Admittedly, I have zero behind the scenes info and only watched the first few minutes and the 1:05:xx point to hear about MP stuff, but like I said in the MP speculation thread, my skepticism meter is quite high with a lot of this info. Too many things make me raise an eyebrow from a common sense PoV

 

Thanks for the disclaimer, and for opening up a dialogue with us in this thread as well!  

 

thanks  

 

I believe a lot of that and I now know I'm vindicated. YES! I knew Spinout was sabotaged on purpose. I knew it. There was no legitimate reason for the figure to be that terrible. YES.

We knew HasTak had some insight into the process because it's been claimed in the past that some of their workers moonlight for the 3rd parties.

Heck, Aaron Archer and crew tried to open their own 3rd party company!

I didn't listen to the podcast, but yes, we've heard several times that Robotkingdom is the middleman they're talking about. It's been said (on various Facebook group posts, private PMs and board messages) they dominate the market and dictate which companies get their stuff out there. Rumor is they own some of the companies, too.

 

Thanks for clearing that up!   There are easily 10 different "unique" 3p companies, not connected, by my count, over the years. A lot fo them tend to becomes friends, or split up with friends to go and form a new company, cutting ties with their old one.

Robot Kingdom tries and does distribute for smaller companies, usually sweet talking them into it for taking a high number of their products. When I helped Corbot with the original War Axe, they tried really hard to be the main distributor world wide.

 

Really interesting interview. The only thing I'm fuzzy on is mention of the 'old' Takara designer having designs completed for the G1 cast. When asked if this was 'the guy that did the Datsuns (Hasui)', Chrs said 'no', but then went on to say that the change in designers led to a delay for Bumblebee and Tracks and resulted in the ditching of 'the year of the Decepticons', which does imply Hasui's departure time frame?

 

your right, i knew when i agreed with him something was wrong, the Datsuns and the Lambos where the original designer and then the new designer came on and made his own take of BB and Tracks, and if i am not mistaken didnt has/tak start using the first designers molds or like they used one of his since the new designer came on? Anyways the wait for the new designers new design of BB and Tracks was what caused them to get pushed back from their original release dates in 2014 thus screwing up the year of the Decepticon in 2015. i think thats right please correct me if im wrong. now this is hear say from Hasbro employees 2 years ago, everything can have changed easily in that time period, so my news is just old news.

 

Wow, I was shocked to hear about that customizer who got deported from Canada !!!!

   

 

One addition, one correction based on what was said on the show (which of course could be off anyway):

"-Talk of a "middleman" who distributes to Asia who bullies all third parties. All American companies get their stock from him."

Add: This middleman is directly responsible for 3P products costing significantly more than they should. The example given was something like a product that costs around $10 to produce and would be sold for $15 by someone like Dr. Wu, ends up costing upwards of $30 because of this greedy middleman. And this is before any shipping or other costs. So basically doubling the costs.

"-HasTak like to show up at third party factories. They also like to talk with the 3P designers and share ideas. "

Correction: They use the same factories. That's what I got out of what Chris said: They actually use the same factories so of course they run into each other there! And yes, HasTak takes good engineering ideas from the 3Ps, so the 3Ps are actually useful to HasTak R&D.


And yeah, if the host hadn't been so loud and interrupting all the time, I feel like we would have gotten way more interesting background and info from Chris. He had so many interesting stories about the 3P biz that got interrupted.

 

That is a lot of information, it seems like one big conspiracy. Not surprised at some of the stuff

 

Ah ok, that makes more sense. Thanks very much for the clarification  

Yeah, that time period in Takara's MP history seems a little hazy. From what we generally know from interviews by the designers themselves, Bumblebee was Hasui's last produced design, Ultra Magnus was the transition figure mostly redesigned by Kobayashi, and Tracks was Kobayashi's first produced design after the Hasui era (Kobayashi also did the earliest designs of MP01, 02, and initially 03).

Since as you say Hasui was salaried, it wouldn't be surprising that he did designs for the entire G1 cast. We've even seen drawings of a never produced Huffer for example. Man I would love to see the rest of his unproduced designs... I wonder if recent releases (Ironhide\Ratchet, Shockwave, Hot Rod, Inferno) are completely new or if they are based on Hasui's initial designs?

 

There was a lot of great info in this, thanks. I also agree with the few comments about the host not doing the best job of directing the conversation, often interrupting when Chris was about to say something incredibly interesting, and didn't follow-up on a lot of other things that were sidetracked for whatever reason. But it was still pretty fascinating nonetheless. Good stuff. I'd like to sit down and have a few beers with Chris and hear more. Another podcast would be cool, too, but prefer the beer option...

 

I'd imagine they're based on Hasui's work which would really put the cat amongst the pidgeons with the designer wars.

 

Can you elaborate a bit on this, and describe how your experience was different?  

 

Tony (chimungmung) once told me RobotKingdom own Perfect Effect, and I take it he knows what he's talking about

 

From an engineering perspective that would certainly be true. Aesthetics are still a different matter. The Ironhide sketch in the Generations 2015 book for example has more detailing than does the final MP whereas Hasui-produced MPs followed their sketch detailing pretty precisely. This is obviously wild speculation, but if that Ironhide sketch is Hasui's, Takara for whatever reason (be it by Kobayashi's direction or some higher up exec) still decided to strip away those details.

 

Where can I listen to this podcast?

 

only about an hour in but this is some fantastic stuff.

pedro dude is really annoying though and needs to learn how not to cut off a guest while still steering the conversation towards the points he needed to ask. this is a 2 hour video. there was no need for all those interruptions other than someone trying to make themselves feel relevant.

 

Link in the first post would probably do the trick.

 

Absolutely. Maybe Kobayashi took Hasui's designs and 'cartoonified' them aesthetically amongst other possible tweaks. It's all very interesting that's for sure but we'll never really know the 100% truth.

Inferno's ladder is something right up Hasui's street arguably.