The thing is...

If Hasbro / Takara's pricing or sales models push me away from buying their products... then they've already lost my sale. They're out of the equation. I swore off the MP line because they got too expensive for what I felt I was getting (and their sales models were beginning to feel predatory and exploitative). I didn't stop buying MPs because I was "waiting for KOs". I do it because I can't accept the price, and I'm voting with my dollar.

For example, I don't really want SIEGE to fail, because it looks like a cool line. But at the same time, I refuse to buy any of them at retail at the new prices. As a consumer, that's withholding your patronage as a form of feedback. Smaller toys with hugely inflated pricing... while ALSO having extra silver paint apps I'm going to have to remove by hand, and being shipped in larger, more elaborate, more wasteful packaging? Nope, sorry. I can't support that.

If another company comes along, and offers a better version of that product for a reasonable price, I'm going to buy it, and it really no longer has anything to do with Has/Tak. I mean, on my side, of course... I think Has/Tak have a legit concern over their IT, and they need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing it, because that may also poison the relationship further with their adult collector base.

When I buy most of my KO stuff, it's usually for one of TWO reasons
- I already bought the original, and the KO offers something new and improved
- the official already alienated me, so I'm buying with money that wouldn't go to Has/Tak anyway

zmog

 

Out of curiosity, did you/would you go in on the siege line at those hts prices that hit their website a couple of times over the last month?

When I first saw figures in target, I was tempted to get the sideswipe, but at $20, I said I’d hold off for their $25 off $100 sale I knew would eventually come; but then hts had the deluxes for $10 each (along with a 20% discount in early December and then 15% discount after they restocked the Friday before Christmas). D.C. and Maryland Transformers Sightings
That $8 price point heavily influenced me to ‘vote with my dollar’ and pick up that entire first wave. (Ironically, I’ve paid more for KOs of lesser quality)

last point I’ll make is that I was surprised with how small the siege line deluxes were. It wasn’t ‘bad’ just them being smaller than classics cars in bot mode and CW cars in bot mode wasn’t what I expected.

 

He's here! pictures soon  

 

Actually that's not true, Hasbro does NOT have unencumbered rights to Transformers, and never did; Takara owns the designs and the molds on top of the trademark rights in that region so Hasbro may not even have legal standing to bring a suit against makers of knockoff Takara products.

 

In my case, I'm seeing things in Canadian dollars. Up here, we're paying $30 for a Deluxe, and $40 for a Voyager.

But even in US dollars, $10 would be acceptable for me, though I would still be disappointed by the size of the figures. This is mainly because I tend to amalgamate my Generations stuff into one collection, so it bothers me when some characters/figures are just way too small next to others.

Unfortunately, at local prices, Deluxes would have to be 50% off before I'd consider them a "good deal" and we almost never get sales like that.

I am really interested to see if WJ or KBB deliver improved/upscaled versions of the SIEGE stuff. That's something I could get excited about.

zmog

 

Toy of the year you say? Can a KO count? Yes, well then:

I can confirm that LT Striker Noir is an absolute beauty. She (that's right) is insanely fun to play around and pose. I haven't transformed her yet so no truck shots.


Looks great with my top CHUG bot, RTS G2 Jazz. The aesthetics really match up, much more so than TR Laser Prime (now banished to the sales pile) with the sweet paint apps, greebly details and lack of hollow limbs. The plastic quality is amazing too, really puts Laser Prime to shame, feeling more like the bulky CHUG of yesteryear (though apparently Siege has corrected all that now). The only negative is the flappy panels on her arms don't peg in anywhere so kind of flop about when you pose her


Half the box is her ridiculous arsenal of weaponry. Obviously same as Maketoys Striker Noir, but I've not seen it before. The sculpting is amazing. The obvious winner will be the light piped version of OP's ion blaster. I kinda feel like a lot of these weapons were made for Striker Manus or even Despotron, not just Noir. Maybe Maketoys stuck it all in the box to get people to buy the rest.


All in all, she's near perfect, really high quality, great posability and tons of accessories; all for less than £50

 

$30 For a deluxe totally alienated me away from siege.. I wanted skytread for nostalgia reasons but not at $30 plus taxes...

 

THIS

Plus these reasons:

- "Availability". If I can't get the original, at a conference reasonable price, I'll get the KO instead.

- Improvements/Value for money. If the KO features better paint, joints, etc, then I'll probably get the KO.

