Transformers: Hasbro Pulse Exclusive Vintage G1 Reissue Cassettes (Gurafi & Noizu and for Some Reason Frenzy)
Gurafi
Noizu
Unnamed Combined Mode
Hasbro has attained a level of abject incompetence only previously achieved by Fun Publications and the Trump administration. They screwed this toy up so badly, they should either reproduce it correctly and send everyone free replacements, or just refund everyone their money. Of course neither of those things is going to happen, but at the very least they should release a statement of apology. They should be embarrassed at how badly they screwed this up.
For starters, the card backs are on the wrong side. If this was on purpose, I’d love to hear an explanation, if not, how does that happen? How do you not put the backs on the right sides? Was this a factory error? If so, how does a company the size of Hasbro allow those things to happen? I get it with Fun Pub toys. They were paying direct cheap prices, and they didn’t give a shit, but they can’t blame anyone for this but themselves. The quality of the entire Transformers toyline has suffered so much since they moved production to Vietnam.
Here’s a better question than how could they screw up the card backs? Why did they even have an opportunity to do it? What purpose was there in including a Frenzy identical to the retail version at all? I mean, if they had called him Rumble, then at least I would have said, “well, at least we finally get a tech spec with his correct name on it.”
Or a better, idea, do something that wasn’t already available at retail. They could have made a new character or done Enemy instead. Better yet, why didn’t they just do both Japanese sets together? That would have been awesome to have both Japanese combiner sets together in G1 packaging with G1 tech specs, which we will likely never get for Dairu and Zauru. And if they couldn’t have done any of that, why not just do Noizu and Gurafi and be done with it?
Okay let’s forget how they screwed up the packaging and included a needless other toy so they could charge more for it, when they could have done so many other things. How about you not make the toy in garbage quality? They didn’t include instructions for how to combine these COMBINER cassettes, because they did such a piss poor job on the new mold that when you combine them, he can’t stand up. Noizu plugs into a port on the underside of Gurafi’s pteranodon head, meaning the pivot for his head has to be strong enough to support Noizu’s weight. My original G1 works perfectly, which means it’s not a design flaw, just a piss poor job of either making the new mold or manufacturing the toy. The knock off version of these that came out some years ago is of far better quality.
Even worse, we’ve seen plenty of toys that had production problems before, but this time we know without question that Hasbro KNEW this toy was not manufactured correctly, and didn’t bother do anything about it. They left off the instructions on how to combine it. That’s proof they knew. The Hasbro Pulse site actually shows the toy combined. At best that’s false advertising, at worst it’s fraud.
Oh yeah, and the combined mode doesn’t even have a name. I hate it when they don’t name things.
So, anyway. The stickers are different from the originals, but I’m so pissed off, I don’t even want to bother to go into the details.
Overall: How Hasbro could screw this up so badly, I don’t know. I want to give them credit for making them at all, but I can’t. Fuck you, Hasbro.
Thanks for reading!