I hope it won't be difficult to color match the orange and silver paint for those that decide to custom paint the maw and robot teeth.

 

As established earlier, there's wiggle language giving Hasbro the right to a reuse of the mold if they want to.

But no one should expect it. It was crystal clear that they expected this to be the only release for the mold, ever.

 

How many people have received their Unicron? Is Hasbro sending out shipping notices or does FedEx just show up randomly?

 

people in asia are getting their copy first, and if its like any other time with Hasbro, Fedex advanced tracking is needed,

 

I'm a backer and while I would be pretty pissed if Hasbro did another run (especially in a better deco!), for some reason the idea of Takara doing a slightly better repaint later for the Japanese market doesn't bother me as much. Assuming it wouldn't be horrifically priced I would definitely consider buying that version and selling my HasLab copy. Like the good old days when the TT CHUG figures looked a little better than the Hasbro versions.  

 

Never Say Never - but it's very unlikely to happen in short term. As long as Hasbro is a Toy Company, if someone at some point thinks they can make money off something they own, it will be made & sold.

 

If they did re use the mold I would hope they would wait at least a decade, UNLESS it’s to make replacement parts for QC issues.

 

Hasbro's arent shipping till late march

 

I'm not saying "never." I thought I was clear about that.

But I am saying, as strongly as I can, "no one should expect this to happen."

 

Amazon unicron still looks pretty good with the right love.

 

This is my thought. Replacement parts for such a important item could be needed.

 

Keep in mind I'm super crummy at this. But looking at this sample of the figure, we can see that the yellow/orange paint on blue comes out as more yellow than the actual orange plastic surrounding it. Similar to the yellow accents on the planet mouth itself.



So following that same principle and sampling the more yellowy color that the paint comes out as on top of blue, I masked off and made a few mock ups of what it might look like if the inner blue was painted yellow.

With teeth closed it is far less shadowy so this closed mouth gives a good look at the color match. (Keep in mind I could only make the blue gears the same yellow color in my edit, they would be orange plastic if this were the real color scheme).





Mouth open.





This is just my rendition so it could be pretty far off. But I'm certain that paint in that area would be more yellow than the orange plastic so it should give a bit of an idea of the way the colors would, or would not, match.


My opinion? Not a great look in that area with yellow paint, especially next to the teeth. Orange plastic would have been the best way to do it and that was impossible because that middle piece is the same as the surrounding blue square as we all know. Is it horrible? Worse than the blue? Maybe not. Again, this is just me doing a rank amateur recolor so a real paint app in that spot might have looked better.

In any case, I'm not hopeful for a third party getting a better orange paint match on the blue than what Hasbro could do, if they were to recast that entire blue piece and paint it themselves. All the more reason that, in my opinion, an orange plastic cap or several plastic fillers, or god forbid, stickers, are going to be the most promising solutions for getting it to look correct.

Honestly it kind of makes me more accepting of the blue.

Interestingly, if the figure was still yellow instead of orange, like the original prototype, the yellow plastic may have been a better match to yellow paint in that area. So if they really did consider yellow paint there and ditched it because they couldn't get a good match for the orange on such a key area (no evidence for that, just my idea here seeing how it might have looked), it may actually be thanks to the orange that the maw got no paint. Perhaps that's why it was so yellow in the original prototype, because they knew they could do yellow paint on blue more easily than orange. Just a thought.

 

Another thing that I haven't really seen discussed is the complexity of molding in the mouth area compared to other areas that are painted orange. While he's covered in surface details, the areas being painted are largely flat(ish). Maybe, molding that in orange meant difficulty matching the blue that the rest of his planet mode is molded in. Maybe painting the mouth was causing issues with coverage. There's so much more depth to that piece than basically any other surface outside of his rings, it would be really easy for it not to look good or have qc issues with paint. And painting orange/yellow over blue without a basecoat is really tough, I'm surprised what they did do turned out as well as it did, even if it isn't exact.

 

Best guess: Don't expect a shipping notice until March.

 

Late March.

Advanced tracking with FedEx tells you when the label is made before Hasbro pulse emails you

 

I honestly doubt Hasbro would reissue this. IMO the fallout would be legendary in the toy collecting community.

The only way they can avoid any fallout is a straight reissue - unpainted maw and all.

While I don’t mind Unicron’s unpainted maw, I honestly wouldn’t have mind if Hasbro painted it and if its a different shade of orange/yellow, I won’t mind either.

 

Another angle with a bit better lighting. I guess it doesn't look so bad with that different shade. It'd really have to exist in person before we could say for sure. Also the screen we're looking at it on makes a big difference... when I view these same pictures on my phone it looks like a lot better of a match than on my monitor.

 

It almost looks like a gold color

 

I think this color would look close but like I said
Wouldn't know till it gets here

 

Yeah, since it's just a color replacement all of the glare on the blue plastic remains making it look shiny. If it were paint it would be a different texture.

You're braver than I if you're trying. Definitely want to see it though. It doesn't look that close to me but who knows how it looks in person.