The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Off Topic => Topic started by: Bebopgroove on April 27, 2018, 02:25:57 PM
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As the topic title states, I think I may quit collecting anything more that has been made by Hasbro. However, I will make an exception for G1 MLP.
This stems from a lot of things. It stems from the quality of current MLP toys. It also stems heavily from their handling of the first line of Jurassic World toys that were released in 2015. For those who don't know, their handling of the line was so poor (raptors without toe-claws, glaring screw-holes in figures reminiscent of happy-meal toys, sloppy paint jobs, and some toys with rubber parts that are already rotting and tearing), and the public reception so bad, that Universal stripped Hasbro the rights to the Jurassic toy line (who had long owned the line since acquiring Kenner), and gave them to Mattel. Since then, what Mattel has released for the JW: Fallen Kingdom line has been absolutely outstanding. Figures harkoning back to the original vintage lines, stellar paint jobs, zero screwholes, beautiful sculpts on the dinosaurs, and human action figures (which Hasbro failed to produce) - all of which are [mostly] in scale to one another. Taking all of this into account, I have to wonder what has happened to Hasbro, one of the most successful toy-producing companies, and it makes me sad, even a little angry. Mattel heard the complaints of its consumers and responded to them accordingly, going above and beyond with their JW line. Meanwhile, Hasbro was (and still is) cutting corners in an (apparent?) effort to cut costs. I also have to wonder, as a long-time MLP collector, what Mattel might do with the MLP line if they were to have it instead of Hasbro.
With all this mind, I may be at a point where I no longer want to give my money to a company that doesn't care about the quality of its products - and I will give my money instead to a company that does (though, as I stated earlier, I'll always be collecting G1 MLP). This isn't about a disgust to MLP, but rather to Hasbro. And I'm disgusted.
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I agree with the fact that toys quality is low by theses days, but saddly I thinks Mattel didn't specially do best than Hasbro (in line, see how the barbie's animal have become this ugly? The horses in particular :shocked: ).
Also, yes the quality is low on MLP these days, it's a shame and why I only take ponies from the show for the fandom only and not more. And didn't buy a lot of merch too.
In the end, it all comes to you and your decision should be the one who make you feels good about where your money goes!
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I don't collect their pony toys or their transformers toys anymore, when I used to be a very active collector in both areas. I agree that the quality has gone down and their creativity has dried up too. We know how badly the pony characters are recycled - it's not as bad with transformers, but the characters they do come out with they hardly make any attempt with it. For example, Blurr was practically a solid blue piece of plastic. No paint applications. No parts or features that stood out. That's just lazy design.
I will give them this though. Hasbro did finally listen to the feedback they were getting from the LPS fans and revamped their product line accordingly. The new designs aren't my cup of tea personally, but it is what most collectors were asking for. Maybe Hasbro was just getting really tired of children submitting complaints on their 1-800 number. (Seriously. Kids were doing that.)
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What got me upset about Hasbro's Jurassic World was that they made legit good new sculpts and a modified bull t-rex only a few years before that: http://www.jptoys.com/toy-database/jurassic-park-2009/dinosaurs/index.htm
And then when JW came, that potential (and two unreleased prototypes) got thrown out the window for what basically are McDonalds toys.
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I personally think this is the way of big toy companies these days. Hasbro in the UK used to have a great customer service team who you could write to and who would actually answer your messages but now they just copypaste and it's irritating.
Toy quality and design inspiration has also gone downhill with G4 - I mean, some good stuff, but a lot of bad hair, and expensive stuff that's not got through QC very well.
But Mattel? Seriously? Did you see what they did to Monster High? Aside the start of MH where dolls had (and still are found with) glue seepage in their heads that make the hair sticky and greasy and which is really hard to fix unless you're willing to spend a lot of time on it, rehair or use noxious chemicals...the reboot of MH made everything cheaper and nastier. True, no more glue head, but reductions in clothing variety, articulation, and the joints of the dolls were just horrible. Not to mention all the soul of the line basically died with the reboot as there was no more quirky monster stuff and just girly themes cloaked in monster doll guises.
