yikes. the mood in here is venomous. i would support if they reproduced vintages at a price, but i'm not counting on it. and i speak as someone whos splurged on guys like g1 amongst them wheeljack, sunstreaker, mirage, hound (before it was reissued) being the 4 origianal cars that werent reissued then, and fort max, overlord and others citybots. doesnt make sense if you make the reissues exorbitant, might as well go for the real deal.
Personally I thought Overload was one of the best figures in the line. Of course, none of this vehemence towards Kyde could have anything to do with the recent unpleasantness between you and him over which proto was which, could it? On the subject of reissues and the like. I would fully support continued reissues; and if they have to come from a third party like Swoop, then so be it as long as the quality is good. I buy TFs to enjoy them, and I buy G1 TFs to get the ones I couldn't have as a kid. And if I have to get KOs to fill the gaps until I can afford to buy the originals, then I'll do just that.
I think someone needs to send out the Nevermore alert. If any thread was made for his imput, it is this one. On to the issue of re-issues: I have been a big fan of them. I have been able to buy a lot of G1 toys that I was not able to get the first time around. I thank Hasbro and Takara a lot for them. If they were big money makers we would be getting them all of the time. If it were easy and cost effective to re create the molds they would do it. It is not. So we probably will not see many more re-issues from them. We might get one on occasion, but they will be few and far between.
A few years back the molds for the Micronaut city building sets (for those who don't know, the sets are mostly 2 inch flat squares that hook together with little hinges...it was an AWESOME set when I was a kid) went up for auction after a factory was sold. Even as small and uncomplicated as those pieces were, the mold was HUGE (several tons of metal IIRC) so it was more cost effective for Mego to simply abandon it than move it. I suspect the same holds true for Hasbro. Look at what we've seen with Botcon and remolded heads. Just the head adds somewhere near 10,000 for the molding. Creatus Maximus gave some insight with their Smart Bombs line...for little 4 inch statues the molding costs were in the neighborhood of $16000 for an item that was to have a VERY small run (275) and no articulation and a total of 4 individual parts. With an item like a Transformer with all the precise engineering and complexity, and in some cases hundreds of individual pieces I'm sure that adds exponentially...
I hope they still do. That would be great if Takomy would reissue each of them complete with everything. I would gladly pay $250 in a second for that.
It took my local TRU like a year to get rid of Ultra Magnus. I was probably the only person in my city who bought all the TRU reissues for full price. As much as I love reissues, many are unlikely. If you notice, Hasbro only reissued what Takara had already reissued. In fact my Hoist came with a Japanese stat card like the ones that come with Takara reissues. Make more classics and I am a happy camper.
Unfortunately, no real chance of that, either . At least until Hasbro has need of another filler line (Movie 2?). And by that time, maybe the market might have changed, and we end up getting Beast Wars Classics instead . I think we'll have to wait and see what "Heroes" gives us, whether it gives us something more movie-inspired, or back to basics. Although it's been said that they're trying to experiment a bit in order to create an iconic "look" for TFs, one that differentiates them from any other giant robot franchise out there. I guess it's a matter of what public acceptance of the movie will be, and what kind of indications it may give for the future.
Yes, by helping make Hasbro record profits... OOH! Beast Wars Classics! I'd be all over those... at least if they play up the season 1 "organic" aspect rather than TM and TM2s...
I think part of the reason these didn't sell as well as Hasbro would have liked was the changes to the figures and the weapons. The other factor is that Takara has released all these reissues, in most cases, before Hasbro did. And I don't know about you, but a lot of collectors went for those as the bots and weapons were original in most cases. Hasbro has several problem with doing G1 reissues. They are always a day behind Takara and the US regulations make them modify the toys.
In my own interpretation, Toys R Us was as much at fault, if not more, than Hasbro or anyone else for the relative non-success of G1 reissues. Based on my own observations, Prime (at $40) and Hot Rod/Rodimus Major (at about $18/$20) sold VERY well, and were pretty damn tough to find a lot of places. Ultra Magnus (also $40) shelf warmed a fair bit, mostly because it was an expensive toy of a less popular character (Relative to Prime anyway) Starscream also sold really well, and the more expensive Powermaster Prime shelfwarmed. The early gangbusters success seemed to lead TRU into thinking the reissues would be big, right when many of the "big" popular characters were already out of the way. They started selling the Autobot cars for $30 each and Decepticon jets for $35, and ordering them in larger quantities. I'm not sure what the real cost structure is, but I'm led to believe the toys could have been sold for less while still making a reasonable profit. With a few exceptions, none of those newer releases were characters that anyone except die-hard fans and collectors cared about either, so a large chunk of 'casual fan' sales were lost. Stepper/Ricochet was a great example - some fans and collectors liked the opportunity to get a (formerly) rare Japan-exclusive figure, but few others knew who it was or cared, and that's not nearly enough sales to support a wide release or a large production run. Interestingly enough, Soundwave seems to be doing rather well-saleswise (though it's a bit early to tell), but then it's a more popular character, and better value-for-money than most of the G1 car TFs to boot.
TRU certainly had it's issues, though from what I saw the costs for TRU went UP substantially...so I can't just blame TRU. IMHO what they should have done (and what I SUGGESTED personally while I was a manager there) was to go the E-Hobby route with each reissue...in a case of 6 Autobot cars have 2 of them be a new color scheme and character...For people like me who balked at pieces I allready had I know I would have snapped up the new colors in a quick heartbeat. Boom, reissue sales jump with a 33% sell through just with the new character...less shelfwarmers ...needless to say, they hated the idea, thought I was crazy, and it never happened.
Yup, I feel the same way. Don't they only have to recreate the mold once? The demand is there....I think they would make up their money on demand alone. But what do I know...
By some accounts - most of us aren't or weren't around to check as readily as TRUs here for Hasbro reissues - many of the bookstyle reissues did very poorly as well. Ricochet not selling at TRU USA's inflated price with its modifications is one thing, but Stepper being a shelfwarmer in TRU Japan is a whole other can of worms. Just like in the US, all their main characters sold like hotcakes - Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave - but what about the cars? Jazz was ruined because of that tab for his hood, Inferno is probably easier to find in a Japanese box, and so on. Not even TM Hot Rod is that uncommon. There's no doubt completists and hardcore collectors were getting them, but you don't hear about multiple production runs for Skids, do you? Or re-releases via Bandai Asia? On the Hasbro side of things: 1. Cheaper reissues don't equate to instant sales. Hasbro still has plenty of Astrotrain when the price on the practically identical Takara version is going up. Sideswipe wasn't exactly flying off KB shelves, but I haven't heard much about success with that recently. 2. Hasbro may have very well tried to sell the reissues to the big chains, and they said no, forcing the exclusive deal with TRU. Wal-Mart can sell whatever it chooses to, not obligated to accept whatever is offered to it, as everyone should know given the Alt situation in the past. The movie was really the best chance of reviving the line, but is most likely too late for that given the amount of product to be released, and Hasbro wanting to focus most of the effort on movie-design stuff.
Right here buddy. It's not addressed specifically just towards Transformers, so you'll probably try to pass it off as BS, but it's right there. Transformers is a core brand, and if it was in any trouble Hasbro wouldn't be doing as well without it.
