I was googling some stuff to waste some time at work and came across a thread from 2004 that talked about the original Skystriker mold, the Night Raven mold, and the Tomahawk mold all being destroyed by Funskool in India by erroneously using saltwater to clean them.

Anyone know if this is true? Just curious.

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I think just about any story you hear is going to be hard to validate short of talking to the Hasbro people that worked there at the time. I can't say I heard that particular story before but I did hear a story about a cargo ship with molds on it sinking. True? Who knows? It probably doesn't matter much at this point since Hasbro did confirm a couple of years ago that they destroyed what molds they did have on hand. They cited that it was cheaper to recreate them than store them.

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Storage must be expensive and they must take up a lot of space.

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I remember reading somewhere that a mold for a figure was roughly the size of a car and weighed several tons. I would imagine the mold for the tomahawk would be larger than one required for a figure

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Scott, from what I remember - it wasn't that a ship that sank, but rather that some of the containers on board (some of which had molds) went overboard. Brian Savage also relayed at one of the Cons (maybe Minneapolis?) that some had gone overboard at a pier in China or India. With all the rumors of that type - I think it's a safe bet to assume that something like that happened, but I'd love to have an official confirmation.

Regardless, and back to the original post, I know the Skystriker mold was gone, as Hasbro reverse-engineered it from vintage toys to make the new version.

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Does anyone have a picture, or link to a picture, of an actual metal mold used for manufacturing figures or vehicles?

I would have a hard time believing anything the Club or Hasbro says about Molds without photos to back it up.

At one point it was said that the Tools for the USS Flagg deck plates were Lost/Stolen/Destroyed... Because this was such a large tool it wasn't feasible to re-create it... This was put forward with the idea that Fans would stop asking for a Re-release of the Flagg... (no idea if it's true or not.)

in 2004 the Club had to re-create parts for the Dreadnok trike, Stunn, and Hydrofoil. This was because many tools, that just happened to be about the size and weight that one person could carry them out the door, were missing from Hasbro's Tool Library. "Stolen and Scrapped or Trashed by a Disgruntled Employee"

At some point the Club described Some Tools as being the Size and Weight of a VW Beetle. This could be quite right for parts Like the Flagg...or even the Moray Deck Plates.... but Hasbro didn't employ a bunch of Incredible Hulks...so All tooling can't be that large or weigh THAT much.

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That must have been what I remembered reading, thanks nova!

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To give you some sense of the size of a mold, at work we recently did a reverse engineering of a mold used to make standard DVD cases. The mold as solid steel, which is standard for longer life molds. Aluminum is cheaper, but wears out much faster. It weighed just under 50 pounds and was about the same size as an unfolded DVD case in length and width, and about 5 inches thick. So unless they gang molded Joe parts, which probably isn't needed, the molds probably aren't that big. The actual injection molding equipment is pretty sizable, but the molds don't need to be.

Figures parts and Weapons are Run in a gang mold... Thats why you'll find cavity numbers on almost every part..

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Yeah, its the molding machine what's around the size of a car, not the molds themselves. I can't imagine they'd try casting out an entire Flagg from one mold, so not even that works as an example. When I briefly worked for the Igloo cold container company, the molds for the lids and bodies of the beer coolers we made weren't much larger than the pieces themselves, but some of the pressing machines were the size of RVs. One had a portion where you actually walked thru the mass of the machine and it drew the casted lid/body over your head to cool, or something. Seemed stupid and dangerous, but its what it did.

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This came from one of our Q+A's


Like nova said though, we've heard a lot of different descriptions for the molds.

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^ THAT was what I read

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We were also told that the mold for Scarlett was one of the ones that went overboard, so the comic 3-pack with her, CC, and Breaker would not come out. Then test shots started trickling in and they got released. Maybe someone was mistaken but I think it is like Nomad said...something happened but who knows exactly what.

I haven't seen much in the way of current molds, but I don't think gang molds are very large. I know 25th AV accessories had enough parts on one mold for 2 figures. I'd imagine it is about the same for others.

With several cavity numbers in the vintage line, it seems to me like those molds would have been larger.

After reading through all of the different theories and rumors, I am beginning to think it is the simplest solution. That being that Hasbro sold the molds for scrap. Someone counted the beans and showed the benefit of selling them versus saving them and off they went to be melted down. It was probably not that much money either. Damn shame.....well, not that they would have actually remade the Night Raven or the Tomahawk anyway, but still a shame.

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