I don't hate all the reboot dolls, but I'm just saying that Mattel definitely are no better than Hasbro in this regard. All big companies want money for the least amount of output. Sad reality of our modern world.
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All big companies want money for the least amount of output. Sad reality of our modern world.
This sums it up well. It certainly isn't limited to Hasbro. Mattel does it too.
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My thought is that the toys made today are seriously lacking in quality across the board. I have been quite disappointed with a lot of what is being sold. Even the companies that use to produce high quality are falling below standards for quality yet they expect the same amount of money for their inferior productions (American Girl is an example) it's everywhere. :pout:
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This is essentially nearly every toy company. We have a few hold-outs, like Schleich, Breyer, Safari Ltd. CollectA, The Bridge Direct and the Pokemon Company off the top of my head. But yeah, it's not limited solely to Hasbro.
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I think it's more of a broad issue with most toy company cutting cost.
I have to agree with you on the Jurassic World toys... There were a few cool toys but for the most part they were nothing special. When I ran into the new toys the other day I spent an hour geeking out in the toy isle. The new movie toy line is some of the best I've seen in a while.
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I say that is a certain absolute yes on the quality, I do visit some toy forums, and there are plenty of horror stories of newish toys, being broken MIB or even having the wrong parts, or duplicate parts. Kinda remands me of the MC Farline toy line, lovey sculpts, but they chose the worst plastic for them.
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I've seen some of the new Jurassic World stuff at Walmart, and honestly until I read this just now I had no clue Mattel had the JP license now, but I did notice the quality of the new toys was significantly better than the uninteresting, poor quality crap that came out for the last movie.
I just looked up the new JP stuff on ebay and apparently they are even doing legacy figures from previous movies. That's really awesome! I've wanted to get into collecting JP for years but some of the original Vintage stuff can be a bit pricey and in my opinion most of the stuff Hasbro released from JP III onward sucked. Jurassic World was where it got really bad tho, most of the toys I saw for that looked like complete garbage.
Also, I agree that the quality of most toys in general have really gone down. Toys from when I was a kid were made with quality, which is why I still have many of them. A lot of modern toys now feel like they are going to break right out of the package. This is partly why (aside from nostalgia) I have been looking to start collecting some of the original toy lines I had as a kid. I am heavily interested in the Star Wars Power of the Force line from the 90's right now. They may not be the most realistic looking toy iterations of these characters, but they still bring me the same joy they brought to me as a kid and I don't feel like they are going to crumble into dust just by me looking at them.
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I heard tales of those Jurassic park toys, but I figured they were just internet stories. I’m not going to stop buying pony stuff from hasbro, but I do hope that the experience with universal and the feedback was enough of a wake up call.
As for the quality of toys going down, I agree. As companies look for ways to save money, quality goes down. Be it shaving a few bucks of the animation budget and producing lower quality entertainment, paying just enough for a lousy paint job and sub-par materials, companies are doing this a lot more than they should. We all love to save money, but when it comes to cutting a few bucks at the loss of quality, that’s where we should draw the line.
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My thought is that the toys made today are seriously lacking in quality across the board. I have been quite disappointed with a lot of what is being sold. Even the companies that use to produce high quality are falling below standards for quality yet they expect the same amount of money for their inferior productions (American Girl is an example) it's everywhere. :pout:
Agreed.
While I slowly lost interest in collecting in general as I have gotten older, the lack of quality toys certainly pushed me along that path as well. I have zero interest in any of the MLP toys anymore. They don't look right (to me) and quality is poor. Monster High dolls have faded away big time. They were so interesting and fun, before the reboot... Now with many dolls lacking articulation and boring themes, it seems no one wants them now. They used to have a large spot in the toy isle here, now it's a fraction of that size.
Someone also mentioned the Barbie pets and horses. Your right! They are ugly now. Oddly proportioned and many pets rely on some gimmick (like walking or giving birth) rather than making sure the animal looks right. And for the Barbie dolls themselves (my youngest step-daughter has several) the clothes are often partially molded onto the doll. Or, made out of plastic. It's sad.
I still like to look at toys, but nothing much tempts me to buy anymore. There is almost nothing special, creative, or of good quality. It's a shame that the toys I grew up with are better than toys they make today. With all the technology, I think that these companies have gotten lazy and forgotten how to make toys that are fun to PLAY with and be able to use one's imagination too.
