Over the years since the release of Fansproject's City commander set for the old classics Magnus ive noticed a significant decrease of 3rd party companies releasing upgrade kits for existing figures? Does anyone know why this is? I love the idea of the upgrade kits, giving new life to a pre-existing toy. Is there a rational reason as to why companies have been steering away from these type of products?

 

... Because there's more money to be made in designing your own figure from the start?

 

My guess is that it's a bit of a crapshoot as to what figures would benefit from those kits and which ones won't. In the past, it was pretty easy to make an upgrade everyone wanted because the figures warranted them. Deluxe sized Primes and Ultra Magnuses were ripe choices. Similarly, guys like Dr. Wu would do well getting out signature G1 style weapons for characters that were released without them.

Cut to 2016-2018 where most of the figures we're getting are all gimmicky, and either come with their own armor (POTP), or are so kitted out with extra stuff there's no real room to install more easy mods. In addition, the 3d printing market has taken up a lot of the mini-mods people used to make - almost all of my Titans Returns deluxe and some voyager figures are sporting shapeway mods. Reprolabels even sells minor mods and weapons for some of the deluxe scale figures.

In addition, there was a ton of upgrades for the Titans Returns line before it ended. DNA, PE and other companies came up with whole combiner kits, or just upgrades to the voyager component. However, some of these mods require extensive tooling around with the fig, which some people aren't going to risk because they don't want to break their toys and/or don't like the idea of throwing away parts.

In short, I think people want to see what POTP does first before they launch a crapton of mods for those figures. I hope someone fixes Starscream and Elita's hulk hands and clown boots, for example. As for add on armors like the FP Parallax parts? I think that ship has sailed until TT/Hasbro reveals a figure that has horribly dropped the ball on some generally understood key component of that figure (i.e. a Megatron without some kind of cannon or a Shockwave with a face with a nose or something silly).

 

Third party market evolved in size and capability to making their own high quality figures. Why make a set to fix the flaws of someone else's figure when you can make more money making your own figure?

 

Perhaps it's because these days there isn't a dominant, 'must-have' figure that has a wide base of customers to buy such upgrades. In the past it was Classics Prime, resulting in the various trailers and add-on armors. Today we have MP-10, but he already has his own trailer available and owners would be loathed to tear apart a Masterpiece figure. And those who buy a KO version would probably not pay a premium for an upgrade kit.

 

Mostly it seems the Hasbro stuff isn't worth upgrading anymore, not with the stand alone 3P stuff being offered. <--- Just my opinion and why I wouldn't be interested in upgrades anymore.

 

There's still plenty of upgrade kits, but like the rest of the currents trends have been focused on Masterpiece stuff.

Still Perfect Effect is still churning out some stuff like hands/feet for combiners & upgrades to Titan Master Optimus Prime to turn him into a Power Master.

And there were a number of upgrade sets for Devastator.

Plus, you can always look to Nonnef and Renderform to have something.

Plus, there's plenty of stuff on Shapeways, and the new High Def material is almost good enough to look like it was factory made.

Trent Troop makes a number of neat things, like a large number of custom Titan Master faces:

Prize Inside by The Octavirate Forge by TrentTroop - Shapeways Shops

 

Third parties started making their own toys more often and solving the problem at the root of the cause by surpassing official products from the ground up with their own better toys. City Commander though was a weird case where I still feel like we haven't really had a penultimate non-g1 magnus that is definitively superior in every respect. Closest thing weirdly is PlanetX's. So I hope GCreations turns out amazing.

Not sure why anyone would expect things to be as they once were though given we're in such a different market now than we were in 2010-2011. That was almost a full decade ago, things have changed immensely since then. Prices, options, standards, all of it is different now.

Like for less money than it costs for takara's ginrai and PE's upgrades for it you can get maketoys thunder manus, a vastly vastly superior toy in every single way that is only ever so slightly smaller. It's crazy how far stuff as come that that isn't an abnormal occurance now. I for one certainly haven't needed any upgrades for official stuff in a long while. Last ones I bought were some hands for my takara mps.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing an articulated hands set for mp36.

