I love these cartoon color G1 reissues, even if it's just some small tweak. So far we had: Anime Astrotrain Anime Bluestreak Galvatron Reissue New Year Convoy TFCollection #9 Starscream Chronicles Megatron Anime Devastator TFCollection #20 Wheelie TFCollection #12 Bumblebee (later Encore and Walmart reissue) Am I missing any other? I'm not counting Zhong Jin blue Swoop or red Slag in the list, though they *are* part of the collection for me. Have we ever had Soundwave or Megatron with red eyes?
I agree. However, if Hasbro were to identify toys that have not been reissued in a while that there is huge demand for, they would sell well. For example, the Dinobots, particularly Grimlock and Swoop.
The trouble is some G1 toys have been so damaged or lost over the years that they can’t reissue them. The Dinobots being some of the known ones. Wheeljack, Sunstreaker and Mirage being others. I don’t understand how molds can be lost but it reportedly happens. I would think that each mold would have an ID number in a database detailing exact location in the warehouse. But apparently not. If you think about all the molds from all the series and even those from other series not Transformers that Hasbro has done, there’s got to be a very large number of molds in whatever warehouse they keep them in.
Usually during moves between factories, clerical error, or they degrade/become damaged and are recycled. Thing is Hasbro proved they're willing to recreate lost moulds with the BW Reissues of Cheetor/Tigatron and Rattrap, so nothing's stopping them from doing the same to any G1 character...
It's funny I wouldn't have thought of Chronicle Megatron as part of that but thinking about it both him and NY Convoy were actually preceded by the Goodbye Sets in what they did. I guess you could toss those on the list as the very first even if its redundant. If you're not counting strictly Sunbow then Encore Soundblaster and Twincast were also slightly tweeked for show accuracy (the face paint apps are the most obvious).
This is a myth. Not only all of these were reissued as high quality KOs (the Grimlock mold was completely reconstructed) by a 3rd party company, but we have threads documented on ATT saying the EXACT same thing circa 1999 about Soundwave. HasTak has the money and technology to rebuild molds, they just don't have the interest.
Exactly. Some of the BW reissues like Rattrap have gotten entirely new molds cut because the old ones were degraded beyond reasonable use.
The rumour at the time of the G1 KO's is that these were made from official moulds found in a factory. During the existance of TF HasTak have changed factories several times. Back in the 80's the concept of a collectors market for toys was completely foreign and old toys were rarely if ever released again. Thus when HasTak changed factories, they didn't care about the moulds still present, because who would want to use them? But that would still mean the moulds were lost to HasTak. Of course, they can recreate them, but this is time consuming and thus costly. A KO company can do this much cheaper due to less QC, but for HasTak to release them as official products they need to do basically the same as the KO company, only much better. For several characters, most notably Optimus Prime, this isn't an issue. But for less popular ones...
but what "less popular" ones? the characters people ask for are pretty dang popular; the dinobots and combiners always sell, and wheeljack, mirage, and sunstreaker aren't exactly 'obscure'.
And yet they did it for several of the BW reissues. They couldn't do Rattrap for the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary because the mold was lost, hence they used the Transmetal version instead. Then 15 years later, Vintage Beast Wars suddenly features a brand-new Rattrap tooling.
Multiple things we thought were "lost" or "damaged" and unable to be brought back have been brought back over the years, and people still occasionally trot this bullshit out. Either things were never lost, or Hasbro/Takara just re-made them for their own reasons. Oi. Hasbro can bring back whatever they want, whenever they want. It's simply a matter of "want to." Understandably, they don't "want to" for plenty of things since they can just use funds to create new shit instead of resurrect twenty-five-to-forty-year old toys. Weren't all four of the Dino-cassettes from four years ago re-created from scratch? They were sought after by G1 collectors, but certainly not Dinobots/carbots-level popular, yet they trotted them out for a few random exclusives for no reason I can discern beyond "We felt like it."
And like, can’t they reverse engineer a mold from an existing toy? I don’t claim to know much about mold making, but I would think they can.
Steel molds are super expensive and any company will want to get as much ROI as possible. How many people would actually buy reissue dinobots vs the cost of acquiring, reverse engineering, minting molds, gearing up a factory and pressing and assembling?
1. Reverse engineering is cheaper than creating a new mold. We've seen many new transformer molds created. 2. We've seen many examples where Hasbro/Takara has reverse engineered transformers molds. It was obviously economical for Devastator, dino-cassettes, and Rat Trap. I have a hard time believing Grimlock or Swoop wouldn't outsell Rat Trap.
I'm not really talking about the fact that newer molds might sell better (although I agree they would), but rather that the cost of producing an old mold, reissued today, is generally far higher than most folks realize. Sometimes it's the use of diecast metal. Sometimes it's the sheer amount of plastic. Sometimes it's the number of parts. Whatever it is for a specific mold, reissues tend to go for much higher prices than folks expect they should, and this is partially down to the cost of production. You can have a hard time believing that all you like, but we've seen this demonstrated many times over in the past couple of decades. For toys that originally went for less than the original Dinobots did.... It's strange that you should mention Devastator and the Dino-Cassettes, as both of those are prime examples of reissues that a great many fans screamed about the prices on. If you think the prices Hasbro asked for those were reasonable, then I'm not really arguing against you, specifically. I DO agree that Hasbro CAN do these things. I was just saying that the price would likely be higher than most fans would want to pay.