Also rubber brakes down faster, alot faster went played with a lot so you'd have a lot more return due to tires shredding, that going to push your costs way up and make a lot of retailer not want to carry them either.
BALL JOINTS!! Give me swivels, twists, or ratcheting joint all day every day over godawful ball joints. Ball joints are imprecise, and while you get more poseability possibilities, you lose stability and precision, and everything becomes all loosey-goosey over time. Transformations are less straightforward, as any part can go in any direction, and the 'well-oiled-machine' feeling that some of the G1 toys had is lost.
part-popping. See Ransack, the biplane scout. I like to be able to get from alt mode to bot mode without an arm or a leg or a wing coming off. Accessories. I don't like em. HFTD deluxe Bumblebee has the right idea with the flip-out weapons. Floppy alt modes. Everything should lock together solid. Gappy alt modes. Can be annoying.
Now that they are giving double joints to their elbows and knees, I really notice how much I don't like when they only have one joint, aiding in poor articulation. Something I also really hate when kibble blocks joint movement, a lot. *Looks at Alt. Tracks* "Fuck you Tracks"
1.Parts with nicely sculpted details that aren't painted properly. ( I know official products can't be painted to the same levels as customised ones but even a few extra paint apps can make all the difference to how a toy looks. Takara are generally good in this area but Hasbro are pathetic. ) 2."Reimagined" designs of G1 characters that render much of what made them stand out in the first place redundant. ( Along with Hot Rod, Kup & Blurr always stood out amongst the rest of the Autobot cars for their unique alt modes so it sucks to see 2 of them reduced to generic car-bots and Hot Rod the only one that retains much of his original aesthetic. ) 3.Toys that fall to pieces during transformation because of the crappy ball joints. ( A major problem with the Bayformers and Animated lines and one which caused me to resell several items as they became more trouble to handle than fun. )
Not to drag it on but 20k is an average for a small mold, yes, but I'm talking per piece overall. It's a few cents per figure. Especially if they use tumblers and avoid the manual cycling and auto cycle with a person rushing to cut the flashing and runners. That stuff gets hot (I hated running 3 autos, one of which was abs with fiber fill and 2 being rubber stoppers hotter then hell coming down the belt). So yeah I was going by per figure costs.
If you're going per figure, almost everything is "a few cents": that extra paint app, an extra joint, a weapon, etc. Rubber wheels are low on my personal list of aspects that matter, if it means sacrificing say an extra paint app or jointed hands and such.
Material cost per item is not a valid measure of the total production costs of a figure. A few cents per figure sounds like nothing. But factor in the extra tens of thousands of dollars needed for start-up, and suddenly you're a lot less willing to fork over that cash. One $20,000 mold means that, on a production run of 20,000, the cost per figure rises at least $1. Depending how retailer markups are applied, any extra costs incurred may be further multiplied. It's all rather moot, because Hasbro and their retailers don't want to raise costs. The prices of TFs have remained remarkably low over the last decade, far below the rate of inflation, as a part of a concerted effort to keep the retail price palpable. It doesn't look good for business when the price of the top selling action figure line suddenly jumps a couple of dollars between years, all over these fiddly little details that the target audience couldn't care less about.
Not in my country they don't. An average Deluxe will cost me about £18 including shipping from an import store and the Takara United versions will be about £5 more. I don't mind paying a bit more for something that looks like some effort was made in ensuring the product looks as good as it could be instead of Hasbro's cheap ass approach.
You can utilize the same tires on different molds and a small mold can make up to 4 pairs so two different sets can be made. It does make more sense when you run numbers like that. I am a bit curious as to the production costs resulting in the same priced figures as well, especially with gas prices raising. All I can think is they're doing less and less virgin material , adding more regrind and finding cheaper factories. The quality of the plastic has gone down but it's still good stuff. A good buffer is the share of movie profits they got from GI Joe and tftm too.
I'm sure I can think of dozens for this page, but for the moment: On humanoid TFs, end effectors that are neither hands/fists or a weapon proportionate to the robot's arm. (Examples: Whirl - 2-way claw hands, Energon Shockblast - giant satellite laser, ROTF Jolt - inverted 3 fingered claw hands, Movie Jazz - 3-way, 3-fingered claw hands) Even though I like them: Ironhide & Ratchet. Their upper bodies are proportionate to their seat-heads, if you imagine the hood minus the windshield as their chest. But when using the Aftermarket heads or even the Encore "box flap" cut-outs, that proportion is thrown out the window. Beast head for a hand, especially when extra bits like a neck make it much longer/larger than the opposite hand. (BW Fuzor Quickstrike)
No I'm not and I'm glad because it appears that the people who buy them are willing to accept any old crap as long as it says Transformers on the packaging.
Most adult collectors don't mind the extra costs so much. So hey, good thing we have plenty of import options. The average consumer and the kids they're buying for? Good luck on that sell. "But Mommy! That one has its tail-lights painted!" *groan* Yes, it sucks that HasTak doesn't have free reign to create the ultimate, super-duper toys with perfect QA and zero design flaws and paint apps out the wazoo and a bajillion moving parts and made out of 80% die-cast and whatever the hell the current complaint is about. But I think a good lot of us need to take a step back, and reaffirm for ourselves that we are not the average consumer, and that ultimately, most of these hard decisions made, be it simplified designs or lesser paint-apps or whatever, are meant to make the toys (namely the price) more appealing to their real target audience. The kids, and their parents. Once Deluxe figures start costing $25 or whatever, the whole brand is fucking dead.
In Sweden the prices were a bit high (running 20 to 25 USD for a deluxe) too not too mention a severe lack of non movie tfs (one city only had the rpms). When I move there I plan to have my friend back here in the USA store hunt for me.
In the UK Deluxes almost cost that much, At the current exchange rate £15 is the equivalent of just over $23. Considering the sad excuse for official distribution at retail level here and from what I gather Europe in general the brand may as well be dead.
Then you start running into other problems. It's incredibly stifling on the designers if they're forced to use standardized wheel sizes and styles. "Want to make a truck? Well, all you've got right now are racing wheels, so start planning a few more trucks to justify making a whole new mold." If the molds are shared between a couple of figures, then it means a certain quota of such-and-such type of vehicle have to be designed simultaneously for production to begin. Mold becomes damaged? Well, you've just knocked 2-3 toys out of production. "Oh, too bad, we were going to use that guy for a fan-favourite redeco, but his buddy's mold blew out." It doesn't make any sense. Exceptions and extraneous cases are not the norm. Yeah, those of you in Europe are getting hosed. But higher prices seem to be the norm over there in general, so I wouldn't take that as any indication as to the status of the line, but moreso your domestic retail environment. Meanwhile, the major markets in North America, and portions of Asia, still retain rock-bottom prices. Cost per Deluxe finally rose $2-3 in the past couple of years, after staying relatively static for 20 years. That's absolutely nuts. Accounting for inflation, the prices should have pretty much doubled over that time span, rather than just suddenly spiking a couple of bucks.
