User:ItsWalky/sandbox/partial
A partial, an abbreviation of "partial new mold" or "partial remolding," is when one toy either has newly-sculpted parts added to it or when a new toy borrows parts from another, distinct different toy. The term "partial," functionally, has a lot of overlap with the term "retool," but "partial" has a broader implications and can cover not only when a toy has merely new head or chest tooled for it but also a toy being an entirely new sculpt except for borrowing a few small pieces, such as tires, from another toy. As long as a toy uses any new parts not originally from itself, it's considered a partial.
The term "partial" found favor over the term "retool" with the Transformers team beginning with the War for Cybertron trilogy.
A partial or retool is not to be confused with gang-molded alternate parts, wherein a toy has alternate heads built into the tooling from the beginning for future use. Historically, gang-molded alternate parts were commonly referred to as retools or pretools, simply because from an outside perspective it wasn't easily possible to tell when a head was either strictly new or always existed on the mold, but modern transparency with the current Transformers team has made this less of an issue.