I found Masterpiece Rodimus for anyone interested

[Skyquake87]

I like how the person (from Cybertron!) who found his was broken in the box would still recommend it to a friend.

Yeah, I can't understand those reviews - they all say its complex, expensive and has QC issues but still would recommend it and give it a high rating! Not much of an incentive for the manufacturer to take a little more care is it?

[Cliffjumper]

Yeah, I can't understand those reviews - they all say its complex, expensive and has QC issues but still would recommend it and give it a high rating! Not much of an incentive for the manufacturer to take a little more care is it?

I'm guessing they're Transformers fans. "I hate this figure, the plastic's crap, it's got bad articulation, it was ridiculously overpriced and the design is lazy. But it reuses the same trademark as another toy I like, so I'll buy three".

[inflatable dalek]

They have two -- possibly the minimum order for store -- and there's no sign of them reducing the remaining Grimmys.

Not very impressive in the plastic.

Would you're nearest be the Merry Hill one? They had about six other Grimlock's when I got mine, and that was only the second they'd sold, both seemingly because it was AA that week. As I think I said in the Newest Acquisitions thread, the cashier was cheerfully telling me they were expected to be reduced any time now and she was holding one back for a friend.

It's kind of worrying with the Hasbro version of Rodimus that even with what seems to be the basic quality control checks not present with the Takara ones it's still a bit crap. Such a shame what should be a sure fire winner range has only managed to produce two toys to date that aren't over designed nonsense.

[Cliffjumper]

Problem with Masterpiece is that there just aren't enough Transformers of the right stature - in terms of both size and popularity - to fill the line. When you factor in the overlap with Alternators (a Masterpiece Prowl, for example, would basically be the Alternators Impreza reshelled) you're not left with much.

I think the key triumph with Grimlock is that they've just basically scaled up the original - only the mechanism for hiding the tail in robot mode is radically different.

[Knightdramon]

Actually, coming from a person who's a radical Rodimus fanboy, got the takara version on release and has the hasbro version for a while now, the QC is really better on Hasbro.

*Unless of course I got real bad luck on my takara version and really lucky on hasbro's*

All in all, besides Megatron and JP Rodimus, I'm fairly satisfied in the MP line so far. Sadly both Convoy and the release after him are repeat performances, but they're so far

[Clogs]

£60 a pop at our Leicester TRU - loads on the shelf, warming it...

[Denyer]

Would you're nearest be the Merry Hill one? They had about six other Grimlock's when I got mine, and that was only the second they'd sold, both seemingly because it was AA that week. As I think I said in the Newest Acquisitions thread, the cashier was cheerfully telling me they were expected to be reduced any time now and she was holding one back for a friend.

Yeah --they're in two parts of the store, so there were a handful more. My guess is that if they average one of a £60 item every couple of weeks, they probably aren't going to price them down for a while. It's just a case of catching the short period between marked down and gone...

[inflatable dalek]

Problem with Masterpiece is that there just aren't enough Transformers of the right stature - in terms of both size and popularity - to fill the line. When you factor in the overlap with Alternators (a Masterpiece Prowl, for example, would basically be the Alternators Impreza reshelled) you're not left with much.

Aye, but that doesn't explain why the ones they have done have struggled so. The only one I can understand being a real struggle to design would be Megatron, considering the difficulties in getting from a realistic gun to something vaguely like the animation model (which is probably the most streamlined of all the original characters, it doesn't really look much like it turns into anything) even though it's basically impossible to give it the right amount of bulk.

Starscream and Rodimus though, shouldn't have been any harder than Optimus (who actually has some fairly intricate design features in places to get from the truck mode to the character design, the pull out headlights being the most obvious, but never feels hard or fiddly to transform).

Even little things like Starscream's original release colour scheme don't feel right. There's nothing wrong with realism as such, but pretty much the only way you differentiate G1 Starscream from A Random Jet is the red white and blue.

[Cliffjumper]

Oh yeh, they bollocksed those up, no question - I think in both cases, though, they wanted to put "more" into them than the recent Classics figures, so they couldn't just scale things up... With Classics Grimlock having such a different transformation pattern, this was less of a problem with him; they didn't have to worry about 'doubling up' and putting out what's basically an oversized hugely expensive version of a recent figure.

