I bought Cybertron Mode Prime the other day. The plastic looks and feel high quality, but stuff keeps grinding down at an incredible rate, like the ball joints and the waist clip. Is there anyway to prevent this without NOT playing with the guy? I imagine making a protective coating on everything that grinds down in some way with super glue might work. The red plastic seems to be the problem, I think.



To illustrate how bad his joints were before I did the super glue trick on them: He was floppier than my 10 year old Cheetor who had seen a LOT of play. And he didn't come that way, either. He was tight as all getout the first couple of times playing with him.

Dude, I wish I could help you out, but I'm in the same boat. I only have 6 Animated TFs. My Starscreams head likes to pop off, and if you look at the plastic that the ball joint snaps into, it looks like acetone was applied to it. It's dicolored. The head stays on pretty good, it just seems that it likes to pop off at times. My Animated Bumblebee's arms like to pop off, and the plastic that the ball joint sna;s into on one of the arms has turned white. You know, likw when plastic is about to break or has stretched. I absolutely love the Animated toys, but quality control is a big issue.

It could be the amout of color they put into the plastic: in raw form, plastic has no bright color to speak of. It takes colorants ( ground up pigments) to color the plastic. Technically, the pigments are a contaminant, but normally they shouldn't affect the quality. But in this case, I think in trying to replicate the bright colors of animated, they went overboard and used too much. The result: the plastic has no integrity, and crumbles.

Unfortunately, I don't think there really isn't much of a solution. Even if you apply a coating over the affected parts, either the coating will eventually rub off, or the plastic underneath will crumble. I wish I had an answer, but sadly, I don't.