So, I'm just starting to feel like either they need to stop doing these Beast Wars reissues, or they need to start getting the toys *right.*

Too many times now, the toys have had gimmicks that didn't work, molding problems, or some other combination of factors that made them significantly less enjoyable than the original Beast Wars toys from the 1990's. It's happened pretty much every time so far, I think. It's awful. I'm a student of mold changes, and I recognize that it's sometimes necessary and inevitable, but when it produces garbage toys, that's a sign that either they need to tinker with the molds to FIX the problems, or they need to give up and not produce inferior products.

And, this is speaking as a consumer who doesn't *need* any of the Beast Wars reissues. I have a complete set. I'm buying these strictly as a novelty, and maybe to have toys made of modern plastics that I can let my grandchildren play with some day, when and if I ever have any. I can experience the toys, as they were originally designed and manufactured, any time I want to. But these new versions are awful.

RETRAX

I seriously never, in a million years, thought we'd see a Retrax reissue. He was the biggest joke of the Beast Wars toy line. He's got a goofy beast mode, a silly hug gimmick, and he was without question the worst pegwarmer of the entire toy range. It wasn't uncommon in late 1997 or early 1998 to see entire Toys "R" Us endcaps of literally nothing but Retrax. The idea of a gigantic potato bug just didn't appeal to kids.

So, here's an anecdote for you. I opened up my Retrax reissue and started play-testing, and when I started transforming him, I realized he was missing an insect leg. I obviously popped it off accidentally and hadn't noticed.. I spent about half an hour running my fingers through my carpet looking for it, and the carpeting is this tan-brown-black gradient so a tiny black insect leg would be able to hide in it very easily. Then I realized I was missing not one, but TWO of his bug-mode legs. Now I was really starting to question myself. Did I really lose two legs without even hearing them fall? Was it defective out of the packaging and I hadn't even noticed? On a lark, I did some digging online, and everybody's Retrax reissue is like this. They just plain didn't put two of his insect-mode legs on. Well, that's dumb.

So, anyway. For those who don't own him, Retrax is a t̶e̶n̶ eight-legged pill bug, also called a potato bug depending on where you grew up. The real bugs are the little grey-colored kind that can curl up into a ball to evade predators, but Retrax is a dark translucent green with a bright yelllow paint spray on his back. He's about seven inches long. The reissue does a better job of matching the bright yellow paint to the bright yellow plastic parts. His antennae are misassembled, though, and are swept backwards instead of pointing forwards. Not sure why they did that.

The beast mode actually has three separate and distinct spring-loaded gimmicks. One is that the mouth pincers will clamp shut at the press of a button. There's also a tail stinger that does the same thing. (Pill bugs don't really have stingers, but they had to make this guy able to attack Maximals somehow. He's a bad guy, after all.) The third gimmick is his ability to roll into a ball. There are twin triggers on his back, and one collapses the rear section and the other collapses the front. Trigger them both at once, and he can curl up into an almost perfect sphere, with his head neatly lining up with his tail section. There are bright yellow locking tabs that are supposed to keep his parts in insect mode, but they're a little loose on the reissue.

His transformation is weird, because he's asymmetrical and ends up sideways.. The insect head and tail section become massive armor panels for his robot arms, and his robot legs are super skinny, folded up and contained in the middle section. A section folds down to form the robot chest, and his robot head strongly evokes his insectoid form, with helmet horns that resemble his pincers and the same segmented eyes with triangular-shaped pupils. The ̶t̶e̶n̶ eight insect legs tuck away.

So as a robot, he's about 5.5" tall with this massive sideways potato bug strapped to his back. He's got access to the same pincers (right arm) and tail spike (left arm) which can be deployed as weapons for robot mode. The pill bug feature doubles as a robot-mode attack. When you press the twin triggers, he brings both robot arms together, with the mouth claws and tail stinger now poised to strike. You can also unplug the robot arms, which contain the springs, so you can also leave the potato bug parts alone and have him deploy just the arms. Is he trying to ensnare Maximals in his grasp, or just wanting to take them into his arms in a loving embrace? (I guess there's a reason he was named Powerhug in Japan.)

