I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, I searched for the the words in my topic title and nothing came up that mentioned what I'm about to. Also I'm not sure if there were mold changes between the releases. I was looking at my Eject or Rewind(those are the names of the two blue cassetticons Blaster has right?) and had a small magnifying glass near buy(its normaly used to look for imperfections in gems, my mom's fience gave it to me a while back) and used it to read the Takara and Hasbro copyright info. I then wondered if they updated them on the re-releases. So I grabbed my Jazz re-release and red his copyright info(its on his feet, sorta hard to see due to the black) and it turns out they have updated it to 2002. I don't know if some hobby shops will try and pawn off the releases as orignals for better profit but if your ever really centered on buying originals just check the copyright info. For Seekers its on their left leg.
Oh I didn't relize that, sorry. I have a re-release of Magnus but the last time I saw his orignal mold was around ten years ago. So does this make the topic usless? Also is that why my re-release Thundercracker have missles longer than the gun barrels?
What I was meaning was telling a loose re-release from the orignal. Before I knew about slight changes for saftey laws I was thinking about how easy it would be for a Hobby shop to buy the re-releases and take them out of the boxes, throw away or leave a couple of missles or something maybe put the decales on and try and take'm off or something and then place them in the glass cases with a higher price and pass them off for the orignals from the 80s and make a profit off of them.
Gets a bit trickier with Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus for example, where the copyright info is on the trailer.
If you can see the stamped info on the toy itself, most if not all reissues are stamped "Made in China", while most genuine G1 aren't (most early G1 toys are made in Japan I believe)
The reason why your reissue Thundercracker has longer missles compared to the first release i.e. vintage is because if "safety reasons" in the USA. I don't know the exact name of the group in-charge but they're the ones also responsible for the "drop test" whereby Fortress Maximus was deemed to be "unsafe" for the US toy market. As for telling apart loose original toys to their reissue counterparts...its kind of tricky but most people use the "copy-right" method.
whats the difference between the U.S. reissue and the Japanese reissue? i know that the smokestacks r shorter.. wat else?
There are a couple more toys that have such differences but mostly to the weapons. If I remember correctly, most of the US reissues had "unchromed" and "larger" missles such as Prowl and Jazz - something which G1 purist were unhappy about. However, I laud Hasbro's move for ensuring the safety of kids. Besides, Hasbro has even improved some of its reissues such as "fixing" the subsequent production run of Jazz - making it more "stable" in his vehicle mode. Another difference is that G1 Megatron was never reissued in the States due to "gun laws" (?) but he could be purchased on-line by US fans. The Japanese reissues had their reissues close to the originals mainly because of the collecting culture there - toy collecting is deemed as an acceptable hobby. That's why we get to see such amazing stuff in the market such as Master Piece Convoy (Optimus Prime) and Starscream, Yamtao's Macross series, Soul of Chogokin, Gundams etc.
There is no Blast Off "reissue" in the strict sense. At least none that can't be told apart from earlier releases by the color scheme alone.
try this website if you need help... I think it works good. Helped me find out who my Minicons were. http://tfu.info/
it depends on the figure you have to compare with. With Prime's cab mode the front wheel mounts stick out further. All the bootlegs are based off the reissue mold too. Most have an updated manufactoring stamp.
What exactly does this have to do with the premise of this thread, "How to tell a re-release from an original G1"? I mean, it's nice you brought up TFU and all (although the site should be pretty much common knowledge by now), but it doesn't really help answering the question, since TFU only provides a general toy overview, not an in-depth analysis of "original vs. reissue" with a comparison of copystamps at all.
If someone's going to throw around links to reference differentiating reissues from original G1 stuff, might as well make it THE most relevant link to the subject: http://www.geocities.com/futuristgroup/vquanda.html That guy's archived more info on every G1 variation, including those of the reissues, than should be healthy for a person to do, heh. The site's extremely meticulous and reveals a lot more than just "check the copyright date" to protect someone from getting ripped off.
