Quality control

Quality control refers to efforts on behalf of a company to ensure that their mass-manufactured products are free from flaws that affect the functionality and/or aesthetic quality of the product. This has nothing to do with safety-testing which is usually done at an earlier stage of the development process, and which only aims to make sure that the product isn't harmful to the target audience (in the Transformers toys' case, children), but says nothing about the functionality or quality of the product (in fact, safety measures may sometimes affect the functionality).

Usually, quality control involves picking individual samples from a production run and testing them to make sure they're free from a variety of errors. Testing the entire production run is not commercially feasible, so instead, the manufacturer relies on just testing random samples, hoping to catch at least the more widespread problems this way.

Unfortunately, despite these efforts, errors still occasionally creep their way into products available on store shelves. While for the most part, these are limited to flaws on individual samples which aren't caught due to the very nature of the quality control process, the occasional widespread error exists, some of which even affect an entire production run, or at least a considerable percentage of it.

Fields of quality control

Molding

Transformers toys are assembled from many smaller parts usually made out of plastic, die-cast metal or rubber. These parts are cast from mass-manufacturing molds. There are several problems that can occur at this stage:

• Too little material can be used for the molding of one part by accident, resulting in an incomplete or deformed part. This is usually limited to individual samples.
• Parts can be damaged during the molding process or after it, again resulting in incomplete or deformed parts, but again limited to individual specimens.
• The sculpting may be imperfect, which can result in aesthetically flawed (imcomplete or damaged) parts, but also in too little tolerances or too much space between connected and moving parts, or too tight or too loose joints. This usually affects the entire production run, and is this more likely to be caught during quality control, although some cases still slip through. For example, Movie Deluxe Class Decepticon Brawl's shoulders are connect to the torso with diamond-shaped pins as part of the transformation, but the pins actually don't connect all that well, resulting in the shoulders easily disconnecting from the torso. This problem was eventually fixed for the Revenge of the Fallen Deep Desert Brawl redeco of the toy, however.
• The molds can wear out and deteriorate due to excessive use, resulting in the same problems caused by imperfect sculpting. Again, this would effect the entire production run. Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Class "Preview" Bumblebee and Binaltech Asterisk Alert are just two of many examples. Though this sort of problem is usually also spotted during quality control, Hasbro and Takara only address this in rare instances (such as Generation 1 Jazz's head which had degraded into an ugly smirk with various reuses of the mold, and which was eventually either restored or replaced by a brand new, flawless mold), instead just hoping that the flaws aren't being noticed that much, and eventually just retiring the molds in question altogether.

Materials and stability

Sometimes a toy that was perfectly stable as a prototype may develop problems at the manufacturing stage. This can be due to the materials used for the mass-produced version having different properties and qualities than the materials used for the prototypes.

• Some types of plastic may turn out to be too brittle to be used for small parts or parts put under a lot of stress as part of the transformation process. This affects clear plastic in particular. Movie Deluxe Class Decepticon Brawl used clear plastic for the gears of his Automorph gimmick which were often already broken inside the packaging. This is a flaw that usually affects most, if not all of the production run and therefore should theoretically be caught during quality control.
• Some plastic types will deteriorate after being exposed to air or sunlight for a while. Although in some cases one couldn't realistically expect quality control to notice the problem (such as the infamous Gold Plastic Syndrome, which doesn't manifest until years after exposure to the elements), there are instances where materials have degraded very quickly, such as Movie Legends Class Scorponok's tail stinger... which might be the reason why the toy has never been redecoed thus far.