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On KOs and BBs

Last week, a popular source for knockoff and third-party Transformers figures was shut down. When it returned, it was without any of the KO figures (a fact confirmed as the new permanent situation by the site's owner via e-mail).

The topic of KOs (and their scale modeling equivalent, recasts) comes up regularly, and my own feelings on it are mixed. I've had my work stolen and used for both personal and commercial applications, so I know how that side of the situation feels. I also know how frustrating it can be to get the short end of the stick when trying to acquire a particular item. So I have adopted this general guide: If there is any chance that I can acquire a legitimate copy of an item, I will do so. That means that there are a lot of holes in my collection because the items I want are too rare and/or expensive to locate (Black Tracks, AMT ZZR kits, etc.), but I have faith that I can fill them in some day...it's just a matter of time.

But what if the item has no "legitimate" counterpart?

Thanks to the current global economy, Hasbro and Takara have been downsizing their figures recently. The Alternator/Binaltech/Human Alliance figures are gone, Masterpieces have been downsized to around 1/32-1/36 scale, and the only figures that I still regularly see in stores have been in the the much smaller Cyberverse series. I really can't see either company suddenly changing things up and offering us 1/24 scale versions of any of the Transformers: Prime characters. Not that Has/Tak are permanently out of that scale, but by the time the pendulum swings back Prime will be long dead (just as we'll likely see no new figures of characters from Machine Wars, Robots in Disguise, Energon, and Cybertron outside of con/store exclusives...it's just the nature of the industry).

So when a company makes an "oversized" version of a standard figure that fills this void, I take interest. Such was the case with Transformers: Prime Bumblebee. While I do own a copy of the standard size figure from Hasbro, this gave me the chance to add the character (along with Wheeljack) to my model collection.


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