>>11542786
>diaclone buggy and driver
I think this is why I loved Titans Return so much. Even deluxe class figures felt like their own little self-contained playsets, and I love the concept of pilots/drivers and mini-vehicles because they help add a sense of scale to the giant transforming robots, plus they're just fucking fun to play with.

>>11542793
Everything *is* expensive nowadays. We live in a shareholder economy where every major corporation has promised infinite returns to their top investors, forever. And entire class of people depend on this to fund their way of life. When toys get more expensive, the biggest driving factor isn't that they want to increase quality, and it certainly isn't that they want to pay their workers more—they just want to maximize profit so the corporate payout gets bigger. That's why current retail shit has not only price-hiked, but also untethered size classes from actual size, so they can charge whatever they feel like for however much plastic they want.
>But it's the kind of thing you can feel in hand most of the time
This is the saving grace. Every now and again, there's a nexus of cost and quality that is actually worth it. Most MP and Haslab stuff is still just bloated pricetags for the sake of profit, but ML Convoy actually feels worth it to me. I predict this class of toy is going to get exceedingly rare moving forward as corporations try harder and harder to squeeze money out of plastic, so I'm trying to enjoy them now.