QUOTE(legham @ Sep 25 2008, 06:49 AM)

Well actually... due to the way the molding process works, it's much easier to add things like minicon ports or extra detail than it is to eliminate surface detail.
In order to add plastic detailing, you're simply cutting more steel off the mold. It's possible to add material to the mold, but it's messy and weaker than the rest of the mold, so degrades quicker. It's better to cut a new mold if you want to change that much.
Have another look at your remolded TFs... if you compare them to the originals, they've either had material added (permanently changing the old mold), or a fresh mold cut.
LH:
G1 Jazz may have been welded up when they fixed his face for the Stepper reissue. The reissue dies are probably an ugly mess of repairs after all these years. Of course it *is* always easier to take metal away than to add it.
Oddly enough, our forging dies get welded and recut all the time, and they're in very rough service...getting a ton or two dropped on them from 4' up every second, with 2000 degree steel in between, developing 100,000 psi pressures in the cavities...but the welds hold up really well. Sometimes we weld a little here and there; sometimes we have the whole die scarfed out and "flood-welded" with a hard welding alloy. Lots of forge shops do this, but I don't know if plastic molders do. It could be that the welding compounds are too hard to drill easily for all the ejector pin and sprue holes that plastic molding dies have.
Doom a green Ironhide recolor? Bah! Doom must have his own mold.
Hey, if this line lasts long enough, maybe we'll get a Fantastic Four - to - Fantasticar vehicle combiner. That would be cool. Of course, we've already got a Human Torch.