Hiya! I'm the dude who wrote the negative review, and who also founded the site that ended up becoming Little Rubber Guys (waaaaaay back in the late '90s. jkaris is doing a better job than I ever did). Please don't take this as defensive, I'm actually REALLY JAZZED that people noticed it! Seriously, I saw this site as a referrer in the traffic from Nerditis (please keep visiting there!), and then noticed the mentions of Little Rubber Guys, and it's kind of amazing. So I just thought I'd bring a few things up:
-Honestly, I don't spend much time in the Beastformers section of LRG, so I can't speak for them, but I've had a lot of really good friends from years from that forum. There are a few asshats, but by and large we're really good guys.
-I'm normally not a very negative guy. You can find some of my reviews on MWCToys, and there's a new one on Action Figure Fury, and I have a tendency to GUSH.
-I'm really grateful for Zach's input, especially on some of the corrections he gave me as per DST's Battle Beast's' license. And even when there are things that are bad (like the quality control), he's not responsible for it.
-Yeah, I owned the original Battle Beasts, and yeah, I would have appreciated had the new ones resembled them more (so you noticed it, eh?), but BB's aren't exactly a huyge part of my personal toy collection. I had known that these new ones weren't cyborgs for a long while, and I'm fine with that. It's just a little thing that seems odd when you add it to the other ways this differs from the original license. It's like... something like this is going to rely a LOT on nostalgia to make sales, but it doesn't actually prey on that nostalgia?
-I don't hate Minimates as a concept. I don't own MANY Minimates, but I really like the ones I do have. Especially the Universal Mummy with his casket. See the end of my comment here.
-It was really the quality control that killed the new BBs for me. Take Fenruk, for example - he's absolutely my favorite of the new Battle Beasts. I love spiders, and I think he's a great-looking design. But mine can't stand under his own power. He droops, wilts, then collapses and faceplants. If this is a one-time or really rare problem, that's fine. But if it's a common problem... well, that's bad. Adult collectors can't pose him on a shelf. Kids can't play with him. Yeah, there's the superglue trick for strengthening joints, but "fixing your own toys" shouldn't be a common requirement. Fenruk's face plant was really the last straw for me as I was figuring out how to write the review.
-I didn't come into this negatively. I was really excited for the new Battle Beasts, and I didn't even really mind the inclusion of humans until after everything else piled upk like the quality control issues. I still think that maybe the humans should have been saved for Wave 2. They look odd in contrast,m since the other figures are stylized to not look like MiniMates, whereas they are.
-I'm probably going to pick up the moose and bat if I see them at Toys R Us. And post a followup. If they have better quality control, there will be many happy comments. I'm likely to even grab the spider repaint because it has a chance of not being broken!
-THANK YOU GUYS for your input and opinions. I'm glad to see that some people agree, some people disagree, but more importantly, people are capable of explaining why they agree or disagree. Understand, I want the new line to improve and succeed. If they can fix the quality control, then it could be really great. But if they don't, it's like MOTUC's constant forearm-swapping, or NECA Predators Series 1 and the "Quick-snapping knees" action feature.
-8-year-old me would have been upset that the toys are broken right out of the box. Other than THAT, they're fun.
-Believe it or not, I'm not a huge collector of the new Japanese Beast Saga figures. In fact, I don't have any.
-And, uh... yeah, I am a work-at-home freelance writer/editor. But it looks like I'll get to be adjunct college faculty soon, too!
-I dunno how closely I'll watch the thread of the forum. As I said, I don't have MANY MiniMates, though I enjoy (most) of the ones I do.
Oh yeah, and I really love that Universal Mummy. The one with the sarcophagus. See?