Third party group Play With This Too have revealed a new addition to their lineup. Speaking with the Cybercast podcast, PWTT’s Rik Alvarez showed off the concept of Wastelander, a planned redeco of the group’s figure inspired by Pretender Grimlock in colors seemingly inspired by Beast Wars Dinobot. According to Rik, this will be one of the stretch goal figures from the group’s Kickstarter.
Play With This Too is a group made up of former Hasbro staff, who are currently kickstarting their own line of action figures based loosely around the Pretenders and other classic 80s franchises like Inhumanoids and Centurions. Find out more here.
CodeXCDM
Not always. I mean, I would agree some changes are irritating. But from what I've seen, a purist mindset will complain for *any* changes, good or bad.
Also, these guys are basically doing what they did back when they worked for Hasbro… and what the toy industry's always done. Repaints help offset costs. At the same time, exclusive repaints sell, otherwise something like TFCC wouldn't exist.
Robogeek28
That would be my guess, but not much can be done about that really.
Scaleface
I do often complain when movies are inferior to the book, but only when they make changes that I see as making the story suffer and cannot see a good reason for the changes.
As an example of changes they had to do – I know that most Jules Verne novels have almost NO WOMEN in them. Every movie based on a Jules Verne novel adds some women characters or changes an existing character to female, because movie makers know people want to see a pretty girl and add some love/sexual tensnion to a film. That's why a ship with two women get shipwrecked suddenly in The Mysterious Island, why the scientists assistant is also his lovely niece in 20,000 Leagues, and they have a female interperter in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Still, it is hard to watch Jurassic Park or World War Z after reading the books! So much lost potential!
Still, does this mean the complainers are saying they want to see an original molds for Wastelander instead of a repaint? If they did not know Boneyard existed, would they accept this toy better?
CodeXCDM
IMHO, it looks better in BW Dinobot's colors.
Purists are always hostile to *any* deviation from the source. This is regardless of Transformers or any other franchise. Books are great examples, actually. Make a game of film from a book, if it isn't absolutely 100% true to the source… you'll get someone decrying that failing, even if there's the chance that it was a logical change.
That aside… Not a fan of repaints usually, but at least when it comes to characters that are popular enough to receive several new molds… repaints have a practical use for lesser-knowns. I know I've an army of mostly-unique Seekers because anytime one of the Seekers gets a mold, repaints immediately follow; especially if it's Starscream.
backlash3906
People coming into a clearly marked thread just to complain makes me think of someone saying that they do not like sharks, and then jumping into shark infested waters.
Scaleface
Um, they are using the Kickstarter money to make the finished figures… until then they are all prototypes.
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SPLIT LIP
Have we seen a single finished PWTT figure?
Seems like their eyes are bigger than their stomachs.
Scaleface
I never understood the hostility to repaints as new characters. No one forces you to buy them, especially here where they are basically selling them made-to-order. If a person doesn't like it they literally won't make one for you! Several of us would love a cool, articulated gladiator action figure who has more than a hint of Beast Wars Dinobot in his design.
Also, remember, Hasbro themselves repainted Dinobot into Grimlock for Beast Wars. Turnabout is fair play! Now a Grimlock homage is repainted as a Dinobot homages. I'm trying to think what else could work as a straight repaint… maybe Dinoforce Goryu colors? G2 Grimlock? Beast Wars Neo Hardhead? Beast Machine T-Wrecks? Yes! That would be excellent! Give me a blood red and blue gladiator!
Robogeek28
I can understand the frustration, and kinda wish everything was in one thread as well.
n10zguy
This is like the equivalent of people getting pissed off at someone for typing in all caps cause they are "shouting". If you REALLY don't like it, you can REALLY avert your gaze down to the next topic and move on with your life.
Mr_K
While I understand what you're saying, what I'm saying is that the mould is obviously made to homage Pretender Grimlock, thus this isn't a new mould for the Dinobot character, thus it's a repaint and the Grimlock colours are unlocked first, meaning this one uses what will be an existing mould.
Dinobot looked nothing like this apart from the colours used – which is what tfcc do. Though usually tfcc go one step further and mould at least a new head.
webz
Getting REALLY tired of Playwithittoo threads. Not transformers in any but the loosest sense, and should belong in the toyark site, not here. Wish there was a way to block these threads from showing up. Worse than spam, IMHO… Can't they just be put into one giant megathread with pwttoo updating the first page?
G1Hexatron
Here's the full show. The PlayWithThisToo discussion was at the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXepsQB13wc
PWTToo
The difference is that we're making a whole new figure not just doing a repaint. We have to maximize our tooling dollars by offering several versions of the toy. This is how we can justify making a whole new figure.
Mr_K
This reminds me of a lacking tfcc effort. Take an existing mold, slap the colours of another character on it and charge a premium for colour nostalgia – $0.02
Robogeek28
I'm betting once this thing hits the $80,000 goal, things will start adding up fast. Once stretch goals start opening up, more folks will be adding onto their pledges, and making this go up even faster than it already has.
The trick is getting people to pledge now instead of later.
General Magnus
Am I the only one that looks at this guys and thinks "this is a Protoss warrrior from Starscraft I/II"?