Redeco

It may be a surprise to some that these three toys are actually the same toy but in three different color schemes!

A redeco, or recolor, is a toy which uses the same molds as a previously-released toy, but has been reproduced with different plastic colors and/or different paint applications. A redeco can either be officially marketed as the same character in different colors or as a different character. A redeco uses exactly the same tools or molds as the original toy. If any changes have been made, even something as simple as giving the toy a different head or additional pegs for locking body parts into place, it is more properly categorized as a retool.

For example: the first three Generation 1 Seekers, Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp, are redecos while the second year Seekers Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust are retools of the same base mold.

The term "repaint" is also in wide use among fans as a synonym for "redeco". "Redeco", however, is the term used by the people on Hasbro's Transformers team. Additionally, the term "repaint" is technically wrong* in almost all instances of a same-mold-new-colors toy, as typically more than the paint applications are changed when a toy is redecoed.

In fiction, redecos are usually justified as characters sharing the same "body-type".

*Don't worry, you won't be burned at the stake for calling redecos "repaints". Still, we use the proper term for this wiki.

Why redecos?

Some people just don't know when to stop.

The single most expensive step in making a Transformers toy is making the steel-cut molds required to hold then cool molten plastic. Add to this the salaries of the designers and engineers, and there is a very considerable expense involved in making a single new-mold toy. Many of these development expenses are not involved in making a redeco, giving the company a chance to make a larger profit on a single mold and put more product on the shelves with a smaller investment.

Another reason is that the toy market moves far, far faster today than it did when the line first started. Retailers do not like product to linger, and shipping older toys in new assortments can give the impression that some items simply do not sell. (Of course, some don't anyway, but that's beside the point.) With this much shorter sales window in mind, companies use redecos to keep molds in use longer (to help make back the money spent in development plus a worthwhile profit), and oftentimes keep popular characters still in circulation while maintaining a "fresh" look on the shelves, making the retailers happy. Retools have a much longer development lead time than redecos, even for small parts. It may not cost much more to give a reused mold a new robot mode head, but timing concerns may be the deciding factor in choosing to redeco the old one.^[1]

Members of the Hasbro Transformers team have repeatedly pointed out that they never expected anyone to buy all the redecos made; Aaron Archer was apparently baffled by the premise. However, with the rise of the collector market, and fans who habitually do buy every toy that comes out, Hasbro has increasingly tried to ensure that the redecos they're releasing are "meaningful"—i.e. based on the lore, or in homage to something from the franchise's history.^[2]

Redecos as exclusives

OTFCC 2004 Megazarak is a redeco of a toy available at mass retail.

Most exclusive toys, be they for conventions^[3] or stores, are redecos and retools of previously-released toys. With just one exception, all exclusives that used previously-unreleased molds are toys that had been developed for normal retail but were temporarily in "limbo" when their intended toylines were ended. The one exception, Aveo Swerve, was a new mold produced for a gigantic multinational corporation.

The simple reason for this is, again, cost; making the steel molds is prohibitively expensive, as well as the engineering and so forth. Because most exclusives are produced in numbers far less than a normal retail toy, there are fewer units to amortize what production costs do remain, which means the toys must either sell for more to cover costs and make a worthwhile profit, or the profit margin per item must be reduced, or even both at once.

While it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that a major retail chain might get a new-mold toy as an exclusive (as they can move thousands and thousands of units nationwide over several months), the odds of a convention getting one are almost nonexistent due to these cost considerations, as the production runs of these toys rarely reach far beyond 1000. At most, therefore, one can expect a few retools of select parts from a toy, often a new-mold robot mode head.

"Virtual" redecos

Guess how many of these toys existed when this comic was published. Now half that.

While character model re-use has been a cost-cutting staple of the brand since its inception, a peculiar, fantastically nerdy trend began to materialize in collector-oriented fiction around the turn of the 2010s: slavishly toy accurate art of existing molds, but with decoes that did not exist on real toys. These "virtual" redecos can have many motives, from "backdoor pilots" for future exclusives, to customizer bait, to a simple game of I Spy for huge nerds.

Some prominent sources of virtual redecos include:

• Shattered Glass
• Beast Wars: Uprising
• GoBots, somehow
• Legends
• The Precursor World
• The Cybertron Satellite promotional campaign

Popular redeco themes

Not knockoffs.....

Redecos can be marketed either as the same character in different colors, or as a different character. For both versions, some recurring themes have been established between Hasbro and Takara.

• Black redecos - commonly used for "stealth" forms and evil clones.
• Clear redecos - sometimes inspired by specific character abilities or plots (such as Generation 1 Mirage's invisibility or Starscream as a ghost).
• "Fire"-themed redecos - often representing a power-enhanced version of a character (such as the "Fire Guts" version of God Ginrai or the "Super" redeco of Side Burn).
• Metallic redecos - particularly gold or silver chromed. These are often used for Lucky Draw figures.
• Homage redecos - designed to resemble a previous (often Generation 1) character. This is particularly prevalent with construction vehicles and dinosaurs.
• G2 redecos - Made to represent the bizarre G2 color schemes given to various characters

Popular redeco characters

Skywarp is usually redecoed from Starscream.

Some toys of a certain character are frequently designed to be redecoed as one or more other characters (with or without various levels of retooling). Some of those different-character redeco themes are directly rooted in Generation 1, while others are indirectly inspired by Generation 1, and still others are more recent additions to the Transformers lore. Some well-known examples include:

• Optimus Prime into Ultra Magnus, Scourge, Nemesis Prime and Motormaster.
• Megatron into Galvatron.
• Soundwave into Blaster and Soundblaster.
• Bumblebee into Cliffjumper.
• The Seekers.
• Prowl, Bluestreak, Smokescreen, and Barricade.
• Rumble and Frenzy.
• Ironhide and Ratchet.
• Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, and Red Alert.
• Cheetor into various other cats.

Notes

• Hasbro designer Joe Kyde once said that the plural of "redeco" was "redecos", not "redecoes". But seeing as it's a made-up word, and Joe Kyde is a troll, take that with a grain of salt.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Redeco (リデコ Rideko)
• Chinese: Chóngtú (重じゅう涂, "repaint")

References

See also

• Repaint
• Retool
• Gang-molding
• Mold
• Paint operation
• Body-type