Regarding TRU and reducing, I spoke to a friend who worked in one a couple of years ago yesterday and mentioned about MP Grimlocks. He said that when he was there they really didn't bother too much about reducing (note: different to promotional prices) specific figures within a line; as long as Toys R Us stores have a large section devoted to Transformers, there's no harm in having a shelf or two of slow-moving figures as long as there are 10-12 with faster-moving products (like, say, current movie assortments) so there's space for new stuff. When getting ROTF stuff, for example, I can remember still seeing a couple of pegs of RiD basics alongside them at original RRP.

Generally speaking stuff only gets reduced if TRU are stopping or drastically paring down the space they have devoted to that line. So TRUs have widely reduced things like G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra because they don't carry a lot of G.I. Joe normally and want the shelf space for something else, but seeing as they'd have a sizeable Transformers section anyway they're not so fussed.

Obviously there are some exceptions to this (I seem to remember Commemorative Series stuff getting reduced), but they might not bother unless general interest drops off and they want to cut back on the space to make room for something else.

Another thing worth noting with Grimlock is that the TRU one is steadily going for £70-80 on ebay (not sure if this link'll work, but do a completed listings check on the UK version otherwise), as not everyone has a TRU within travelling distance. It wouldn't surprise me if they trickle away from people buying to sell - if I had staff discount or something, I'd be tempted at the chance for a £10-15 profit.

Like Denyer says, if they're selling one or two a week at £60, they'll keep them there. Plus the shelves are going to be pretty settled until the Prime line hits at least - there's no need to clearance them if there's nothing to replace them.

[Cunning Ravage]

Starscream and Rodimus though, shouldn't have been any harder than Optimus (who actually has some fairly intricate design features in places to get from the truck mode to the character design, the pull out headlights being the most obvious, but never feels hard or fiddly to transform).

with Starscream the head designer, Shōji Kawamori was absolutely against just putting the robot chest under the jet, and insisted that it be made so the jet mode was completely accrete to a real jet as possible from every angle. Needless to say this pushed the original plans of basically just doing an upscaled classic down the drain.

[Knightdramon]

-Just a suggestion, from one point onward this could branch into a different thread altogether as not to hamper the actual sale thread-

Kawamori is crazy about planes. The guy actually majored at aircraft avionics\mechanics or whatever before settling as a mecha designer. He has come out many times and said that all his jet transforming robots are designed in such a way so that they theoretically could fly if ever mass produced.

I personally don't mind intricate and complex transformation schemes, as long as they actually work. My takara rodimus was an uncompromising nightmare. Megatron would actually be challenging and not frustrating if a)half his armour parts popped off b)parts actually co-operated when attempting to move them around c)the world's stupidest fusion cannon didn't cripple his robot mode.

One of the problems with the line is that the designers can't keep a unified theme within their 5 moulds in 8 years. First came Convoy, who was [at the time] G1 incarnated. Then Starscream, with a completely unrelated colour scheme. The thing looks like Starscream in all aspects but some of the more stylized parts don't work. The torso is way too long because the cockpit breaks too early and the head is relatively small compared to the rest of the body. I couldn't care less about the robot chest sweeping forward or staying down in jet mode. It actually works much better the way it is.

Megatron was plagued with too many compromises even during design sketches.

Grimlock is something done right, although he's much much simpler to transform. I cringed when I saw only 8 steps in the booklet on my first try. Only design flaw I can come up with is that they trust the weight of those huge arms on simple ball joints.

Rodimus looks as if he stepped out of the 1986 movie, dead-on accurate. Aesthetically, he is much like a SOC--keeping in with the exact proportions of the anime, be it blocky or stylized, and working into making a complicated procedure to zoom him into an alternate mode. The TRU version I got via this very thread is one of my favourite figures.

I mean, come on, if modern engineering made one of the world's blandest robots [Ideon, my favourite, but bland] into one of the most intricate transforming robots ever, the same can be done for most other transformers!