Just my two cents. :P
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I agree. my retail purchases of displayable plastic has dramatically reduced in the last 4 years because NOTHING seems worth its price tag :(
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I haven't bought any new Hasbroken toys since G3's, even then I kept myself limited to just birth month ones and about 5 others that struck my fancy.
I'll buy anniversary releases, but even then, will keep myself limited to just the ones that are my favorite.
I love Rainbow Brite, but won't go for the new stuff, Smurfs either.
However, those Shirt Tales plushes at the Hallmark store are kinda cute.
I'm limited on space so that stops a lot of my collecting, but I guess I'm getting too old for some toys...
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I will say another thing that is pushing me away from new pony toys is distribution. My local wall mart never had ANY of the baby sea pony toys. As of right now once gain my work place has another batch of the wave 2 pearly ponies. I had no TRU within hours of me, and the next nearest is Target but I am not going to go out of my way for them. Even when my work place got the main six as sea ponies, we only ever had apple jack and pinkie pie. That is just bumming me out, and I would rather at this point go second hand, or buy them from people here. On top of that some of my early gen 4 ponies already have head body mismatches.
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I totally agree. Just look at what Hasbro did to the Disney Princess doll line. OMG, what was Disney thinking. Bizarly enough, the Descendants dolls are much better in design and quality, and yet they can't seem to apply that same level to their own EG dolls. As a side note, I wonder how well the EG reboot dolls are doing.
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This is essentially nearly every toy company. We have a few hold-outs, like Schleich, Breyer, Safari Ltd. CollectA, The Bridge Direct and the Pokemon Company off the top of my head. But yeah, it's not limited solely to Hasbro.
Schleich have their issues elsewhere. Since they got their new CEO a while ago their sculpts and paintwork started to lack severely. We can be lucky if a figure is two-tone nowadays.
Their new horses for 2018 look monstrous compared to CollectA, a company that invested in some great artists to help their figures look great and realistic.
Schleich's horses look like misshapen aliens now. And I can say that, I was exposed to Schleich since birth :lol:
They value cheapness over educational purposes. But hey, at least the plastic gets tested for safety.
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This is essentially nearly every toy company. We have a few hold-outs, like Schleich, Breyer, Safari Ltd. CollectA, The Bridge Direct and the Pokemon Company off the top of my head. But yeah, it's not limited solely to Hasbro.
Schleich have their issues elsewhere. Since they got their new CEO a while ago their sculpts and paintwork started to lack severely. We can be lucky if a figure is two-tone nowadays.
Their new horses for 2018 look monstrous compared to CollectA, a company that invested in some great artists to help their figures look great and realistic.
Schleich's horses look like misshapen aliens now. And I can say that, I was exposed to Schleich since birth :lol:
They value cheapness over educational purposes. But hey, at least the plastic gets tested for safety.
I do seem to notice they go up and down on the sculpts and paint jobs. :wonder: Most of my schleich are pretty good looking. I wish they'd ditch the braid trend on the horses. The mermaid sets look fantastic!
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I’m becoming really upset with quality control, myself. I feel like I’ve watched it deteriorate massively, just in the last several years. :/ That goes for Hasbro, Mattel, and a lot of others...
That’s disturbing news about Schleich. I haven’t kept many tabs on them since the Bayala stuff started disappearing from my stores...
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I only keep track on Schleich horses and dinosaurs because I think their other figures are still good looking, even compared to the rival companies.
But the issue is the horses and dinos belong to their top sellers and yet they started skimping out on them a lot.
I am trying not to derail this too much but let's just say... I have always lived close to their headquarters, stores were full of them and it was sometimes impossible to get the rival figures because Schleich would dominate the market here.
That was ok because they made good quality toys and prided themselves with "educational value" and would even put in their booklets that they valued education over sales (a way to endear the company to parents).
Now this has become an empty promise. Their dinosaurs look ridiculous safe for one or two outliers (but they willingly make them inaccurate colors because kids go more for popping colors) and they upset educators with the shere monstrosity of some of the animals.
