Vintage O-Ring Molds Destroyed?
 

The report is that at the Collectors Club roundtable, it was revealed that Hasbro destroyed large amounts of vintage ARAH tools rather than pay to store it. The club got the chance to save some select molds but there was too much to save all of. :(

Nice, real nice. :rolleyes:

I didn't expect ARAH molds to return at retail, but...what the heck? Couldn't they have just sold them to someone else...I guess they wouldn't want bootlegs out there.

That is disappointing. :(

The b@stards! Why am I not surprised? Hasbro can kiss my hairy @rse! :mad:

Surely the moulds themselves are pretty small, it's the injection moulding machines that are large?

I also imagine that there would have been multiple machines running in parallel, and therefore lots of moulds made from a master. Perhaps they are talking about destroying all of these multiples rather than the master? (He says hopefully, feeling pain at the waste otherwise)

Geez!

From what I understand, the molds are huge. Making 100 plus figures at a time. I wonder what ones got saved. I know the club has made new head molds and such in the past, I wonder if they will be willing to make more like that. I overheard Brian this weekend saying that he was selling most of his backstock for under cost just to keep moving forward with new stuff. Makes you wonder what the future of o-ring figures will be.
They announced last night that the next year con will be in RI near the Hasbro HQ. 15 hour drive and this years was 12. I wonder if I can make that. Its also in april so 8 months from now. We will be getting an 0-ring Big Lobb as next years membership fig. THat is awsomme.

Ah right, of course they'd have multiple-component moulds, silly me.

Thanks for the info.

I am not sure how much stock I would put into these statements.

Remember the TRU Cobra troops, they said then that the head mold was gone, then suddenly they maraculously found it by sending ninjas into a secret factory in china and stealing them back (OK that was a bit of hyperbole, but there was this silly story about the factory being shut down and Hasbro going in heroicly and saving them).

And jsut in time for the comic packs to arrive at retail too, HMMMMM. This was after the joe community split again on the trooper heads (new and old) like they split on everything LOL.

Still over the years I have found too many tall tails from both big H and MC to believe anything they say with anything more than a grain of salt.

Word is from people at the con is that a lot of the molds were already rusting and would cost more to refurbish rather than make new from scratch.

Still seems a like shame they let them get that way. And this will affect any future o-ring offerings, but it already seems the club is moving away from them anyway.

There's always some bad news to come out of the convention.

Dont' forget that a lot of molds were 'lost' down in South America or something.

ALso, a ton of molds were loaned out to some company in which, THOSE got lost too.

Consider that maybe, JUST maybe the last of the o-ring molds they got rid of have been the parts we've seen the last few years when they were doing the ARAH-style comic packs. I don't know what molds they decided to destroy, but I'm guessing that they were molds I wouldn't cry over. Hasbro prolly should've kept the molds that actually had GOOD designs to it. I'm thinking of Tunnel Rat and Falcon's molds over, oh, Ice Cream Soldier, Fast Draw, Raptor and Blowtorch.

But anyway, continue lamenting.