Now I know newer toys aren't supposed to be as vulnerable to gold-plastic syndrome but my Botcon Dinobot is concerning me. He uses gold-ish plastic for his scoop arm, his feet, and his midsection, and it has the infamous swirls in it, though not nearly as prominent as those on older GPS figures, I've got a G1 Skyhammer for comparison. If a main line figure had this I wouldn't worry, like I said it's gold with swirls but not that bad and a main line figure could be replaced or a repaint down the line might address it, but a Botcon toy? No replacing it 5 or 10 years down the line if it starts crumbling. Any expert want to weigh in on this concern of mine?
Like you said, newer toys don't really suffer from the same GPS degradation that old stuff can. Hasbro and Tomy don't use that stuff anymore - I think Randy would be the last figure to have it, not certain - even though figures are done with similar gold plastic. Swirls are natural to any type of plastic, they just tend to be more visible on gold or silver. If you look closely at nearly any TF, you can find some spot with a visible swirl.
If the figure's plastic is prone to degradation, it will not begin degrading until 2015 or so. The figure isn't even two years old yet.