He's got no accessories, so no weapons to lose, though the robot chest piece pops off easily, and I've seen plenty of aftermarket vintage toys with no robot legs or head. The arm joints are on pins, not ball-and-socket joints, which makes it impossible to lose those parts, but also limits his articulation in the extreme. He can do an "I'm about to hug you" pose or an "I'm hugging you" pose, and that's it. As with other Beast Wars toys like Bonecrusher the bison or Polar Claw, he's completely a slave to his gimmick.

The reissue is also missing the "energon chip" sticker, the Beast Wars era name for the heat-sensitive rub symbol. There's a little square meant for it on the underside of the tail stinger, but there's no symbol in evidence. It was a gimmick only used on the 1997-98 toys, so not the entire toy range, but its absence is still inauthentic for Retrax.

Retrax was never a darling of the Beast Wars toy line by any stretch of the imagination, but Hasbro deliberately sabotaging his beast mode really irks me. There was no reason to do this... I mean, they were already manufacturing eight identical insect legs for his beast mode, so at this point, what's two more?!

WOLFANG

Wolfang was considered as the first new Maximal to be added to the roster in the first season of Beast Wars, but due to the expense and difficulty associated with creating an entirely new CGI model for the character, they opted to introduce Tigatron instead, who could reuse most of the existing Cheetor assets and save Mainframe Entertainment some money.

Originally a 1996 release, Wolfang is a medium grey wolf with some light grey paint spray on his paws and mouth, about 6.25" long from nose to tail. He's got green eyes and a little black-painted nose. He's permanently positioned with his left foreleg stepping forward, like he's in the middle of stalking some Predacon prey, The forelegs have no articulation, nor does his wolf head or jaw. Only the back legs can move. His beast mode is about 90% disguise and 10% pretend-you-don't-see-that, as part of his blue robot torso is visible, and the tucked-away undercarriage robot arms, and parts of his robot legs hidden in the wolf legs. Unlike Retrax, his beast mode has no built-in gimmicks.

To transform him, the wolf head splits in half to form shoulder pads for the robot mode, like Transmetal Rattrap. The wolf's entire back pops off to serve as a gigantic riot shield, and the tail is removable as a weapon as well. The wolf hind legs unfold into the robot legs, there are a couple of folded-up panels of wolf fur that end up hanging off the hips, and the wolf forelegs just sort of end up stuck to the robot arms and you have to tuck them out of the way as best you can.

It's very hard to collapse the robot pelvis into the body to complete the transformation. I don't know if there was a mold change, or just some plastic flash gumming up the works. I saw one guy on Reddit showing off photos of his latest Beast Wars reissue acquisition and he photographed the toy with the pelvis fully extended, claiming the toy wasn't able to collapse at all. I really had to force mine to get it to work.

As a robot, he's about 5.5" tall, still with lots of grey, but with more medium blue thrown into the mix (upper torso, robot forearms, robot feet) as well as some black (robot biceps, fists, chest detailing). He actually reminds me of the TV show CGI model for Dinobot in a way that even the Dinobot toy does not, especially with the blue torso and the spine/ribs detailing on his body. The shoulders and hips are ball-and-socket joints, so he's got decent articulation. The wolf head shoulderpads tend to get in the way of his arm movement a bit, and the utility of his knees is somewhat limited. He's also got some major thunder thighs.

The wolf back turns into a shield with silver-painted detail on the inside. There is a section that's supposed to rotate to allow him to grasp the handle, but on the reissue it tends to fall off. The wolf tail turns into a launching gun, and he comes with two black harpoons that can be launched one at a time. When not in use, they're supposed to be stored in his back, wrapping around his body to complete his rib cage styling, with the plug-in ends of the missiles poking through his back and out his belly. The problem is, at some point they were remolded, and they don't stay put. They sit very loosely where they're supposed to be stored, and fall out at the slightest provocation. It's a real shame, since the integrated weapons storage was one of the coolest thing about the Beast Wars toy line, back in the day, and they went and ruined it.