 

The Gravity Builder / NBK etc... Dvastator just got a claw attachment accessory if that counts,

 

Not much has really happened.. there is still a few out there pe always makes something we need so we can count on them

 

There was an upgrade kit for CW Ultra Magnus... It came with new arms with articulated hands with wrist swivels, and new leg panels that gave feet with ball-jointed articulation, and a new head with changeable faceplates, not to mention some filler panels and big rifle that worked with the shoulder launchers to make a new hammer. The kit was about the same price as a leader class figure though.

I eventually ended up cutting the original feet off of Ultra Magnus to maximize the design, but the only necessary parts changing was the head and removing the original forearms, which were mounted by mushroom pegs. It was an excellent kit, though the color matching seemed more to match UW Ultra Magnus than the CW version.


CW Optimus got a couple kits upgrading him to a leader sized version of IDW Optimus. Now that was a major ordeal replacing the all parts on.


There was also several kits released for CW Megatron, giving better feet and legs, cannon, and a back mounted barrel to better emulate his G1 gun kibble.

Honestly, I don't see much or anything else that comprehensive coming out in the future. However, PE has a nice set coming out for POTP Grimlock, which seems to replace the arms and hips or combined mode waist panel.

 

The juice ain't worth the squeeze anymore. The prior responses say it all.

 

The base toys got more expensive and the kits were always pricy relative to what they were.

So on the one hand, people that would've put up with paying $20 to fix a $10 toy balked at $40 to fix a $20 one because there were better options not too much further away.

On the other hand, there's been far more people waiting for Ollies. These kits have a lead time for design and production that starts after it's been determined that a toy has flaws yet is still popular. A toy that sits for a year and goes to clearance multiple times does not look it has either the potential base or the willingness to spend and dragging out the timeline only risks that the next shiny will have come along by the time any kit would hit the market.

 

I suspect they were sort of like training wheels for many of these companies and after they had a handle on those with the current anything goes 3P figure climate they couldn't help but jump all in and dedicate their time and resources to full figure design.

3P has come a very long way over the last few years. 3-4 years ago, the idea that a 3P could possibly design a Bayformer was nearly unthinkable and now the best of them are starting to at least tie Hastak.

FT's original Slag was the first time I ever saw a 3P toy I actually thought was comparable to high end Hastak design/execution and that was maybe 5 years ago.

 

Upgrade kits are the only things I'm interested third party wise. And there were a lot obvious candidates that fans wished upgrades for. Shapeways is a no go for me as long as the plastic is not abs quality and readily painted.

 

I started to make my own upgrades, but mostly for old Micronauts figures so they don't really fit TFs. Like these replacement boots for Time Traveler figures with broken ankles.

 

I was never a huge fan of add-on kits (even though I have a couple and am happy with them), simply because I feel like they are too expensive.

That isn't to say that the manufacturers of add-on kits are price gouging or anything - personally, I just find them expensive. Plus I find it distasteful that I have to pay often $20 for an add on kit to for a $40 figure. I'm not hating on the add-on kit manufacturer - it's more that I feel dumb that I have to pay to 'fix' a figure that maybe I shouldn't have even bought in the first place if I didn't think it was up to snuff.

These days, I'd rather just wait for a better figure to come along and buy that. I think because we have so many choices these days for figures (it's awesome) that I really don't want to bother with a 7/10 figure and then have to pay another chunk of cash to get that figure to be a 10/10. I'd rather just wait for a better figure to come along....

 

You can't polish a turd, and that's what current official transformers are lol (for the most part)

 

As far as deluxe figures go, there’s not really a market for actual upgrades beyond weapons. I’ve spoken to someone who runs one of the smaller upgrade companies and he’s said that the upgrades he does for deluxes don’t really sell all that well