Why keep the good transformers prime figures from us while selling far inferior versions!
Seriously hasbro? I have a hard time justifying buying the tformers prime stuff when there are better versions made. Why make two versions!
That's been my complaint all along and the reason why I refuse to pay normal retail prices for the line. If I find something at a good sale price or clearance I'll reconsider, but otherwise I'm passing on the whole thing.
Emerje
MyFigureCollection.net - Most of my Japanese figures
Associate Editor for Tomopop.com
I assume it has to do with cost cutting. Many of the FE designs look better. Especially Bulkhead and Arcee.
I picked up Wheeljack on a whim. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a very nice and seems more like a FE design rather than a mainline design. Can't say that there is anything else in the line that has caught my eye.
I just don't understand why they would even MAKE two molds of the same figure so close together, in more or less the same scale. Next time Hasbro says they can't do something because of tooling costs I hope someone throws this debacle in their faces. What a waste of resources.
I wondered the same thing. The first run were amazing, and then the new ones came out looking cheeper, with a crappy looking card.
The FE series was originally meant to be a Generations wave, back when Hasbro wasn't ready to commit long term to a Prime toyline. Things changed and that wave got pushed back... to the point where Hasbro used it as end-of-year space filler under it's own sub-series: the First Edition wave.
Unfortunately it got under-ordered abloo bloo bloo.
The new toys are the "real" Prime toys. They're made to be more more kid-oriented - less complex transformations and more play gimmicks. The FEs, while being vastly superior, are relatively more complexly engineered. That's OK for Generations, which is a more adult-focused Transformers line, but unfortunately for us older guys, soccer moms have been pressuring stores / hasbro for easier toys because they can't help their kids turn those darn robots into cars. That's why we're getting meh versions of already existing toys.