On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 7:14:26 PM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:
> So, I'm just starting to feel like either they need to stop doing these Beast Wars reissues, or they need to start getting the toys *right.*
>
> Too many times now, the toys have had gimmicks that didn't work, molding problems, or some other combination of factors that made them significantly less enjoyable than the original Beast Wars toys from the 1990's. It's happened pretty much every time so far, I think. It's awful. I'm a student of mold changes, and I recognize that it's sometimes necessary and inevitable, but when it produces garbage toys, that's a sign that either they need to tinker with the molds to FIX the problems, or they need to give up and not produce inferior products.
>
> And, this is speaking as a consumer who doesn't *need* any of the Beast Wars reissues. I have a complete set. I'm buying these strictly as a novelty, and maybe to have toys made of modern plastics that I can let my grandchildren play with some day, when and if I ever have any. I can experience the toys, as they were originally designed and manufactured, any time I want to. But these new versions are awful.
>
> RETRAX
>
> I seriously never, in a million years, thought we'd see a Retrax reissue. He was the biggest joke of the Beast Wars toy line. He's got a goofy beast mode, a silly hug gimmick, and he was without question the worst pegwarmer of the entire toy range. It wasn't uncommon in late 1997 or early 1998 to see entire Toys "R" Us endcaps of literally nothing but Retrax. The idea of a gigantic potato bug just didn't appeal to kids.
>
> So, here's an anecdote for you. I opened up my Retrax reissue and started play-testing, and when I started transforming him, I realized he was missing an insect leg. I obviously popped it off accidentally and hadn't noticed.. I spent about half an hour running my fingers through my carpet looking for it, and the carpeting is this tan-brown-black gradient so a tiny black insect leg would be able to hide in it very easily. Then I realized I was missing not one, but TWO of his bug-mode legs. Now I was really starting to question myself. Did I really lose two legs without even hearing them fall? Was it defective out of the packaging and I hadn't even noticed? On a lark, I did some digging online, and everybody's Retrax reissue is like this. They just plain didn't put two of his insect-mode legs on. Well, that's dumb.
>
> So, anyway. For those who don't own him, Retrax is a t̶e̶n̶ eight-legged pill bug, also called a potato bug depending on where you grew up. The real bugs are the little grey-colored kind that can curl up into a ball to evade predators, but Retrax is a dark translucent green with a bright yelllow paint spray on his back. He's about seven inches long. The reissue does a better job of matching the bright yellow paint to the bright yellow plastic parts. His antennae are misassembled, though, and are swept backwards instead of pointing forwards. Not sure why they did that.
>
> The beast mode actually has three separate and distinct spring-loaded gimmicks. One is that the mouth pincers will clamp shut at the press of a button. There's also a tail stinger that does the same thing. (Pill bugs don't really have stingers, but they had to make this guy able to attack Maximals somehow. He's a bad guy, after all.) The third gimmick is his ability to roll into a ball. There are twin triggers on his back, and one collapses the rear section and the other collapses the front. Trigger them both at once, and he can curl up into an almost perfect sphere, with his head neatly lining up with his tail section. There are bright yellow locking tabs that are supposed to keep his parts in insect mode, but they're a little loose on the reissue.
>
> His transformation is weird, because he's asymmetrical and ends up sideways. The insect head and tail section become massive armor panels for his robot arms, and his robot legs are super skinny, folded up and contained in the middle section. A section folds down to form the robot chest, and his robot head strongly evokes his insectoid form, with helmet horns that resemble his pincers and the same segmented eyes with triangular-shaped pupils. The ̶t̶e̶n̶ eight insect legs tuck away.
>
> So as a robot, he's about 5.5" tall with this massive sideways potato bug strapped to his back. He's got access to the same pincers (right arm) and tail spike (left arm) which can be deployed as weapons for robot mode. The pill bug feature doubles as a robot-mode attack. When you press the twin triggers, he brings both robot arms together, with the mouth claws and tail stinger now poised to strike. You can also unplug the robot arms, which contain the springs, so you can also leave the potato bug parts alone and have him deploy just the arms. Is he trying to ensnare Maximals in his grasp, or just wanting to take them into his arms in a loving embrace? (I guess there's a reason he was named Powerhug in Japan.)
>
> He's got no accessories, so no weapons to lose, though the robot chest piece pops off easily, and I've seen plenty of aftermarket vintage toys with no robot legs or head. The arm joints are on pins, not ball-and-socket joints, which makes it impossible to lose those parts, but also limits his articulation in the extreme. He can do an "I'm about to hug you" pose or an "I'm hugging you" pose, and that's it. As with other Beast Wars toys like Bonecrusher the bison or Polar Claw, he's completely a slave to his gimmick.
>
> The reissue is also missing the "energon chip" sticker, the Beast Wars era name for the heat-sensitive rub symbol. There's a little square meant for it on the underside of the tail stinger, but there's no symbol in evidence.. It was a gimmick only used on the 1997-98 toys, so not the entire toy range, but its absence is still inauthentic for Retrax.
