No, I usually avoid forcing issues with figures. Push comes to shove, I try to disassemble before breaking.
The only thing that bothered me was Planet X Jupiter. The knee pads are held in place by tiny pegs I can only describe as crumbs. They crumble off very easily and It strikes me as poor engineering. Both pieces involved are big and chunky with a good area of contact on both sides. the knee pads could have socketed in like the chest piece on TR PMOP but they went with crumbs. I re boxed it pretty quickly after that and never looked at it again.
I came very close to breaking a couple parts on MakeToys Quantron when putting it together into combined mode, and I recall some issues getting tabs to tab in on Guardia's core bot as well. I definitely had some painful marks on my fingers before I was done putting those combiners together!
I believe the saying is “cost of doing business “ In all honesty, sorry that your hard earned money didn’t take you farther with a companies business but I’ve come to be a bit more discriminate with my purchases and have several “statues”. To this day I have never transformed MP Megatron or Apollyon. Only transformed KFC Transistor once and broken him. Instructions good or bad don’t even begin to account for possible break points.
The first time I transformer Apollyon, I sheared the head clean off. I was trying to work the collapsing mechanism down slowly in case something was in the way, and put a little too much pressure on. Popped the head clean off at the ball joint. Luckily, a small screw and some patience, I was able to fix it, but I"m never, EVER trying to transform it again.
Broke the head off FT Willis (one of the wheel covers too, but it was half snapped out of the box already) , and the red clear part on PE Aranea (My biggest piece of junk yet. Looks very good though). Popped the arm from XTB Boost, but managed to put it back fortunately. The plastic on the Warbot/GT kits is very brittle too. Broke the backpack hinge on Grimlock and an arm piece on Megatron. Warbotron had some broken parts too... but that's because he fell from my Detolf, whoops...
Trying to get XTB's Klaatu to sit on his "abduction" stand and it wouldn't fit. So I tried to force it a bit, my hand slipped and I knocked off one of his little blue exhaust ports. Nothing a little super glue won't fix. But I was a bit bummed out because I had just got him in the mail about a half hour before I broke it. So at that point I masked off the peg on the stand and took my dremel tool to it until it fit correctly.
I broke a piece off of Apollyon. I'm not sure what to call it but the front of his hip has this little black section that sits above the metal swing arm that brings the hip in. That broke off on one side. I also broke one of ko Prowl's doors. I think I glued it on pretty well but I haven't tried to transform him since then cuz I don't want it to break again.
When I was a dumbed out stoner I would always break beastwars transmetal the instruction weren't that good and I would get frusterated with some of the weird twisted backwards move n us force ever since than I use the gentle hand techniques But seen Bobby skull face rage formers n beat his up it's totally understandable RAGEFORMERS
I've been very lucky so far but, I'm dreading my first serious break. The only thing I did manage to break on a 3rd party figure was one of the tiny folding side panels on one of the KFC Opticlones backpack. Thankfully it is so small and hidden away in both modes that no one would never notice it unless I pointed it out (in fact I even managed to forget about it completely until just now).
KFC Simba. One of the panels/hinges for turning him into victory saber boots had a major stress mark the first time (stuck/flashing). Of course, there's that borderline OCD obsession with the stressed point. You transform it more. See if you can do it in a way that moves smoother/ doesn't hurt. But that increases the stress. And then younhaveba day 1 break. It's on such a way that it's fine as a boot, so long as victory saber is on top of it. It can't do a kick pose. It's also held in place by a different clip/hinge and the upper body in robot mode and liokn mode, where there are no concerns. Still bums me out to have a toy break day 1 at that kind of price.
KFC Transistor, broke one of his fingers and popped 3 others off trying to get his gun tab in. I used a spare set of Soundwave KFC hands to make a new knuckle but KFC sent me parts to fix him up right. Hot Toys Terminator T-800 - Turned the head and cable on the back of the skull snapped off, right out of the box - I did crazy glue it in place though and you can't even see it and it works fine. MP9 Rodimus. I opened the box and his left arm flew off when I opened the cardboard flap. Not sure that was my fault unless it was one of those "you're not supposed to open the box" toys. I did fix that with a new screw and spring. Badcube Speedbump - Came with a swirl mark on his right silver thigh, ordered another because it bothered me and then found out they ALL have that. Crap. (again...have a spare one if anyone needs one cheap) Warbotron Airburst (Blast off) - Folded his back flaps a little too hard and put a small crack in one but didn't break it. Glued and fixed it fine.
Broke the waist on GT J4zz with very little force. Seems the screws they use to connect the front and back waist pieces aren’t long enough to go all the way through. A month later, was disassembling GT Tyrant’s shoulder to tighten a screw and noticed the screws that mount the shoulders to the torso were really long. Swapped Tyrant’s screws with J4zz’s. Both figures fine now
This is what I say when I eat a few fries from a value meal I pick up for someone else since I'm "on the way".
KFC Transistor- left arm snapped off right above the elbow during first transformation. Glued it back but the panels don’t quite perfectly fit together in alt mode because of it.
