It's been stated here time and time again about re-paints / re-decos about being cost cutters, and that' why we have so many and why people shuld quit whining about them. But from the panel... Borrowed molds might save some cash, BUT they may not be the quick buck everyone thought they were.
well in a sense they are cheaper because they dont have to spend the effort and money to build and engineer a new mold
So the whole "they have to redeco everything to make the money to make new stuff" canard has been thrown out the window. Good to know for future battles with white knights.
I thought it was a given that the toys have to go through QC and packaging no matter what. I never imagined repaints save HasTak heaps of money. Then again considering how they seem to be using the same mould over and over again until the mould wear shows on the toy, I wonder how much they are saving by not making a new mould for producing those repaints.
No. Redecoes recoup costs for the moulds, but they still cost money to produce and subject to QC and safety tests. Redecoes are not as expensive as whole new toys, but they're by no means "cheap." Basically all they lack from production is the tooling of the actual moulds, which you'd be surprised how little that goes towards the overall cost of a toy.
IIRC the question was asked in the context of "could we get more exclusive repaints like you guys did for Dragstrip, Overkill, etc. a few years ago?". I believe the answer was given so that people didn't think repaints were something you just slapped together on a whim and were thus a "no-brainer". The process to put out a product is an expensive and risky proposition, even for a repaint.
If you read the quote, it says: There is still a savings for Hasbro, which I'm assuming is based on: Not having to create a new mold Design a new figure from scratch The stuff mentioned like QC and packaging makes sense, since these are standard things that Hasbro does when manufacturing ANY toy, regardless of whether the mold is being used for the first time or the fifth. Let's assume that we as a fandom believed a repaint saved Hasbro 75% of the cost of creating a new toy from scratch. The way I interpret Hasbro's comment is the equivilent of them saying "no it's closer to 50% not 75%".
That's not what he said in the title and he typed not in capital letters. Repainting toys is not much cheaper than making a remold and yet they still make repaints. Why? Every toy company reuses parts from some other toy to save money and not have to pay designers to sculpt a new toy. How is Hasbro any diffrent?
Here's the thing the comment from the panel doesn't make a full comparison. Are we talking the price of a repaint Vs a new mold, or a repaint Vs a remolded figure. Since the argument is typically repaints vs new molds, that's how I framed my response. From that POV, the OP didn't state his case well since the comment from the Hasbro panel was loaded with subjective language and a lack of evidence to reinforce it. In fact the last line of his post undermines his own thread title.
The thread title is wrong: redecos are relatively cheaper, but not as inexpensive as we might have think.
Fair enough. But they're still money savers, so I guess I don't understand the point of this thread, especially since nothing has been quantified.
That is the absolute last thing Hasbro should ever admit to us. If it's true, they should have kept it a secret and protected that secret by any means necessary. Because knowing that makes the repaints 100x harder to stomach than they already were. There is such a thing as too much transparency in the manufacturer/consumer relationship.
They are money savers, but in the same way not flushing handfulls of cash down the toilet is a sound investement. Yeah, technically it's true, but you make it sounds so simple. They exist to justify the cost of new moulds, but are no way some "easy" thing to do.