>
> Retrax was never a darling of the Beast Wars toy line by any stretch of the imagination, but Hasbro deliberately sabotaging his beast mode really irks me. There was no reason to do this... I mean, they were already manufacturing eight identical insect legs for his beast mode, so at this point, what's two more?!
>
> WOLFANG
>
> Wolfang was considered as the first new Maximal to be added to the roster in the first season of Beast Wars, but due to the expense and difficulty associated with creating an entirely new CGI model for the character, they opted to introduce Tigatron instead, who could reuse most of the existing Cheetor assets and save Mainframe Entertainment some money.
>
> Originally a 1996 release, Wolfang is a medium grey wolf with some light grey paint spray on his paws and mouth, about 6.25" long from nose to tail. He's got green eyes and a little black-painted nose. He's permanently positioned with his left foreleg stepping forward, like he's in the middle of stalking some Predacon prey, The forelegs have no articulation, nor does his wolf head or jaw. Only the back legs can move. His beast mode is about 90% disguise and 10% pretend-you-don't-see-that, as part of his blue robot torso is visible, and the tucked-away undercarriage robot arms, and parts of his robot legs hidden in the wolf legs. Unlike Retrax, his beast mode has no built-in gimmicks.
>
> To transform him, the wolf head splits in half to form shoulder pads for the robot mode, like Transmetal Rattrap. The wolf's entire back pops off to serve as a gigantic riot shield, and the tail is removable as a weapon as well. The wolf hind legs unfold into the robot legs, there are a couple of folded-up panels of wolf fur that end up hanging off the hips, and the wolf forelegs just sort of end up stuck to the robot arms and you have to tuck them out of the way as best you can.
>
> It's very hard to collapse the robot pelvis into the body to complete the transformation. I don't know if there was a mold change, or just some plastic flash gumming up the works. I saw one guy on Reddit showing off photos of his latest Beast Wars reissue acquisition and he photographed the toy with the pelvis fully extended, claiming the toy wasn't able to collapse at all. I really had to force mine to get it to work.
>
> As a robot, he's about 5.5" tall, still with lots of grey, but with more medium blue thrown into the mix (upper torso, robot forearms, robot feet) as well as some black (robot biceps, fists, chest detailing). He actually reminds me of the TV show CGI model for Dinobot in a way that even the Dinobot toy does not, especially with the blue torso and the spine/ribs detailing on his body. The shoulders and hips are ball-and-socket joints, so he's got decent articulation. The wolf head shoulderpads tend to get in the way of his arm movement a bit, and the utility of his knees is somewhat limited. He's also got some major thunder thighs.
>
> The wolf back turns into a shield with silver-painted detail on the inside. There is a section that's supposed to rotate to allow him to grasp the handle, but on the reissue it tends to fall off. The wolf tail turns into a launching gun, and he comes with two black harpoons that can be launched one at a time. When not in use, they're supposed to be stored in his back, wrapping around his body to complete his rib cage styling, with the plug-in ends of the missiles poking through his back and out his belly. The problem is, at some point they were remolded, and they don't stay put. They sit very loosely where they're supposed to be stored, and fall out at the slightest provocation. It's a real shame, since the integrated weapons storage was one of the coolest thing about the Beast Wars toy line, back in the day, and they went and ruined it.
>
> The robot forearms are just held on with plastic knobs, loosely, and I don't remember the vintage toy ever giving me this much trouble with them falling off. They fall off during transformation. They fall off when I pose the toy. The pegs for the launcher gun and the shield seem slightly too thick for the robot fists, now, so the forearms pop off with alarming frequency whenever I try to put his accessories in his hands. It's awful.
>
> As a 1996 release, Wolfang includes the mutant head gimmick. The mutant mask is black with pink eyes and pronounced helmet wings (or maybe they're ears?), and the bottom of the mask meets his pronounced lower jaw in such a way that it might have been designed as a working mouth. Swing the helmet all the way up and you get the standard robot head, with green eyes and a chin like The Tick. The mutant mask falls off the reissue way too easily, and it bugs me.
>
> Wolfang saw a substantial remold in 1997 and was released as K-9, the German shepherd. I think that one is on the slab for a modern reissue as well, if I'm not mistaken. I don't pay close attention to these things. I just buy them when they go on clearance at Walmart. (I still need to get Terrorsaur at some point.)
>
> So, here's the deal. Wolfang was never a super important Beast Wars toy. He was always just sort of there, existing alongside more important 1996 toys like Blackarachnia and Rhinox. But, he wasn't a badly-designed toy. He was perfectly fine. The reissue version, by contrast, is hot garbage. You can't even transform it without it falling apart, let alone actually play with it. Just about anything that potentially CAN fall off on this toy does so frequently, and it ruins my ability to enjoy it. I don't know why this happened, either, because none of these problems existed on the 1996 release.
>
>
> Zob (I mean, yes, it's been 27 years, but it's not like we've gotten dozens of Wolfang redeco toys that have damaged the mold to the point of it being nearly unusable... we're not talking G1 Combaticons here)

