Bring Back Gears
Entry posted by bonesiii
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Okay so it's late and I had other blog entries planned and I am out of time for this week but I'm trying to keep this a weekly blog. So this will have to do.
The Bones Blog brings you today a set-related proposal that just might be plausible.No, I haven't mutated into some monster beyond all recognition, if you've read the title and come in here thinking I was the guy that hates gears.
I do hate gears. Personally. That's just my own personal preference. They are mildly interesting gimmicks, but the cons outweigh the pros -- that is, ruining poseability in most sets, stealing joints that otherwise could use the near-perfect balljoints that I love, being awkwardly placed in most sets, and for a lot of target-audience fans other than myself, a tedious extra construction step that slows down what to them should be a quick and easy build.
I do like love to use gears as styling pieces in System Fusion MOCs, and I have just so happened to have already used up my supply and wish I had more.
But none of that is related to this blog entry.
This is an idea that I and another BZPer whose name frustratingly escapes me at this exact moment had come up with a while ago. I've never actually put it forward in any way other than comments in random posts. But Heir of the Chronicler's interesting Sets topic got me thinking about it again.
Heir made it clear in his post that he was not advocating a return of gears.
But my idea is this. Why not bring back gears in one or two canister sets each year, or even just every other year? Now that we are rid of clones, there's no reason a whole team has to have gears.
Bold for easy reference, not emphasis.
Here's some reasoning. Variety is good, and there are a lot of people out there that do love the gears. It's probably the most-repeated topic in the Sets forum or GD, or just something mentioned in a generalized complaint topic. If it's focused on just one or two in a team, maybe there will be enough gear fans to make up for the lost sales from the majority fans, or mostly to do so.
And we've had gears in canister sets before that have obviously survived the market process.
Now, maybe putting them in the heroes is a bad idea -- but there are also villains, and they've had a little more complex of builds in more recent years. Also, which color to put it in might be an issue -- for example, would it be safer to put it in red, which is probably going to sell well anyways, or a slightly poorer seller like white or black and risk those selling even more poorly -- or just the moderately well-selling colors like blue or green?
But whatever the set chosen, the basic concept seems to me to be possible. I know it could be a risk -- and maybe it would be better left to titans (as I've heard claims would be done this year -- anybody know if that is true?). It's just worth thinking over, no?
Any comments?
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