Gripe about it on the Internet, of course!  

 

This guy gets it! 

 

Oh no! Nobody is gonna use the beating a dead horse emoticon to describe me!........................ yet.

 

You know how i describe you when talking to other board.memebers
   

 

It's unlikely, but I hope the hips are actually friction-based joints as opposed to ratchet-based joints. My only gripe with their Downbeat was that since his hips were ratcheted, it made his stances kind of awkward and limited (he could either stand with legs together or legs spread too far apart).

 

OH NO YOU DIDN'T!!!!  

 

Hmmn, $120 seems like a great price to me. Carbots are still going for $90 -$100 - Bad cubes charging $80 for a minibot Huffer /Pipes)
, KFC Transistor goes for $140, FT Lupus $140, the good Springers are $120-$140. Takara is still charging up to $200 for Seekers and Megs was $230.
I think we've gotten a little spoiled by the cheap combiners from zeta and KFC but those are special cases. 12 months ago we'd have been falling over ourselves to praise a $120 Seeker. I'm ready to order 3 Seekers and 3 Coneheads at that price. $720 for Maketoys versus $1200 for Takara? Easy win.

 

I still need to see closeups of the faces before I bite.

 

That completely depends. I can get MP-11 brand new for less than $120 shipped to New Zealand. Yes, Coneheads are more expensive but they're exclusives so there's a reason for the price hike (I'm not saying they're worth it because I don't think they are, but still).

"Good Springers" really depends, because the Open and Play one is one of the best Springers and it's cheaper than the rest.

A lot of those prices depend on where you live, who you buy them from, and honestly, there are plenty of figures cheaper than a lot of those prices. ToyWorld's Cosmos is cheaper than Huffer and Pipes, for example.

My point is that we can't just cherry-pick things to compare them, especially when prices change from region to region and toy to toy. It's not that simple.

But anyway, I'm not really sure why I bothered with all of this because it seems that if you don't agree with the price being okay and the wings being fine, everyone attacks you for having the "wrong" opinion.

Sigh.

 

A big disappointment is the neck articulation, need some reviews asap

 

Where are my coneheads

 

That's all true but is there any reason to assume you won't be able to pick up Howling Meteor for a lower price from those same places? $120 is the mainstream US online store price. The prices I quoted are also from the same US stores. Yes you can pick up Transistor cheaper theough Taibao or Enay with flash sales ... but you'll almost certainly be able to pick up HM from those same places for cheaper. And yes I cherry picked a number of products that are of similar size and presumably complexity (Transistor, Lupus, Springer) and demonstrated that those are the same price or more. Yes there is a cheaper Springer and a cheaper Cosmos... and BB7 and KBB have produced cheaper Seekers. There are very cheap products (Open Play and BB7) there are mid range products (MMC Springer and Maketoys HM) and there are more expensive options (FT and XTB Springer and Takara MP-11) HM is a mid tier price bracket and is at the lower end of that bracket for what seems to be an astonishingly poseable and sweet looking figure. There are issues sure, but not enough to push this to the "cheap" $100 price bracket. At least not for me. You're mileage may vary and you can always pick up BB7 Seekers at that $100 price point. Options. They're great.

 

I can see the issues that people have with Howling Meteor, and I can see why those issues and the price tag on him will keep some people from buying, especially those that already have an MP Starscream. The only Seeker I have is the Walmart Skywarp based on the ancient MP-3, though, so I'm in for at least Starscream and Thundercracker. And if I do those two, I'll probably do Skywarp, too. May go with someone else for Coneheads, though.

 

I buy Masterpieces straight from Japan because it's much cheaper to ship them to New Zealand than America (and considering you're in Australia, I'm not sure why you don't do that too - it'd be a lot cheaper for you). That means you cut out the middleman i.e. the part where US retailers/distributors have to actually get the things imported by paying to ship them all the way from Japan. That inflates the price. The exchange rate doesn't help either. MP-11 is definitely cheaper for me to import than Howling Meteor will likely ever be (or, at best, they'll be about the same price to import).

Also, Open and Play aren't KOs so it's weird that you lobbed it in with BB7 which ARE knock-offs and said that their products are very cheap. I mean, yes, Big Spring is quite cheap, but apart from a few loose tabs, it's pretty comparable to things FansToys and even TakaraTomy put out, so it's kind of hard to then go on to justify the prices for Springers that cost more or other figures of the same price point.

And also, in case I need to reiterate, you cannot compare things such as BB7 and KBB products because they're knock-offs. 90% of the work that goes into a figure has already been done when a KO comes along and gets made. So really, bringing those into the conversation is rather irrelevant.

Anyway, I'm not saying people can't have opinions but I'm saying that not all of us are buying from US retailers, especially with official Masterpieces where it's usually the Americans and Canadians and maybe the British who get some of the worst deals on TakaraTomy releases simply because of their geographical location and therefore shipping costs, so it's very hard to definitively say "X is better than Y" sort of thing which we seem to be constantly doing.

Also, Classics Starscream doesn't have hollow wings. That came out in 2006. Just saying~

 

Nope KO's aren't irrelevant. You may choose not to buy them through an ideological choice, but that's your choice - I choose not to buy the Open play or Toy world examples you quoted but that's my choice. The option is still there. Ideological decisions don't effect overall price comparisons.
I do buy official from Japan but unless you get the early bird discount, they're still expensive and 3P generally isn't available through Japanese stores, only official stuff.
BB7 KO's are better quality than official Seekers and are some of the tightest most solid figures out there.
Open play is a new manufacturer coming into a heavily contested segment of the market so they deliberately undercut prices to build market share. Yes their stuff may be good but it remains to be seen whether their pricing will remain low or if this is a one off to build reputation and market share.
End of the day, you buy what you like and justify the costs you pay, as do I. To me, $120 is fine for a Seeker sized figure, from a high tier, established manufacturer with a good reputation like Maketoys. Expecting them to sell a figure this size and complexity for the same price they sold Downbeat is naive and personally I never expected them to. I am actually pleasantly surprised the price is as low as it is because they could have easily aimed for the $140 price point that is common for big bots of that size from established companies.
You don't like the figure or the price? That's cool. It's fun to debate this stuff.

 

Technically, they're not a retailer. The stores that you get them from are.

 

I had plans on getting this, but the back of the wings and a few other things that I don't like will make me have to pass. So now it looks like I will have to go out and get Mp11 molds of Skywarp and Thundercracker, along with Dirge and Thrust.

Maybe Ft, or Xtb, Kfc, or even Bc, will give us better updated g1 seekers and coneheads.

 

Not another qc gamble from Xtb/KFC. And Badcube isn't exactly known for their straightforward, intuititive transformation sequences. I trust FT.

 

Woops - meant retailer . Problem with posting before morning coffee. The idea still applies though AFAIK.

 

So, you're sticking with "retailer"... LOL