On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 7:07:10 PM UTC-7, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:

> I always hear thee mold degradation arguments while at the same time there are dozen Chinese knockoff companies that can duplicate toys sometimes at a better QC than Hasbro. Is there any issues with Tonkanator? Hasbro had RID Ruination, G2 Combaticons, I find it hard to imagine they really don't have a lot of the molds they say they don't

For the longest time, it was Takara footing the bill to repair or restore the molds for G1 toys, and Hasbro would only nibble after Takara had reissued something. I think it ultimately comes down to how cost-effective it is for them to make restorations. Sure, the Chinese companies are making their own molds, most likely by dismantling an existing G1 toy and reverse-engineering it, but what's their overhead like? How durable are the molds? What kind of a production run are they committing to? It's hard to know. It's possible that whatever Zhong Jin is doing simply won't work on the larger Hasbro/Takara scale.

But, we also know that there have been times when, yes, the G1 molds have been damaged and needed work, and Hasbro/Takara spent the money to make it happen. We know the mold for the die-cast parts for G1 Optimus Prime had to be redone. They rebuilt the face for Jazz (quite badly) and they had to do some restoration for Hot Rod to deTargetmasterify him and on Cliffjumper to deHubcapify him. But, I'm sure recreating an entire mold from scratch (like Sunstreaker or Mirage or the Dinobots) would be much more costly.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say restoring Grimlock would require $100,000 per mold—so you have the mold for his grey parts, another for his black parts, yet another for his translucent parts, a mold for his red sword (I'm sure all the Dinobot swords were gang-molded) and a final mold for his die-cast parts. That's an expenditure of $500,000 at the bare minimum to recreate the molds. Let's say they set the retail price at something outrageous like $50, which I doubt many people would pay. They would have to unload 10,000 units just to break even. Probably twice that number, realistically, if they want to make a profit. Would they really be able to sell ten thousand ancient Diaclone-era Grimlock toys to consumers? Especially when there's a much bigger and objectively better Studio Series toy in existence? It's honestly hard to say.

Tonkanator had all the same problems that the Takara reissue of the Constructicons did. They actually did do some substantial restoration work to the molds, to the point where some parts weren't the same design any longer, and other parts either didn't fit together quite right. Most notably, Hook barely has a mouth now. But, I think Tonkanator was a case of Hasbro knowing the Constructicon molds were already restored and ready to go, so they knew a production run was possible.

> If some guy can print the parts on a resin printer surely it can't be hard for Hasbro to recreate a mold.

The logistics are different, though. 3D printing parts makes sense if you're doing a production run of a single copy in your basement. It wouldn't be practical for Hasbro to 3D-print a hundred thousand toys, or whatever their production run numbers are. It would take months or years just to print the necessary parts, and by that point their sales window would close.

> K9 was a huge pegwarmer around here, and him and Wolfang will likely only sell on clearance, but most stores aren't doing the 50~70% clearance this year to try and recoup missing their sales goals for the holidays.

