And thus the circular debate continues. Sorry if me asking people to use words properly is offensive to you  

 

I wonder if 'partial' refers to 'partial remoulding', 'partial reuse', or if a do-over like Rotorstorm where it's just the head is still designated a 'partial', as in 'it has a part has been altered'?
Did Stoner Mark apply the term to Rotorstorm in-stream?

 

He referred to nearly everything revealed as a partial, even saying ER Prowl was a partial of Siege Prowl (though I'm sure he meant ER Smokescreen)

 

FFS, people. They're toys. Some are pretty, some are ugly, some reuse parts, some are new. Buy 'em or don't, stop going back and forth over pointlessness. Who cares what you call something? I'm so sick and tired of this debate and this back and forth and before anyone says "well, someone needs to be right" no, they don't. It's a toy. No one needs to be right over a toy. Period.

The only time is when someone's swapping and the truth needs to come out, only reasonable time to be right over a toy. Otherwise, be thankful you're blessed enough to even be discussing this garbage. No one has perspective anymore.

Just go enjoy the collecting or don't, but the rest of us are sick and tired of receiving notifications about this garbage.

 

No need to get worked up dude. For what it's worth, I tried to direct it to a different thread, Gizmo wouldn't let it rest though. Also, maybe discussing these things is how some people enjoy this stuff. Does it necessarily have anything to do with this thread? It did initially, at this point not so much though. But such is the nature of conversation. If you find it to be off topic maybe you should just report it so a mod can move it to an appropriate thread rather than blowing a gasket, just saying.

 

I've had a bad twenty four hours. A metal stent running into the kidney will do that. Stuck in there for another twelve days. Sorry, just experiencing it has given me perspective on what does matter and what doesn't and this argument will never, ever matter, and speaking for myself (and yes for others), sometimes it's unhealthy to "enjoy" something this way.

 

Very true, and sorry for the unfortunate circumstances you're currently dealing with. For me personally, I find the meanings of words to be important, so if people are going to use words improperly then they should just use a broad use word. Simple as that. Does it matter in the long run? Not really, but that is how words get bastardized over time to mean things other than their original usage. Just my perspective on that particular topic, and trying to offer a bit of insight on why I get hung up on word usage sometimes  

 

I like this thread. It's very embarrassing.

 

Right?

The thread's name is "Define this term Hasbro uses..."

But we:
1. Don't actually know if it's a "Hasbro term" or just this one dude.
2. What the term actually means within Hasbro. If it's even a "Hasbro term."

So there's no debate to be had. It's pointless unless someone at Hasbro who knew actually weighed in.

Yes. The use people on this forum want to have is even less useful than the fan terms we've already been using (for the most part with plenty understanding).

This just feels like a bunch of fans on a forum who heard a word once and want to seem cool by repeating it despite not knowing what it means.

Like when my three year old exclaims "JESUS CHRIST YOU MADE CAKE!" because he heard us use it once but didn't actually know what it meant or why we used it the way he's trying to copy.

"Repaint" "retool" have a pretty well understood meaning. If I tell you a figure is one of the above you get a picture in your head.

We've only recently started thinking of terms like "shared engineering" to describe a situation where two figures have similar elements but are clearly not just a retool on the same frame.

And I'm not going to even bother with the whole "oh it has the same thighs" because that shit is just obnoxious and by that point I don't care enough to track it.

But you don't know if we're using it "properly" because none of us actually know what it means or if it's even a term Hasbro uses.

It was one dude, likely stoned, doing a fan stream. We've never heard it before nor since.

 

Haha CAD fuckery let's goooo.

Good point on SS 01 Bee, I think at one of the 'cons where SS had its big in-person reveal some Hasbro staff interviewed at the booth even said that they saw a lot of people referring to Bee as a retool of TLK Bee, but they insisted it was not a retool, but rather a totally new mold, brand new tooling, etc. Which in this case is totally accurate in the CAD fuckery world where they could take that digital design and translate it to a new figure with a different (in this case vehicle) design and scale.