You could put some of the natural horses and most of the dinos into the fantasy lines because they are fantastic beasts.
As for quality, the paint schemes are lackluster, one tone, sometimes the horses don't even get accurate coat colors. Just stuff that sells like pure white foals and adult animals with giant almond eyes that remind me of Grey aliens.
And yet their stuff is everywhere here and my new favorite company, Collecta, is basically online only because Schleich still dominates.
Sometimes you spot a Safari and Papo dinosaurs in the museums. But Germany is basically Schleich + Bullyland paradise. If I see one more lime green JP monster raptor I am going to cry :lol:
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That’s really interesting to know, thanks for explaining! So does that go for the unicorns and other fantasy equine, or just the realistic horses?
As for the dinos... that’s definitely sad to hear. :( Since you mentioned “JP raptors”, I’m assuming they’re leaving all the feathers and avian features off of their raptors now? Wow...
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I only keep track on Schleich horses and dinosaurs because I think their other figures are still good looking, even compared to the rival companies.
But the issue is the horses and dinos belong to their top sellers and yet they started skimping out on them a lot.
I am trying not to derail this too much but let's just say... I have always lived close to their headquarters, stores were full of them and it was sometimes impossible to get the rival figures because Schleich would dominate the market here.
That was ok because they made good quality toys and prided themselves with "educational value" and would even put in their booklets that they valued education over sales (a way to endear the company to parents).
Now this has become an empty promise. Their dinosaurs look ridiculous safe for one or two outliers (but they willingly make them inaccurate colors because kids go more for popping colors) and they upset educators with the shere monstrosity of some of the animals.
You could put some of the natural horses and most of the dinos into the fantasy lines because they are fantastic beasts.
As for quality, the paint schemes are lackluster, one tone, sometimes the horses don't even get accurate coat colors. Just stuff that sells like pure white foals and adult animals with giant almond eyes that remind me of Grey aliens.
And yet their stuff is everywhere here and my new favorite company, Collecta, is basically online only because Schleich still dominates.
Sometimes you spot a Safari and Papo dinosaurs in the museums. But Germany is basically Schleich + Bullyland paradise. If I see one more lime green JP monster raptor I am going to cry :lol:
A lot of there wildlife and farmlife animals are still excellent. We barely get Schleich, Safari or Papo where I'm at. CollectA is good looking, but sometimes they have some very...strange colors.
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I don't know what you mean by strange but one of my fave CollectA horses is the perlino Akhal-Teke. Schleich never entertained such a breed or color scheme.
Odd colors are ok with dinosaurs if pigments haven't been detected. But even then there are still colors that seem impossible. Like a velociraptor being neon colors. Quite recently Schleich completely disregarded that a certain species was found out to be brown years ago. It also has no educational value to mimic JP, and badly.
https://www.schleich-s.com/de/DE/dinosaurs/produkte/velociraptor-14585.html
https://store.safariltd.com/products/feathered-velociraptor
https://www.everythingdinosaur.com/product/papo-feathered-velociraptor-model/
Would you believe this is supposed to be the same animal? Schleich's is a movie creature while Safari and Papo's is an animal.
Schleich also got more expensive despite the sculpt and paint decline.
What I do love from them are the fantasy girly lines like their mermaids or Bayala. Their mermaids and fairies actually have healthy anatomy. Wish their new horses had that.
Schleich bought a Mojö mold for a pony and their version ended up looking worse with the same mold. I think I need to make my own thread with comparisons. This has bugging me for a long time. I guess I have added frustration because when I wad a kid Schleich horses were actually worth something to collectors. Now the new ones have lost a lot of collectability and are mostly being used as baits. A Schleich horse often needs it's pose and legs fixed before repainting.
Back to Hasbro.
I'm not into the new JP at all but I noticed some of Hasbro's offerings looked so shoddy. Maybe some of you know what 'real feel' skin is? It's a sort of rubber that used to be on many old JP toys and still holds up. I have an old Lost World stegosaurus and Hasbro still uses the mold. But the new ones look like knock-offs.
I don't know what I would say if Hasbro bought out Mattel. And I'm not big on Mattel anymore but at the very least their sculpts have always appealed more to me.
