Doesn't Keith have his own factories and XTB/KFC are side businesses? Could it be that the factories are producing other things for "real" customers that are generating more income than making some niche collectibles?

 

No. Never. Not at all. In fact, you are evil, spreading fake news like the spawn of the devil.

I mean, yes, it's certainly plausible  

 

His factories produce cheese so he only produces figures when there's leftovers.

 

I suspect even if keith said he was prioritizing cranking out masks and PPE to help with the pandemic, some people would still want their trailer now.

He said most recently to someone on FB it is in production, the hand-wringing about the delay is so tedious.

 

I completely forgot Ibot had a kid... And I was one of the ones who congratulated him!

 

Tell me about it. I have 15yo going on 11, and a 10yo trying to go on 17.

My life =         

 

Six repaints, not a single new figure among them. Maybe Dr. Egg counts? Wow, one new figure.  

Continuing to use cheap, fragile, crumbly plastics on various Stunticons isn't upping their game. Shoddy paint apps on Andras isn't upping their game. Their game is flat at best, unfortunately.

 

As someone looking into the toy versions of their stunticons, I'm subscribing to your newsletter about said bad plastics. tell me more, please.

 

The toy versions are generally OK I think. It's the toon versions (particularly Dragstrips shoulders) that had bad plastics. I don't have toy Dead End but I've got toy Breakdown and Dragstrip which both feel better quality than the toon releases.

 

Toy versions seem to be an unknown as far as quality, partly due to less people with them, partly due to them being newer releases vs the toon set so they might have benefited from improvements. The original toon releases each had one notable issue that I can recall. The first, Breakdown, had the funky pinkish-tan paint color and heavy glosscoat appearance that stands out vs the others. iirc, it was reissued later with a more neutral color that is closer to the correct off-white. Wildrider, iirc, people were breaking the red parts that equate to the rear hatchback "glass" of the vehicle during transformation because significant force was required to tab or untab them. Dead End, iirc, had wonky ankles with a few reports of breakage. Dragstrip had the crumbly shoulder plastic issue. Motormaster had the questionably designed waist hinge that some users reported stress marks on just from transforming.

 

not trying to be an apologist...BUT
as far as i can remember

breakdown - no that was the color and finish it was. some people didn't like it. some people claimed it was more "off" than it was. the youth version had slightly cooler color/tint to it. most owners seem happy with either.

flipout - i think the roof/hatch breaking is really a user error on how you transform it - GRANTED XTB should have issued a warning or had an official transformation video perhaps. i've TF'd mine a few times only but it seems ok if you do it in a smart way.

wildrider - umm wildrider IS flipout. i do recall something about the foot or ankle but i don't think that was widespread but it was not an isolated issue, but again far from widespread.

dragstrip - yes shitty shoulder design and or material. totally. agree here. hasn't happened to me YET but its widespread. i've heard of no issues so far on teh toy version. unsure of G2 but haven't had a confrimed breakage with it posted here AFAIK

motormaster - waist hinge stress mark. i don't think its due to transformation but assembly. i don't think anyone has broken AT the actual area of concern the stressmark caused. the breakage was near there but unreleated and seemingly an isolated case or two.

 

It is apparently the preferred method of expressing displeasure when we go on vacation

 

Sorry for getting the one figure's name mixed up. That's my apology.  

 

You missed the issue on Wildrider where they’d applied that sticker to the bottom of the car which took the paint off.
I’ve been pretty lucky, I had one issue with Breakdown, where the tab on one side of the spoiler was broken out of the box, but it doesn’t cause an issue. All of the others were fine, though I did spend ages on here learning about any possible issues and where to watch for possible paint chipping. I filed down Dragstrip prior to transforming him, so though the shoulders may crumble in the future, they’re good for now

 

Yup, I cracked one of the roof tabs off on my Flipout almost immediately.

 

My toy Deadend has paint scraping off after one transformation.

 

I've had zero issues with breakdown, wild rider, and motormaster. Dragstrip has a loose thigh swivel, but I'll fix it one of these days. They feel like most other third party offerings in finish and plastic quality. For the price, I couldn't be happier with them.

My only concern is the lack of availability on their dead end. XTB has been pretty good about doing reissues, I'm confident they will all be rereleased once the trailer is done. With the holidays approaching, I don't mind waiting.

 

This is now a cat thread.

The other night my asshole cat woke me up making "that noise" sitting in the bed in cannon mode ready to launch one right next to me. I picked him up and put him on the floor with a quickness. But in his defense the cat is about 70 in human years and has been having health problems. The poor little guy has had to go to the vet 5x in the past couple months to do all sorts of tests n things because they thought he had cancer. He doesn't. He has IBD apparently. He is all shaved up and weird looking from all the tests.

Word of advise to anyone who has to give pills to cats. Get a pill gun. Don't bother with pill pockets, pill maskers, trying to hide it in food. Wrap the cat up and force its mouth open with one arm. Put the loaded pill gun in its mouth and launch the pill down its throat with the other.

 

rumor has it, the amount of pages that we end up having is the final price for the trailer

 

ThreeA stuff too. There has been posts about it from ibot on here which mentioned factory time being used by ThreeA for their TF figures