Ok so I love marauder gunrunners stuff and black majors whole figures, but it seems that there aren't readily available upgrade kits along the lines of transformers sets. I'm not really into painting figures but why aren't there more heads for sale ready to go to make new characters?

Also why aren't there more vehicle upgrades? It would seem that whoever makes a vamp mk2 upgrade to put on the old 25th vamp would have money in the bank. You'd just need to make doors, roof, and the missle rack. Why aren't there more things along the lines of vehicle part upgrades etc. like you see in transformers?

That is a great question. I suspect that the collector market is so much smaller for Joes than it is for TFs that it would be hard to make money in such an endeavour. Hopefully, someone out there will prove me wrong. I would love to see a line of upgrades for vehicles and figures.

OB

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OreoBuilder got it. The Joe community is super tiny compared to the Transformers or Star Wars communities. Plus, Joe collectors, right or wrong, are known as being a bit tight with the money when it comes to buying stuff. Just look at the missile rack listed last week that could be ordered from Shapeway. People liked it, but not the price. Admittedly, I thought it was overpriced, too. But the same happens with the casters out there. A lot of people will like the work, especially in the pieces that are modified pieces or completely new work, but not nearly as many order from them. There are people who order from them, of course, but not enough to make it worth it for other people to try to enter the market.

I would really love to see a set of alternate heads for sale from Hasbro. Heads that have baseball hats, knit caps, facial hair, sunglasses, etc, that don't resemble established characters. I'm not really confident that I could paint some of the ones for sale by casters and have them look good. Having a bunch of heads to work with in multiple skin tones would be awesome. I'm not holding my breath though.

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Yeah I guess it's the size of the community and the price point...I know though that if for instance Maurauder or Black major sold alternate hiss turrets for instance I'd be ok with a 20ish price point, but not a 40. And for well done heads I could see 10-15. But not like 20.

Just my 2 cents.

Well the set that MarkM was talking about that I pointed out is the overpriced one.....http://www.shapeways.com/shops/yetibrew?s=0 If you look at that he's got upgrades for the HISS canopies, Dragonfly turret and missile's and racks......And upgrades to make the newish vehicles able to use the old stuff or viceversa but yea they are all outrageously priced

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No offense intended towards you personally RT, but your statement illustrates the point perfectly. In the TF and SW community, they would not blink to pay prices like this for original designed upgrades (even at the higher prices necessitated by 3D printing setup and materials). The Joe community IS cheap.

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Absolutely, unapologetically cheap.

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I was going to refute this point, but then I realized I spent $16 on a head for Generations Kup (which is pretty crazy, now that I think about it.) $60 for a newly molded turret isn't too terrible compared to that.

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Is not wanting to spend $61 on a small modification to a toy being "cheap" or just being real? I don't deny that a lot of Joe collectors are cheap, but I don't consider this one a good example of it.

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I agree. I'm pretty spendy, I don't flinch with paying high prices for cool stuff, but an upgraded missile rack for over $60?

I'd be fine with $30, maybe even $40, not $60 though. For $60, I'll buy another vehicle with one I can mod and get some extra fodder out of it.

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Some collectors (likely the majority) don't care about unofficial parts. They don't customize; they just collect. Odd thing to say on this forum. But it's true. It's true for Transformers and Star Wars fans as well, but having larger fanbases, there's more people to buy custom casted parts than there is the GI JOE community. There's also people who despise repros, but that's not the same as a new part.

Well... A lot of those unlicensed third party items for Transformers... they tend to come from enthusiastic Chinese fans. Transformers is way big in China.


GI Joe, much less so. So you get less of that.

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Yeah and parts like the city commander upgrade trailer or optimus prime's trailer are fantastic. Being able to get either of them for what this missile rack runs shows the disparity in collecting community sizes and capabilities.

Well the thing is the missile rack is made by Shapeways via 3D printing, isn't it?
3D printing is still an expensive process.

The unlicensed third-partiers in China, they use more traditional means to make their products, using cheap Chinese factory space and cheap Chinese manpower to produce this stuff, hence it can go for less than a Shapeways product, but more than Hasbro mass-production.

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