[barnstenchfartface]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tokumonkey

I suspect it's a large part. Gol(r)d Drive was a retail release, which was a bit of a stunner, but it was so easy for them to re-do: Type Speed head, Proto-Drive torso, adjust the paint, and leave out the shift car: done. Bandai has gotten a lot of use out of the Type Speed, Mach, and Chaser (Mashin and Rider) molds. There's just not that much tooling necessary for a lot of these given that the show and its spin-offs kept remixing existing body parts in different configurations. I also think this is one of the reasons Gaim releases dried up: why would Bandai risk significant amounts of new tooling costs when they can produce Riders that mostly reuse existing parts?

To be fair, pretty much all the remaining Gaim figuarts (except for like, Suika Arms) would also mostly reuse the vast majority of their parts. The only new things they'd have to make for them are the chest/armor, the heads, and the weapons. And the lockseeds, I guess. It's not as little as they have to do for these Drive figures but it's still not a lot. Like, if they finished just one Gaim Rider that uses one of the apple-based Arms, they could just reuse that for like 5 or 6 different figures. Most of the helmets for the remaining forms and Riders can also easily be retooled from other Rider's (Gaim's in particular saw a lot of use). And then there's forms that don't even need that, and would be nearly complete just with a recolor, like Black Jimba Arms, Black Baron, or even Watermelon Zangetsu. And I mean, we have seen pretty much all of them in events, so we know they have at least workable prototypes. I really do think it has more to do with the fact that pretty much all of them were throwaway characters or forms, rather than the cost of new parts. The Drive figuarts have an advantage in that not only are they cheap to make but basically all of them are still one of the three main Rider characters, which makes them easier sells. Heart and Banno are exceptions, but they're also both very popular characters, so it makes sense as well.