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.