I thought it was a great idea to do reissues of the Beast Wars media characters, because the small cast meant basically every character was heavily featured, and kids who grew up on the show would remember them fondly. I wonder if doing the non-show characters was as good of an idea. At least G1 had tiers of popularity—Optimus Prime and Starscream and Bumblebee at the top, but you also have fans who are fond of slightly lesser-known characters like Thundercracker or Perceptor or Sunstreaker, and you even have folks who say their favorite characters are Skids or Highbrow or Octane, and if you want to get really obscure you've got Splashdown or Neutro or Skyfall. Beast Wars was very much an all-or-nothing approach, so either a character was an important show character, or he was garbage. And now they're reissuing the garbage.

As with Tonkanator, I'm sure it's just a matter of which molds happen to still be available at this point. I'm not convinced there's a huge consumer market for the unknowns of Beast Wars, but unlike restoring the broken G1 molds, there's virtually no initial start-up cost. It's like printing their own money.

> Surprisingly all the Terrorsaur reissues sold out here when it went on a $18 clearance price. I'm surprised because I think Terrorsaur was like $5 or $8 in the 90s and I expected his clearance to come close before he sold. The Legacy Beasts also went down to....$18

During the first year of Beast Wars, the Basic-class toys were $4.99. It was in increments of five dollars for the longest time—Deluxe Beasts were $10, Mega Beasts were $15, and Ultra Beasts were $20. It delights me when I can get a Beast Wars reissue on clearance for close to the same price I paid in the 1990's, but that doesn't always happen.

The Legacy beasts sold out at my store before they ever hit clearance prices. I was honestly shocked.

The relationship between 1996 and 2023 is the same as the relationship between the year 2000 and the year 1973. Which blows my mind. It just doesn't feel right. I wasn't even *born* yet in 1973. And yet we're at a point now where they're reissuing toys that I bought as a young adult. I feel so old.

Zob (just think... in the year 2040 they will start reissuing Siege and Earthrise toys!)

> > Surprisingly all the Terrorsaur reissues sold out here when it went on a $18 clearance price. I'm surprised because I think Terrorsaur was like $5 or $8 in the 90s and I expected his clearance to come close before he sold.. The Legacy Beasts also went down to....$18
> During the first year of Beast Wars, the Basic-class toys were $4.99. It was in increments of five dollars for the longest time—Deluxe Beasts were $10, Mega Beasts were $15, and Ultra Beasts were $20. It delights me when I can get a Beast Wars reissue on clearance for close to the same price I paid in the 1990's, but that doesn't always happen.

I was spoiled by the ridiculous sale prices Walmart had in Dec 2021 for all four reissue Beasts (Cheetor, Rattrap, Optimus, Megatron), and it makes it that much harder to pay full price for the recent, less essential releases.. IIRC, they had Optimus and Megatron for less than $20, which is mindblowing.

On Saturday, January 21, 2023 at 10:16:04 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 7:07:10 PM UTC-7, Ob1k...@att.net wrote:

> I thought it was a great idea to do reissues of the Beast Wars media characters, because the small cast meant basically every character was heavily featured, and kids who grew up on the show would remember them fondly. I wonder if doing the non-show characters was as good of an idea. At least G1 had tiers of popularity—Optimus Prime and Starscream and Bumblebee at the top, but you also have fans who are fond of slightly lesser-known characters like Thundercracker or Perceptor or Sunstreaker, and you even have folks who say their favorite characters are Skids or Highbrow or Octane, and if you want to get really obscure you've got Splashdown or Neutro or Skyfall. Beast Wars was very much an all-or-nothing approach, so either a character was an important show character, or he was garbage. And now they're reissuing the garbage.
>

I get what you're saying, and it's a completely valid show-centric thought. For G1, it was almost difficult to buy a toy that *wasn't* on the show. For Beast Wars, with such a small cast, most of my purchases were not-show characters. I think this made me appreciate the toys a bit more. I've got good memories of Jetstorm and Claw Jaw and even the much-maligned Transquito. Neale Davidson wrote some of my favorite fanfics about Beast Wars which really breathed some life into the non-show characters that I still hold on to. Also, it always surprises me just how much of an influence the IDW stuff had - it's a much larger portion of Transformers history that I don't give enough credit to which focused on a whole slew of non-show characters..

Now, it's hard to say if someone who read IDW a few years ago would jump at the chance of a 1996 reissue of Razorbeast. But honestly, it's also a bit odd to me that someone who was a show-Dinobot fan would jump at the chance to buy the (let's be honest) awful 1996 Dinobot toy.