I've shied away from a lot of figures lately because I've run out of room for a collection and there haven't been that many figures I'm interested in anyways. However I did pick up generations rhinox when he came out, and I noticed a few rather disturbing problems with him, that became apparent on other figures I've looked at. #1. Is the joint tightness. I've had this problem with movie figures in the past but generations figures seemed okay for a while. Really it wasn't until I picked up rhinox, my first figure in years, that I noticed his leg joints were ALL really loose. My theory for this relates to my last point. #2. The plastic. It seems to me that figures are using more and more cheaper feeling, brittle plastic. It's not quite MP megatron levels of brittle but something does seem off about it. Not to mention shoddily nipped scars from where pieces were gang-molded. #3. And this is the big one: the hollow areas everywhere. The plastic areas might not even feel so bad if it wasn't for the fact the most figures these days tend to use thin, hollow shells or simply an open sided piece filled with a couple of thin braces to hold it together (see the inside of generations jetfire's thighs) to give the appearance of bulk. The worst cases are when robots no longer have distinct limb pieces but in stead made of shells from the alt-mode (see the forearms on knockout) or just flat out plates like the new roadbuster. The lack of weight and thin plastic just make the figures feel like they're gonna break at any moment. Gone are the days of any heft or "good play feel" from lines like cybertron and beast wars. I'm not even gonna mention the lack of effort in many of the paint applications that are so lazy we've come back to having to use stickers on generations whirl. And don't even get started with "oh they have rising prices in plastic and inflation to deal with, give them a break!". No! There shouldn't be such a drastic lowering in quality AS the price goes up. Most of these figures seem like cheap knockoffs than the real thing, and I don't care if they are well designed, transformation-wise. If the quality's so bad the figure can barely hold a stance like my rhinox, its just not worth it. I don't if anyone else has noticed these problems lately, but I feel like I should bring this up as a word of caution and for people mindlessly buy whatever hasbro throws up.
