Folks: The current thread about Micromasters gave me an idea. Minicons seem to sell pretty well, but the same old molds are getting a little monotonous...why not do a slight retool and sell some old Micromasters as Minicons? They're the right size, and a Powerlinx port would be extremely easy to add - just one cored hole in an appropriate location. Well, inappropriate locations would work too; look at Dualor, but you get the idea. The molds might be worn out, but look how many times Sixliner has been reissued! Two patrols would give four battle packs...or perhaps three patrols could be split into four three-packs. These might be neat as inexpensive and easily made basics for the 'neo G1' line. It would also be cool if the bases or two-combiners could be reissued this way. Maybe the bases could even be augmented with a repainted Minicon team... a retooled Ironworks with the Destruction Team would be a neat set, though I don't know what the pricepoint would be. Possibly this would be just a bit too costly for a deluxe and not quite enough for a mega...
Sounds like a good idea, those Micromasters were cool and they're still going around (about 10-20$ set) so Hasbro could do well with some 6-7$ mutipacks of four or of all the old teams. I would say 4$ , but Hasbro and all. Hell they're doing mini unleashed figs for SW that come in 4packs. A 24 pack would rock my socks
Cataclizm1: I shall return...some day. My wife & I bought a house, and I'm in the middle of upgrading the 60amp electrical service to 200amp...and my collection is (mostly) in boxes at present...
I certainly would like that but there could be a few practical problems. Who knows about the status of the molds.... if their lost/damaged like Mirage, Wheeljack, and Sunstreaker, wouldn't repairing those molds be preferable? A powerlinx port should certainly be something easy to sculpt but.... are there available places on the Micromaster molds? Thinking about a lot of those molds it seems like the only place they could be put is right in the center of the chest but that space is occupied by the screw holding it together. I don't know if I'd like all the Micromasters to have ports like Adventure Team Ransack.
Another problem is the Micromasters have inferior articulation to most of the Minicons. Its abit like the rather non-sensical retool of Armada Sideswipe for the Galaxy Force/Cybertron line - kind of an obvious odd-man out.
Using the Micromasters for Minicons would be neat, but I agree with Edgewise that there'd be problems. I also just wish they'd sculpt some new Minicons.
i think the minicon and the mircomasters have basically the same level of articulation...their arms move up and down and their legs are only able to be in the standing up right position...they seem to me like they would cross over into the realm of minicon well.
On most Micromasters I've seen, the most obvious and/or convenient place to put a Minicon port is taken up by a screw that holds the body together.
Mwp38: A bit better than that, actually. Nearly all Micromasters have swivels at the hips and knees, but because the knees are usually a single long rivet, only the shins can bend separately. They can usually sit down, though. Ewise & Fstorm's point about the screw is (unfortunately) a good one which I had completely missed. I will have to look at some of my Micromasters and see if they have any good places for a port.