 

Hasbro owns the franchise and licenses to Takara. Also as of power of the primes the releases are generally double branded for both hasbro and Takara. If it’s a ko of a product released with a hasbro logo on the box then hasbro could most definitely sue

 

I hunted down the last Maketoys Striker Noir in Europe as I have more money than sense, but I’m glad the KO is good too because it’s such an amazing figure, esp in black. Everyone should experience the joy of owning it.

And I never thought about it, but Noir works oddly well as a fembot. Wth, I’m copying you and calling mine a ”she” too  

 

cool cool. to be honest, I need to up the fembots in my collection. I guess it should be 'Noire' to be feminine.. stupid French

There was a point when the original dropped in value and was around the same price as the KO is now. But I passed on it at the time thinking they would be easy to get later   Now they're so expensive  

 

”Noire” she is. Look at me, learning French at midnight in a TF forum  
Now I’m just hoping Maketoys will do some official fembots in the CD line too.

Yeah I waited too long as well. Luckily I found one, but at thrice the cost of the KO and from what I hear with minimal differences. I don’t think you should lament not getting the MT, instead think of all the other bots you can get with the money you saved.

 

 this is true

The Ko is so good, I'm not sure what could've been better on the original. I really hope the Cross Dimension line continues on. The Jetfire looks interesting

I used to have a MT Battle Tanker a few years ago but it was so fiddly and difficult to play with. The cross dimension stuff has really come so far from that.

Haha, my girlfriend is French and she's bit of a twat when it comes to all that Masculine/Feminine stuff.

 

I wouldn't mind a KO of the striker mold in the blue/black diaclone colors

 

I’ve got the black Jetfire on preorder, as he’ll be cool both alone and combined with Noire. And he’ll just as easily combine with the KO, of course.

Pity about Battle Tanker, I like the look of some of the older MT stuff but yeah, think I’m sticking with Cross Dimension.

Lol I had the same with a German friend and der/die/das.

 

All of this. ALL OF IT.

Seriously, I can't like these posts enough; they speak to my problems with pricing, sizes, current offerings, etc. with Hastak right now.

Stand Siege Sideswipe next to Uni 2.0 Sunstreaker. You might then feel a LITTLE better when you stand him next to CW Sunstreaker and he isn't THAT much smaller. And they want me to spend $20 for that crap.

Lie to me, and tell me that Wheeljack+ should sell at $80. Or even $65 that some people happened to find him for, and think it's a "steal!" I bought my Takara Wheeljack during a group buy with friends, and factoring in shipping, my copy cost me $48. With Takara historically being more expensive than Hasbro. You will never convince me that the economy is dictating these higher prices. That's Hasbro and Takara figuring out how much they can gouge us for. This is when I simply decide not to buy. No more MPs, and I'm not too keen on most of the standard shelf-fillers either.

I'll tell you one piece of info. Don't remember his name, but the guy heading the Hasbro panel in Botcon, San Diego (where they revealed Arcee). My friend and I had a REALLY lengthy chat with him after the panel--about 40 minutes or so. Really nice guy. We sorta steered into 3P stuff accidentally, followed by a lot of joking "oooh, uh-oh, oops," kinda stuff. But he told me this. People at Hasbro had different opinions on 3P: some didn't care, many teeth-gnashingly hated them. But his boss told him one thing. If Hasbro is making the best product they can make, they shouldn't be worried about what anyone else does. Because people will buy Hasbro's product as a result.

Sadly, I no longer believe Hasbro cares to make the best product. Last couple of years has seen a shift in attitude. And it's one I don't want to buy into. Here's to hoping a KO group is smart enough to oversize some of these figures to their original deluxe/voyager/leader heights (instead of overdoing it as they tend to do). I can promise I would buy into quite a bit of that offering if they did so.

 

Sounds like you just need to move on from collecting. Prices rise over time, hell g1 hot rod is $35, that figure is a piece of crap. There’s also the g1 devastator that costs damn near as much as a combiner wars combiner while being a piece of crap

 

I'm not too far away from that. I've noticed I don't have the hardest time walking away from things these days. Thing about Hot Rod, is it's now $21 on clearance, and I was able to buy one via Walmart's website through their Rollback thing (which makes no sense; it was never that price to roll back to, but not complaining) for $12.99. And I'm still into 3P, but lately only buying during flash sales (which may tighten up or go away all together). And, of course, KOs if they're what I'm looking for.

But there's a huge difference between prices rising over time (the deluxe creeping up from $15, to $15.50, to $15.99, to $16...) and just gouging (...to $20! And a smaller figure too...). And if that's sustainable for them, great. I'll bail and won't look back.

 

Something amazing is coming from weijiang

 

Wonder what size it'll be