>>11485141
Nothing comes to mind, but having lived through the advancements I can tell you it all started to get serious in the mid-2010's. Hasbro had just started getting their Marvel figures right again after a decade of stumbles and hot off that streak they announced Star Wars Black Series. Shortly thereafter everybody wanted in on the 6 inch super poseable form factor pie, and then the japanese jumped in.
Granted they were always around (especially back in the toybiz days) but even their engineering started to make leaps and bounds in terms of improvement. Thus the importfags were born. Around this same time hasbro was also pushing Transformers engineering harder and harder. The continued success of those movies basically gave them carte blanche to push the envelope and open the doors to headmasters, combiners, triple changers, and all their other (upto that point) retired gimmicks that only third party guys were paying any attention to at that point.
The real elephant in the room was and continues to be China. Through out it all the chinese were learning all the secrets to the trade from the Japanese, Euros, and Americans as the means to manufacture and produce toys advanced even further. The 3P Chinese scene kicked off with unlicensed masterpiece-esque collector oriented transformers but eventually ballooned to cover the entire pie. LEGO, Mezco, Mafex, Marvel Legends, etc. And that pretty much brings us upto date.