My two cents is I don't really care what terms people want to use, just that we need to start understanding that "retool" is now becoming just as inaccurate and contentious of a term as the old "repaint vs. redeco" argument I've been seeing since the 2000's.

 

I always thought "partial" as in things like Siege Ratchet where some of him was retooled but the bulk of his is the same as Ironide, so he's more than a simple headswap but less than the re-shelling of say Siege Ironhide to Earthrise Ironhide.

 

Is "shared engineering" not the go-to term these days? I've seen people on this forum and elsewhere use it since it started cropping up in the Prime Wars toys. I think it's a pretty accurate description for its subject, and stands distinct from redeco and retool.

 

It came about as we tried to describe Dead End/Chromedome. Because, as Hasbro said, there's only so many ways for a car to turn in to a robot.

 

Hey leave Mark out of this. He should be on all the live streams. It was joyous to see someone who seemed to be having fun with the whole thing. Lenny seemed pretty stiff.

 

so, and I do realize it gets pedantic, for sure... but here's the terminology I like to use, because, personally, I do feel like there's enough nuance to support the various categories:
Repaint. (duh - often Seekers)
Repaint with New Head (I break this off nowadays because Hasbro most often pre-molds those new heads in advance... so while it's certainly new tooling, it's included with the original figure, as I understand how things work....)
Remold (minor or major changes to the bot and/or alt mode... Coneheads are usually remolds of Seekers, ER Trailbreaker is a remold of ER Hoist)
Reshell (The "skeleton" remains the same, but all the "outer bits" or vehicle panels are mostly or totally replaced making an entirely new bot and/or alt mode. this was done a lot in Combiner wars, most notable Dead End --> Streetwise or Offroad --> Firstaid, and is what seems to be going on with ER Cliff --> Netflix BB)
Parts Sharing (2 completely unrelated molds share a small number of parts or a single sprue. IIRC Titans Return did this a lot, such as Blurr and Chromedome or CW Magnus and TR Powermaster Prime ~ why design a totally new bicep or hand or thigh or knee every single time?)
Shared Engineering (2 completely separate molds that use the same transformation scheme but are totally unique otherwise. most famously G2 Smokescreen and Energon Starscream or CW Dead End and TR Chrome Dome)

then there are certain cases that blur the lines... Powermaster Prime certainly also uses some shared engineering with CW Ultra magnus, even though, (IIRC) the designer said they only share either 7 or 9 pieces, the upcoming Select Super Megatron... is he a remold or a reshell??? I didn't get the Seacons, so not sure where they fall...

 

For me, I'd categorize it like this:

Repaint/Redeco, again, most everybody knows this
Retool includes everything that changes the tooling between two toys. A new head, slight remolding, or even the "reshell" idea are all fundamentally retools, just to differing levels. TFWiki identifies toys as being light or heavy retools, and I think that works. This also includes pretools, or molds designed to be easily modified into multiple characters.
Shared Engineering I would identify as things like TR Broadside/TR Alpha Trion, but also the shared parts examples. Here, there are whole parts in common on toys with different transformation schemes or modes.
I wouldn't classify similar transformations within these items because that's more of a limitation of toy technology as a whole, and less a strategy specifically chosen to minimize cost.

 

Wow. If I ever needed a reminder of how much of a toxic wastedump the toy forum has become...
Or how some people desperately need a career switch to save those under their care.

 

If there's one term I hate and hope people would stop using for the sake of clarity, it's "repack". Because different people use it to mean one of three different things, which will occasionally lead to confusion when someone uses the term to refer to one thing and someone else who is only aware of one of the other meanings misunderstands what the first person was talking about.

