Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. Like I said, it's nice to see a site with so much passion for these little fellas.
Originally Posted by The Phazer
I'm sorry, but this isn't remotely true.
They are no where near as complex in part number, level of articulation and fabrication as deluxe toys from either Cybertron or Classics.
In particular, Bumblebee only having two colour sprues is a DAMNING indictment of the cost cutting that has taken place here compared to the typical Transformers toy.
Phazer
Well....I wish it were this easy.
In all honesty, "sprue counting" is a bit simplistic when accessing the overall complexity and cost of a toy line. In fact, when a line is this big, the number of sprues (whether it's two, three or four) isn't even an issue. Sprues of different colors and types of injections can be shared or gated based on vamp up needs. The real factor is the speed/volume of production - how much volume can be produced of a given piece in a given period of time. Tooling will ALWAYS be costly, but what really shoots up the production cost on this line is the complexity of the assembly.
While it may be difficult to see form these pics, there is actually quite a bit going on at a pretty small scale. The end result is several difficult to assemble small parts. With the movie figures, the unrealistic designs didn't allow the luxury of having entire chunks of the car body visible in the alt mode. A great effort had to be taken to break up the body parts, AND maintain the look of the licensed vehicle as much as possible. All this had to be done at half the size and price point as the Alternators series.
Because of this, most of these have a more complicated assembly process than Classics, Cyb, and, because of scale, even Alternators.
Sadly, one of the biggest hits on the lower price point line will be the deco apps. This is one of the most costly, time consuming aspects of production. Also remember that not every piece in the line is a direct reflection of the issues I brought up. There going to be pieces that are cheaper to manufacture and there are going to be those that are considerably more costly. When a line is issued, this is taken into consideration so that it evens itself out in the end. For example, in the Star Wars figure line, you're going to have figures like Chewbacca with a light up C-3PO accessory as well as something like repaint of an existing tooling - it's all about balancing costs. The same is going to be true in the Transformers movie line.
Anyway, I just thought I would clear that up.
For the record, I wholeheartedly agree that not all of these look great. All I ask is that the brutal task of taking an unrealistic, impossible design and turning it into a reality with all these issues hanging over the designer's heads be taken into consideration.
Also note that these things are test shots that don't necessarily reflect the final production pieces - and that they were transformed and posed by someone that CLEARLY doesn't know what they're doing.
