Those were fun days, right?

Another update, come and gone, and nothing for 3P. Just more Siege crap and MP-44 and cell-shaded blah blah blah.

It's been months since they've done any sets for 3P figures. They've got one for Siege Omega Supreme now but the DX9 Gabriel has been out for like a year and a half and no sets for that.

There are probably 40+ MP scale 3P figures that they haven't done any sets for, and the list just keeps growing. I don't understand their decision making at all.

 

I miss the days of 3p sets as well - cell shaded stuff can burn in a ditch for all I care.

Maybe they lost designers and have to go for easy BS.

 

Mp 3p animation less detail aesthetic doesn’t work with sticker sets.

 

Considering some of the options they used to do for other figures...I don't think they care about that opinion in the least. If it has a surface, they'll stick something to it whether it looks good or not.

 

You mean 3 or 4 months ago? Worst case scenario earlier this year (I don't remember the specific month). Yeah I can remember that far back. Seems way too fast for a "remember when...?"

 

My guess would be if they're not making them it's one of two things...1) they don't sell as well. Or 2) and possibly more likely...they're trying to brown-nose up to Hasbro. I mean, they are making product that Hasbro could probably easily put a stop to as the faction symbols are copyrighted/trademarked/insert proper legal term here.

 

I would imagine that Siege has been remarkable for them in sales since the figures have been highly praised and have tons of room for applications, so that's been their main focus. Once EarthRise gets released I would imagine it'll be the same.
As with everything in business, you go with what makes you money.

 

yeah, the postscript to this is that their manager, Alex, was nice enough to reach out to me and we had a good chat where he explained some things from their point of view. Gotta respect him for doing that. And I'll be the first to admit that I don't have much of a head for business, so in retrospect, yeah, it seems kind of obvious that profits and sales dictate these decisions.

 

I'm sure there's far more money in doing sets for official stuff than there is for 3P. Not only are 3P fans a smaller subset of TF fans, it's broken down into even further cliques by manufacturer and such, so returns on the investment are significantly lower. There's very few "flagship" 3P products anymore that the fandom all rallies behind, because they're all competing with each other now over the same characters.

And then on top of that, we now have stuff coming out like the XTB "Youth" Stunticons that preclude the need for Toyhax labels in the first place.

 

If their money is in sets for CHUGs I'm not going to begrudge them that. I just miss when they did smaller sets that added missing detail instead of elaborate sets that add glowing hexagons to every available flat surface and still manage to miss the detail I wanted fixed in the first place.

 

I wish they would offer a sticker only option for set that include parts.

 

Cell shaded isn’t up my alley but I’n Sure they’ll do third party stuff yet.

 

The ONLY sets I have bought for hasbro stuff in a looong time were for the siege seekers. .and thats only because they had the fins. I will never but a sticker set for something that already has faction symbols and other details Thats why they need to get back to 3p stuff....grrrrr

 

I would imagine, based on how many comments there are about "lack of paint" on MMC/Ox Assaultus, that sets for those 5 would sell well. (honestly, I'm pretty much waiting for a ToyHax set, before I commit to Assaultus---I need my purple tailboom stripes for Vortex!)

 

It does seem a lot of times that there are sets that include stickers that are necessary and then a lot of unnecessary holo-glow and stuff just to jack up the price.

That said, their latest sets for Siege are a great improvement compared to what we've been getting for the last year or two.
The Red Alert and Mirage sets are amazing and fix all of the things that needed fixing.
The Mirage set covers up all the translucent parts with opaque blue and adds classic logo's to boot.

Both still have some needless stuff thrown in, but these are the kinds of sets I want to buy from them again.

In comparison, their earlier Siege sets add a lot of flashy stickers that really aren't needed while there is nothing to hide the battle damage, which is something that I'm pretty sure more people than me would like to buy from them.

Their Siege Soundwave set does include two labels to hide the broken effect on the tapedeck, but neither label looks very good.

A label to cover Fanstoys Cyclonus's chest is another thing I would greatly appreciate.

 

Doesn’t really seem like 3p stuff needs stickers the same way Hasbro stuff sometimes does.

 

I only see a use for faction symbols, otherwise I hate stickers.

 

I don't use stickers for my figs, but I could see it being a disappointment for people who want to customise their TFs.

 

This is exactly why I dont buy any. Most sets id consider getting I want to use half or less of the stickers so it feels like wasted money. They did have some pretty nice sets for the Transformers Prime figures that I bought several of.