Zoids who's very existance bugs you canon wise

[LoveGame]

Which was fine for the story (albeit a lazy copout) but it also meant that a lot of the coolest kits never got reissued, making them impossible to obtain for people like me who were born later lmao

[CeilYurei]

yeah. it really sucks. also gave them an excuse to make some kits like salamander rarer and crap.

[Falcarius]

To be fair, the meteor disaster wasn't originally intended as a series reboot so much as a series ending. They knew the OJR was dying and they needed to wrap up the story on the boxes, and for whatever reason, they decided to end it with "rocks fall, everyone dies". Then when the NJR came along nine years later, they realised they could use "lost technology" as a convenient excuse for why they were releasing the well-known, top-seller kits from the early/mid-OJR instead of the technically superior ones from later on. I suspect one reason why some of the Grade-Ups weren't reissued was that the molds had been lost or degraded too much - after all, if Tomy's no longer selling the old kits, they're not going to get any profit out of driving up the prices on second-hand ones.

[Leon35]

Huh. I never would have considered the idea that some Zoids designs may have genuinly been lost to time, just like in the story. That's pretty neat.

I wonder then...between the Rebirth line and Graphics line, how were these old Zoids even re-made with minimal remolds? King Liger has King Baron's head and everyone got new battery cases but Zoids like Sea Panther, Gul Tiger, Zeek Dolber, King Gojulas (etc) all came back to us. Why did we never see these Zoids years earlier if the molds still existed?

[CeilYurei]

They reconstructed the molds, or made new molds using old sprues as negatives, perhaps. You could scan the sprues and then have a mchine cute each side inverted into a mold set, in theory.

[Maethius]

If memory serves (and at my age, it might not), the Zoids Graphics line and the more recent limited Zoids releases (Ritter, et al), were both in anticipation of series re-launches that fell flat. Only Kotobukiya seems to have a thriving Zoids line, and I think its because they have approached it from the standpoint of re-capturing the older fans of the line with adult level kits.

[CeilYurei]

Aug 18, 2016 12:49:27 GMT -5 Maethius said:

If memory serves (and at my age, it might not), the Zoids Graphics line and the more recent limited Zoids releases (Ritter, et al), were both in anticipation of series re-launches that fell flat. Only Kotobukiya seems to have a thriving Zoids line, and I think its because they have approached it from the standpoint of re-capturing the older fans of the line with adult level kits.

Only way to relaunch the line would be a new anime launched WITH the line. Most kids don't even know what zoids is anymore. somebody needs to tell tomy this so they can get their heads out of their asses and save the franchise.

[novastorm]

Aug 18, 2016 12:51:42 GMT -5 CeilYurei said:

Aug 18, 2016 12:49:27 GMT -5 Maethius said:

If memory serves (and at my age, it might not), the Zoids Graphics line and the more recent limited Zoids releases (Ritter, et al), were both in anticipation of series re-launches that fell flat. Only Kotobukiya seems to have a thriving Zoids line, and I think its because they have approached it from the standpoint of re-capturing the older fans of the line with adult level kits.

Only way to relaunch the line would be a new anime launched WITH the line. Most kids don't even know what zoids is anymore. somebody needs to tell tomy this so they can get their heads out of their asses and save the franchise.

Can't say that i agree, having never seen the anime and still loving Zoids.
In my memory the toy stores had Zoids and me and friends and schoolmates all thought they were cool and wanted them, none of us ever saw the show as far as i can remember.
The simple fact that they are only available online if you know to look for them has had far more impact than not having a new show in my opinion (at least in europe, perhaps the show was huge in USA?).

Funny now that i think about it, we did have Robotech on TV when i was a kid, but i've never seen a toy for it in stores in my country.....funny how that works =)

[CeilYurei]

True, novastorm actual products in stores would help sell them too. As would advertising, and the anime series in america was how most kids, or at lelast when i was a kid, knew what they were, American kids aren't really into model building so if it wasn't for zoids anime I would have never even known they existed, well, the anime and advertisements. And i think the problem is that they aren't making a standard zoids scale set of kits that can be played with safely and have marketing for them. Without advertising or a show most kids won't remember a cool toy they pick up if it's expensive and their parents said no...and I dunno about other peoplle but my parents then got us the cheapest kits available and we never got the cooler kits.

Hell, even the blox zoids we never got, no matter how often i pestered my mom for them. But then we were poor as *Watch your language!*...or they were just cheap.   

[Falcarius]

Aug 18, 2016 12:49:27 GMT -5 Maethius said:

If memory serves (and at my age, it might not), the Zoids Graphics line and the more recent limited Zoids releases (Ritter, et al), were both in anticipation of series re-launches that fell flat. Only Kotobukiya seems to have a thriving Zoids line, and I think its because they have approached it from the standpoint of re-capturing the older fans of the line with adult level kits.

I think the biggest difference between the NJR and Graphics/Rebirth Century/Original is that the NJR was a mass-market, widely-advertised, "hey kids come buy some of these awesome robots from those TV shows" type of series, while the later ones were more of a niche, nostalgia-fueled, "hey guys remember these awesome robots from when you were kids" deal. Which is good for making existing fans happy and getting rare and interesting kits (that wouldn't necessarily do well with cash-strapped kids) reissued, but not so good for actually regaining any comparable popularity.
Takara Tomy's actually doing an okay job at keeping a niche franchise running - compare the mostly-dead Z-Knights or the absolutely 100% dead Starriors - but it's not going to go "mainstream" again in Japan (let alone worldwide) without a massive marketing effort (and probably a new anime/manga/movie).

[CeilYurei]

Aug 19, 2016 8:17:24 GMT -5 Falcarius said:

Aug 18, 2016 12:49:27 GMT -5 Maethius said:

If memory serves (and at my age, it might not), the Zoids Graphics line and the more recent limited Zoids releases (Ritter, et al), were both in anticipation of series re-launches that fell flat. Only Kotobukiya seems to have a thriving Zoids line, and I think its because they have approached it from the standpoint of re-capturing the older fans of the line with adult level kits.

I think the biggest difference between the NJR and Graphics/Rebirth Century/Original is that the NJR was a mass-market, widely-advertised, "hey kids come buy some of these awesome robots from those TV shows" type of series, while the later ones were more of a niche, nostalgia-fueled, "hey guys remember these awesome robots from when you were kids" deal. Which is good for making existing fans happy and getting rare and interesting kits (that wouldn't necessarily do well with cash-strapped kids) reissued, but not so good for actually regaining any comparable popularity.
Takara Tomy's actually doing an okay job at keeping a niche franchise running - compare the mostly-dead Z-Knights or the absolutely 100% dead Starriors - but it's not going to go "mainstream" again in Japan (let alone worldwide) without a massive marketing effort (and probably a new anime/manga/movie).

i didn't even know what starriors was tillll i saw somebody trying to sell some old kits as zoids and i did a search for them. so yeah, zoids is an alive franchise but needs a relaunch. a more  mature cc/gf style anime would be nice. or at least one marketed for teens more than kids so they can get away with not censoring more of it when dubbed to english. combine with advertising and you got a revival.