C'mon dude, really? Unacceptable then? Save for sideswipe (and to some degree, grimlock) everyone else had fantastic alt modes that retained their classic look...their essence if you will. I understand being happy with the current MP offerings, but lets be real and not toss binaltechs under the bus. You're gonna actually tell me, in all honesty, that when smokescreen with his amazingly detailed 1:24 scale WRX mode, amazingly detailed bot mode hit the streets, you looked at him and said "unacceptable"?? Not buying it.
And you are right, next year will still be too long of a wait. I, along with many Tf fans, have been waiting for an MP Magnus since this lines inception. Everyone else has been made in one form or another, give big blue a chance to shine.
As for QC issues, once again...really dude? MP09. MP10. Both werent rushed out to market and Both had QC issues no? Especially MP09. In fact, they had to re release the bastard, and he still had QC issues. I think they're unavoidable TBH.
There's no need to defend TT man. I'm happy the collecting community are finally getting proper toys of their childhood heroes. If you asked me, it about damn time. But let's not pretend that TT are flawless and doesn't make errors in judgement from time to time.
When BT's originally came out I wasn't even collecting. I didn't start collecting Transformers again until 2007.
That being said I was never impressed with BT/Alternators, they were obviously improved from G1 in terms of their engineering but I didn't like how fiddly most of the transformations were, the robot modes were largely a mess of kibble and virtually all the alt modes had changed from G1 so there was no sense of nostalgia....I couldn't care less about Bluestreak as a Subaru Impreza or Wheeljack as a Ford Mustang.
Classics weren't perfect, but were a decent alternative for a while as whilst they shared some of the same issues, the robot modes were at least fun to mess with and the transformations weren't a hassle.
But once Takara had a rethink with the Masterpiece line and started increasing the range of characters then all the other official lines ceased to be of any relevance to me and even the majority of 3rd party figures weren't as appealing.
The only exceptions are,
Fans Toys
Quakewave reset the bar for build quality on high end Transformers and did it so well that even Takara products feel slightly lesser in quality.
They're also making at least 3 of the other Dinobots in Masterpiece scale and have the aesthetic down almost perfectly.
Cubex
Huff's design is up there with MP Laserbeak as one of the best transforming robot toys ever made. It's only let down by the paint issues that seem to have affected many of the production run.
MakeToys
I'm not a fan of most of their previous work but their IDW Swerve is a mini Masterpiece in it's own right.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I'm defending Takara as if they're perfect.
I'm not. They've had their share of issues but compared to someone like KFC it's no contest as to who are more reliable.
Unless you have in hand experience with the differences in build quality between the lesser 3rd party companies ( which KFC are one of ) and those from Takara and Fans Toys then you can't really comment on the subject with any degree of accuracy.
KFC's Perceptor and variants are plagued with breaking tabs and sloppy paint apps and I've read a few similar things about their cassettes as well.
If they can't take QC seriously on smaller, less complex items like that, then it's reasonable to think that Ultra Magnus, no matter how nice the pics look could well turn out to be a POS.