"Repack" has been used to refer to the following concepts:

• Re-releasing a previously released toy in different packaging. This can be a packaging variant for a subline imprint (for example, Cyberverse Scout Class Grimlock being re-released in "Power of the Spark" packaging, and then again in "Bumblebee: Cyberverse Adventures" packaging), packaging branded as part of a different line altogether (for example, Cybertron Scout Class Scattorshot and Undermine getting re-released at Family Dollar in "Universe" packaging), or re-releasing a toy that was previously available individually as part of a multi-pack in completely different packaging (often as a store exclusive). In this meaning, some people are interpreting the term "repack" literally and believe those are actually unsold toys taken out of their packaging and put into new packaging to sell them .
• Shipping the same toy as part of multiple waves of the same line/assortment. This is actually a practice that has been in use ever since the Beast Wars line, which codified the entire "wave" concept (though the final year of Generation 2 pioneered it), but in part because of how Combiner Wars handled it, some people are actually under the misconception that "waves" consisting of nothing but new, previously unreleased toys is the "normal" way and having the same toys ship in multiple waves is the exception.
• The fraudulent practice of buying a toy, taking it out of its packaging, putting something else (often an older, now unwanted toy) inside the packaging and then taking it back to the store to claim the money back, resulting in the packaging with the wrong content inside ending up back on the store shelf. This practice is also known as "toy swapping", but because people are too lazy to type a few additional letters, and because things apparently aren't confusing enough, some people have also begun to refer to this practice as "repacking".

 

funny though, I would consider all those uses "legit" and hope that in most cases one would understand what's what via context.

(I also would have though#1 was what folks usually meant, then I was like, no, no #2, then I was like, oh yeah, #3 is on point too)

 

Hasbro initially referred to phenomenons like Titans Return Scourge, Highbrow and Windblade sharing parts as a "partial tool", which has aparently since been shortened to simply "partial". So "partial" or "partial tool" seems to be simply Hasbro's own term for any toys that share some, but not all of their parts (things we fans call "remold", "retool", "pretool" or "parts sharing"). Under this definition, straight redecos (or "repaints") with no physical differences between the two versions should not be covered by the term "partial", because it's not "partial", it's "full". Likewise, "shared engineering" (as in, not a single physical part actually shared between the two toys) wouldn't be covered by the term either.

This would make sense since a lot of fans seem to take terms like "retool" and "remold" very literally to mean that the existing casting molds used to create the toys have been directly altered, which I think is a very rare occasion that only happens when there's an objective flaw with it that needs to get fixed, if at all. The phenomenon of toys keeping some unchanged parts while getting some parts replaced by different (oftentimes, though not always, functionally identical) parts can be achieved through a lot of different means, all of which would be covered by Hasbro's term "partial tool":

• Creating new parts that are made from different tooling, and recycling the unsed parts from the original tooling that are on the same sprue as some of the unchanged parts that are still being used (which we would call a "retool" or "remold"). Sometimes there are only very few new parts being made, which are therefore made from their own separate tooling (example: 2007 Movie Deluxe Class Stealth/Premium Series Bumblebee's head, which was later reused for ROTF Battlefield Bumblebee because it apparently wasn't on a sprue with anything else), while other times, all the new parts share the same tooling and thus all end up on the same sprue (example: 2007 Movie Leader Class Premium Series Optimus Prime's new head, the new roof panel to accomodate for the longer antennas, and his new sword that replaced the gun, which all have the same plastic color, unlike the parts they replace).
• Using the tooling layout to create a new set of parts that completely replace all the parts made from one or more of the original toolings, thereby completely eliminating the need to cast any parts from the original tooling that are then not going to be used. As a result, all of the new parts are made from the same plastic color(s), as are their counterparts made from the original toolings. Depending on the number of changed parts, this can result in a partially or completely different transformation (which we would call "parts sharing"). This method can be applied both after the fact (which we would call a "retool" or "remold"), and from the early planning stage of the toy (which we would call a "pretool"), with the latter resulting in a mold layout that is specifically designed to allow for the replacement of those parts with parts from the new/alternate tooling(s).
• Casting both versions of certain parts from the same tooling, and thus having them on the same sprue (which we would also call a "pretool"). One version gets used, the other gets recycled. This only really makes economic sense if it's just a very small part (or small number of small parts) that has an alternative, such as a head.