Well, let's start with common sense: You have a factory. It produces things in sequence. 3P makes a decision to introduce a new repaint of a past figure. They have to slot that into the sequence. That pushes everything after it back by one run, because time does not stop while they do repaints or reissues, it continues onward and new products that would have taken those slots are now further down the road. Product 1 -> Product 2 -> Product 3 -> Product 4 -> Product 5 becomes Product 1 -> Product 2 -> Product 3 -> Repaint Product 1 -> Product 4 -> Product 5 So regardless of what we might or might not know regarding FT's specific situation, even if they have a dedicated factory without other factory customer interruptions, they are still interrupting a sequence to place a repaint or reissue of a past product into the lineup. That is before taking into account what Curium described regarding how most 3Ps don't even own the factory they work with, so they are often at the mercy of the factory's larger customers to even get production time. Now what you have is: Other product -> Other product -> 3P Product 1 -> Other product -> 3P Product 2 -> Other Product -> Other Product and one can begin to see why some 3Ps take a while to bring products to market and often miss their initial estimated release dates.
No. I definitely don't want my dinobots to look like poorly colored shit. They look great as they are.
You are correct we are speculating, but it is educated speculating relating the most likely situation. There is definitely room to be wrong, but it is a very small chance that it is. We are not stating something where there is only a 5% chance we are right, it is closer to 90 - 95% chance (or higher, but I prefer to be conservative). And then there is the "fun" event where it is scheduled Other product -> Other product -> 3P Product 1 -> Other product -> but then a big partner decides they need 100,000 (random number) more units pays the factory and 3P Product 1 gets bumped out of line for the big project and it becomes Other product -> Other product -> Other product -> Other product -> Other product -> 3P Product 1 -> Other product -> after 3P has promised a release date.
No, its not possible to improve them enough to justify re-buying them all for me. They are still some of my favorite figures in my collection. I'd enjoy looking at pictures but 100% would not be a buyer.
Eventually what will happen is Fanstoys will make an OP that will suit the aesthetics of their line not Takara's.
I waited for Takara, and now it’s probably too late for tracking these down or Gigapowers, so not sure what to do except maybe wait even longer for Takara?
FT's Grinder (Grimlock) and Sever (Snarl) are still readily available. Depending on whether you want the Chrome or Metallic version, the GP ones are also not difficult to obtain. You can bet FT will reissue these before Takara comes out with a single thing. In fact, given how crazy TT's prices are nowadays, a Dinobot is going to cost around 400 dollars for sure.
I own and like this set a lot, but there is no need to do an update or rerelease. The best dinobot set on the market is Gigapower, this set blows away FT. We need new releases to complete the full collection of S1 - S4 TF, and once that is done we can play the update carousel.
@edgecrusher @Curium You’re right, if the following assumptions were true: (A) only one thing can be made in a factory at once, and (B) every single thing made there took a solid month to manufacture But we know literally zero about the factory FT uses, and how much their throughput is. This idea that somehow doing a repaint necessarily pushes back different FT releases by a matter of month(s?) has BOTH of those assumptions built in. Having worked at small and large manufacturing shops in my career, I can safely say that *only* if the factory you’re imagining is the *smallest* of businesses of its kind (like, three employees or similar) would *either* of these assumptions make any sense.
ftfy And neither of the assumptions you posed changes reality. It isn't some kind of esoteric, mystical, secret knowledge to figure out that production capacity is a constraint for 3Ps. And when you're FT that isn't starved for funding or lacking a backlog/pipeline of products to feed into production and is still producing products evidencing that raw materials or labor are not a problem, it is evidently the foremost of the general constraints of production. Assuming a backlog and pipeline of new products and the capital to produce them, no matter how many factories/lines a company has that are capable of producing a product, every time one of them is retasked to do a rehash or reissue of an old product, it is delaying the production of new products by some amount of time. In its simplest form, it is the opportunity cost of doing a repaint. It might indeed be relatively shorter time to produce a repaint, but it is still bumping back everything else that was scheduled to be produced on that line by that X amount of time when a rehash is inserted into the lineup. That is rather obvious and self-evident. Feel welcome to doubt and disagree but this particular conversation has run its course. As for FT, hell, just look at Jabber that was ready for months before it finally entered production. It evidently got bumped in line a couple times for other products. This evidences FT does not have spare lines or factories just sitting idle that could have kept Jabber on time while they also produced Phoenix X, Roadking, Maverick, Quietus T, etc that have all intervened. FT is also not cash-starved to where they need repaints to fund new figures. Practically every figure they make sells out and they do fairly high quantity runs of everything outside of special (like X) variants. They are choosing figures to produce in an order they feel is strategically best for them as a company, and that has resulted in some new figures that were essentially ready for production to be delayed and have been confirmed as being pushed back while other products were announced and then placed ahead of it. And no one is saying it was the wrong thing for them to do. In fact, it may well be the right move to delay new products to put out a high margin repaint because reasons. It doesn't change the fact that doing so invariably delays other things from being produced as soon.
I would totally be in for toon accurate repaints IF they went all-in on the toon accurate look. I would promptly sell my current DiBots (at a loss) and replace with new toon versions. IF they were proper toon versions. I appreciate @Snaku argument that "toon accuracy" means the yellow was simulating gold and the grey or white was simulating steel or chrome, but that's specifically NOT what we are talking about here. We are talking about a look that matches what the eye saw, not what the mind was supposed to see. In that sense yellow is yellow, grey is grey and white is white. We already have the "mind's eye" version. This is for those of us who want the "actual eye" version. For me, I would totally be in for a well-done version of the dibots with the mismatched gold chrome replaced with a bright glossy yellow, the grey a richly painted grey (though I will settle for grey plastic) and the silver chrome replaced with a glossy, slightly metallic white-ish/grey colour, similar to how MP Inferno's alt chest piece looked. It's not to everyone's taste, but it doesn't have to be - we already have the version that those folks want. This is for the rest of us. For me, the thick glossy paint of the anime edition's looks amazing. It might not adhere to what people say the cartoon was intending to portray, but it totally matches what the cartoon DID portray and what I see in my mind when I close my eyes and reminisce. Some may hate the look, but I love it. I recreated that "toon" effect with a set of G1 Insecticon toys (KO's of course) and it turned these awkward and old fashioned 80's toy designs into figures that actually match the cartoon a whole lot better:
Dude, bro, can I call you bro? Amigo, listen, sorry, I'm not talking, I'm writing so read my words. It's super simple. Just look at FT's actual release history. They either release a new figure, or a re-issue/repaint. You won't see 2 releases at the same time, ever. So that's how "we know" they either waste time with this type of stuff or work on their backlog.
They'd have to do a 2.0 dibots. They just have to. Toon versions of the dinobots are too cool to pass up.
And how many times have you seen FT pushing out more than one figure at the same time? Full disclosure, it has happened ONCE and only once, and the other figure was Seaspray (a super simple figure). No we don't know zero, we know because the last figure they released was FT THIRTY ONE. If we are still at FT 5, then yeah, we don't know. After 5 plus years, we KNOW.
Are those the MFT/DX9 Legends+ Dinos? I've been so close to picking them up along with a Hulkie or KO Devastator as Deskbots for the office. BUt I keep resisting telling myself I don't need them. It's pretty difficult to turn 'em down though. If NewAge do Dino's and a Devy... I may not be able to resist any more.
They still wouldn't truly match up with the ultra toon mp figures, due to having all of the toy influenced molded-in greebles all over them. Also the heroic body proportions. It's one of the main reasons why some fans prefer using Scoria in their Dibot group. Cesium looks out of place, since he's more toony in sculpt.
