In recent weeks I've been looking at G1 toys and thinking "wouldn't it be nice if I could get some" and these Retro boxings seem to have come at the perfect time. Sixo's video review of pink Hot Rod has sold me on a character I've never had any interest in (chrome would've been nice though, gotta get one of those markers).

Mirage would be an instabuy for me as would a Lambo of some form - probably Sunstreaker!

 

Those colors suck. Glad I still have mine from 1984.

 

They don't have somebody in the organization championing reissues. That's the long and short of it. All of this "oh me oh my tooling so 'spensive" handwringing goes out the window when you see how much dumpster bait they release in any given year between the various soap bottles and Cyberverse-style lines.

 

These pictures look like the reissue will be all plastic with no metal and no chromed parts.  Unless this is a test shot without die cast, the original G1 or the 2001 Takara reissue might be a better way to go.

 

I haven't seen so much truth in a single post in a great while. And to make it all the worse.. they spend so much time and money on these molds.. and then product never gets to retail shelves in a timely fashion eventually ending up on a deep discount at Olley's and other similar stores.. YET these lines and their waves are "released" like an Olympic sprinter.

 

We have heard that it's really expensive, but I've gotta imagine with modern technology (like 3D scanners) it's a lot more feasible and cheaper than it was. And since they keep going back to the well on these guys, it seems like it'd be worth it, at least for popular characters that you can keep rolling out every few years, Like Grimlock (not to mention that you've got G2 color schemes and cartoon-accurate redecos available)

 

The offset factor you're not considering is just how much wider a distrubution deal a main product line like Cyberverse has, versus these reissue figures. A mainline figure will have at least 10x the sales volume, worldwide. Every dollar sunk into R&D for those "soap bottles" returns 10x the value than investment in reissue figures do.

It's not that recreating the toolings actually costs more than making brand new ones from scratch. It's that you get far less return on investment on those "old" toolings.

 

Tooling being expensive is also a "from a certain point of view" situation was well. Hasbro pulls in more revenue in an hour than anybody on this forum makes in a lifetime. So while it really is "so 'spensive" for the average person, it's relative pennies to Hasbro. If somebody in the organization wanted it done, it would be. They don't, so it's not.

Have they ever published a breakdown that would spell this out? Everything I've seen in the annual reports posted here is at the brand (TransFormers, Monopoly, etc) or demographic (boys, girls) level. I'd love to see the numbers for a soap bottle vs an actual toy. The "between the lines" vibe I got during the Goldner years was toy budgets got cut so he could play movie maker. When Hasbro buys these other companies, the money comes from somewhere, and when they're quietly spun off years later, it seems like more money than expected went somewhere else.

 

that's a good point. I wouldn't be surprised if they farm out the creative work on those too.

 

Hasbro as a collective makes enough money to not particularly care about those nitty-gritties. But the company isn't structured that way. Each cost incurred needs to be justified to the shareholders, who will simply say "why spend on this project with 2x ROI, versus doing more of these with 10x ROI?". It's then in the Hasbro board's court to demostrate the value of fandom appeal and good-will over cold, hard cash.

I'm sure that minutiae falls under the purview of "trade secrets" and will never be publicly disclosed.

They definitely ain't putting master designers like Shogo Hasui on the Titan Changers dev team, that's for sure.

 

They'll be $30 US bare minimum.
Hot Rod is like $33.

 

I don’t see how they can break even at $30. This is not going to be a high-volume seller.

I guess I just don’t understand the thinking here. Collectors who value the toon look don’t just want the colors, they want the shape. And nostalgic collectors with a love of the toy aesthetic aren’t going to get the warm-and-fuzzies from a toy with the right shape but in a jacked-up toon deco. Maybe I’m just biased, but from my perspective, this particular combo targets a very, very small audience within TF collectors.

 

I would have been ALL over this in the early 2000s. e-Hobby Astrotrain, New Years Convoy, Anime Galvatron, TFC Starscream, Encore Omega Supreme with actual sculpted eyes, Encore Anime Devastator with a completely new head sculpt, Encore Autobot cars with blue painted eyes... Takara was doing some crazy stuff and that shit was my jam! Nowadays with Masterpieces and the Generation mainline scratching that itch, not so much anymore though.

Starscream and Hot Rod must be doing well enough for Hasbro to continue this line though. I'm sure there's a decent audience for this!
I'm curious to see where this line will head next and, if the inevitable Optimus Prime looks any good, I may pick him up.

 

Well, to each their own, I guess.

The Encore stuff was ok because it remained largely true to the original releases, but this looks like a cheap dimestore KO, in my opinion (as do the Starscream and Hot Rod figures we’ve seen already). I think the washed-out colors of the animation work fine on animation sculpts (given that they compliment each other), but cartoon colors on the Diaclone models doesn’t work at all.

Again, it’s great if this is an appealing option for interested parties, but it looks like a wasted effort to me. This is like ketchup on prime rib.

 

Oh, yeah, I have 40 shares of NTDOY and Nintendo asks me my opinion about their direction for Super Mario every day.

In order words, you don't know what the ROI differential is then.

 

The feet look like diecast to me, the color is slightly different from the rest of the green plastic.


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Just in case anyone forgot, Hot Rod and Starscream sold out lightning quick on Pulse. I think the market for these decos is bigger than some suspect.

 

Got my Hot Rod today and can confirm he has die cast! Skipping Starscream since I got the book collection one for dirt cheap earlier this year and the new one is too similar (as well as those fat missiles that I despise) so I’ll be passing him

Overall a fan of the subline, it’s long overdue for Hasbro to do something interesting with the G1 molds instead of just reissuing the same damn layout again and again

 

Without knowing production numbers, who can say? If 1000 customers were interested and only 500 were produced, I would expect rapid sellout, but I wouldn’t call that a significant market.

 

Was Pulse already hiding available units when Hot Rod and Starscream went up? We know Pulse sells 5% of partner exclusives. It's real easy to figure out how many of these are being made for the U.S. market. If Pulse sold 500 of these, then Walmart is getting 10,000 for the U.S., which works out to only about two Hot Rods and two Starscreams per store.

 

Come with G1 decals?