 

I wonder if there would still be complaining is Misfire had a toy-accurate head, but they still painted the eyes blue? I mean, that's definitely toy accurate. I like the Scavengers, but I don't seem to be so excited about them like some people (probably also that I've cooled a lot on James Roberts in general). So visored Misfire is cool with me. Glad I'm waiting on the Takara version though. Need the Targetmaster and red eyes.

 

Still a missed opportunity...

 

I would be totally fine with that cause if it bothered me enough it's a simple fix with a dab of paint. As he is now I need a new Shapeways TR face plate and to paint it up, way more involved and at this point just means another TR figure I have no interest in getting.

You know, I was just thinking if him being an SDCC box set exclusive had more weight on the decision to release him as a Blurr remould and not him being a Walgreen's exclusive (which would have just given them another reason to just use Blurr's mould and be done with it).

If they weren't ready by SDCC to use the Trigger happy mould, which they probably weren't at that time.

 

So, they started putting paint on the titan masters again?


No TR Krok btw?

 

Also, most Transformers fans probably aren't into the IDW fiction.

Example: I want Overlord because he's a cool toy, not because of the Japanese G1 stuff or IDW.

But people here know my opinions on IDW, so I won't go into detail.

 

Yes, a very pleasant surprise, painted Titan Masters. Aimless is lovely for it.

TR Krok is one I skipped. The TCC did a good job on theirs, and I don't need a third of the guy in my collection