Imagening MLP by Mattel. That silky hair quality! :P Their new Fashionistas have great quality hair. They finally perfected curls and so many new dolls have afros. Would be great to get a pony like that.
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I don't know what you mean by strange but one of my fave CollectA horses is the perlino Akhal-Teke. Schleich never entertained such a breed or color scheme.
Odd colors are ok with dinosaurs if pigments haven't been detected. But even then there are still colors that seem impossible. Like a velociraptor being neon colors. Quite recently Schleich completely disregarded that a certain species was found out to be brown years ago. It also has no educational value to mimic JP, and badly.
https://www.schleich-s.com/de/DE/dinosaurs/produkte/velociraptor-14585.html
https://store.safariltd.com/products/feathered-velociraptor
https://www.everythingdinosaur.com/product/papo-feathered-velociraptor-model/
Would you believe this is supposed to be the same animal? Schleich's is a movie creature while Safari and Papo's is an animal.
Schleich also got more expensive despite the sculpt and paint decline.
What I do love from them are the fantasy girly lines like their mermaids or Bayala. Their mermaids and fairies actually have healthy anatomy. Wish their new horses had that.
Schleich bought a Mojö mold for a pony and their version ended up looking worse with the same mold. I think I need to make my own thread with comparisons. This has bugging me for a long time. I guess I have added frustration because when I wad a kid Schleich horses were actually worth something to collectors. Now the new ones have lost a lot of collectability and are mostly being used as baits. A Schleich horse often needs it's pose and legs fixed before repainting.
Back to Hasbro.
I'm not into the new JP at all but I noticed some of Hasbro's offerings looked so shoddy. Maybe some of you know what 'real feel' skin is? It's a sort of rubber that used to be on many old JP toys and still holds up. I have an old Lost World stegosaurus and Hasbro still uses the mold. But the new ones look like knock-offs.
I don't know what I would say if Hasbro bought out Mattel. And I'm not big on Mattel anymore but at the very least their sculpts have always appealed more to me.
Imagening MLP by Mattel. That silky hair quality! :P Their new Fashionistas have great quality hair. They finally perfected curls and so many new dolls have afros. Would be great to get a pony like that.
It's kind of hard to describe, but there's this offness to their shetlands.
I only just started CollectA. Wonderful toys. Hope to have more someday.
Schleich does have Akhal-Tekes. The buckskin stallion looks plain and kinda strange
indoors, but outside there is a faint bloom to his coat. I had the foal, but gave her away. I was never able to find the mare.
In all fairness, I imagine Perlino is a very difficult color to do. I don't think even Breyer and Peter Stone tackles it all that often.
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My last reply on that subject, I swear.
LAW, you are right. I googled and Schleich did have an Akhal family. I just never clocked them because the Schleich horses can look so samey. At least they tried doing the bodies differently.
Some of their Shetlands look like MLP, so chubby complete with flank symbols :lol:
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I wonder how well the EG reboot dolls are doing.
I don't know about other areas, but I literally have never seen a single one of these in a store. I only know they exist from reading about them online. I haven't seen much of anything EQG related in a long time. About 2 years ago there was a huge glut of Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games dolls appearing in discount stores, and that's about the last I've seen besides those little Mini figures that were around for a little bit.
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My last reply on that subject, I swear.
LAW, you are right. I googled and Schleich did have an Akhal family. I just never clocked them because the Schleich horses can look so samey. At least they tried doing the bodies differently.
Some of their Shetlands look like MLP, so chubby complete with flank symbols :lol:
Yeah, have that one. She's cute.
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I wonder how well the EG reboot dolls are doing.
I don't know about other areas, but I literally have never seen a single one of these in a store. I only know they exist from reading about them online. I haven't seen much of anything EQG related in a long time. About 2 years ago there was a huge glut of Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games dolls appearing in discount stores, and that's about the last I've seen besides those little Mini figures that were around for a little bit.
They have only been at TRU so far. There are listings in the system for Target but they probably won't show up until they reset again.
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I literally didn't even know what the packaging looked like for the new EQG dolls until just having seen one on ebay. I hope they start to appear more. The pony sections in general have been pretty sparse at most places around here.