Armor part sprues?

[Spiff-O-Matic]

http://www.shmax.com/products?q_filters_toyline=4990

How do we go about adding the small armor pieces that come on the sprue in these? Do we make up names for the pieces that aren't something obvious like a sword? Or do we just picture the sprue as-is out of the package and call it "Accessory Sprue"?

[engledogg]

I would create a part record for each of the pieces, naming them as best you can (perhaps something like "Armor Piece 1", "Armor Piece 2", etc.), then, if you want, create a gestalt-part called "Accessory Sprue", with a photo of the intact sprue. 

My rationale for this is that if someone got toy this secondhand, I'm wagering they will get the toy with parts detached, not an intact sprue, with the residual sprue being long thrown away by the first owner.

MIKE
engledogg

[Spiff-O-Matic]

Thanks, I'm doing that now. What part type is a sprue though? I'm just assign it as "unknowns" for now.

[engledogg]

I made a "sprue" form type...wasn't sure where to put it, but the number for it is 4671.

MIKE
engledogg

[Tripredacus]

If you are going to do that, then it would be added to guys like this too?
http://www.shmax.com/product_details/920/thrust

[Spiff-O-Matic]

Thanks Dogg! I'll need to add this to many items I've done, like Warbotron X-Ray (mini Shockwave) and the DMK model kits.

[engledogg]

Thinking about this a bit more...do people care about sprues ? I can sort of see it for the RID Mini-Cons in that the sprues have an interesting shape, but even then...do we really need to include them as a part record?

Going with my reasoning from earlier, a person buying this toy to actually play with it (which I would assume would make up the majority of purchasers) will remove those parts from the sprue, with a significantly smaller number of people planning on never opening the toy or at least keeping the sprue intact...so, which group do we appease?  Can we do both?  We absolutely should have part records for each of the parts on the sprue, but what about the sprue itself?  As most parts were likely attached to sprues at some point or another, do we care if those sprues end up in the packaging or on the factory floor?

I will say that it is nice to have a photo of the intact sprue with nothing removed as it is cool to see the parts in their "original form", but to create a bunch of sprue records might be a bit unnecessary.  Could we just show a photo somewhere else in the record instead of creating part records?  And if so, where do we put the photo?

As trips mentioned above, all the early G1 toys had the missiles, rockets, etc. on sprues...and the chances of getting photos of intact sprues, especially for older products like G1, are slim-to-none as I'm afraid there just aren't that many out there.  There may be a bunch of used ones (but then again, maybe not), but a photo of a "used" sprue is sort of useless...sort of like an applied label sheet.

Maybe we better think about this a bit more before anyone goes crazy adding sprues to anything else.

MIKE
engledogg

[Spiff-O-Matic]

I like to go crazy adding sprues! I'm thinking of only adding them to things that come as "kits", like the mini-cons, Warbotron X-Ray and the DMK model kits.

[KidTDragon]

I'm falling on the side of: no individual sprue entries, optional on-sprue pics in the records of the parts that come on the sprue.

[Spiff-O-Matic]

So you mean no pics of the individual pieces once they're off the sprue?

[engledogg]

We absolutely want photos of the individual pieces once they're off the sprue.

As far as what KTD suggested, that would be fine, but I'm not that comfortable tossing up the same photo of an intact sprue on every record of every part that came off that sprue.  It would be okay to do that with sprues that have four or five parts, but can't some sprues hold 50 to 100 parts?  So wouldn't that mean 49 to 99 additional identical photos of the sprue (if all the parts were unique)?  That certainly seems like a lot of redundancy and a bunch of unnecessary space eaten up by all those photos.

MIKE
engledogg

[Tripredacus]

So you mean no pics of the individual pieces once they're off the sprue?

No I think that still applies, given the reasoning that if someone were to get an item second hand, it likely won't be on the sprue still. Look at the G1 example.

Isn't there a way to add secondary pictures for an item? I would say the pic of the full sprue would be good as a pic like that.

[Spiff-O-Matic]

Ah, I understand what he meant now. I agree with Dogg, it could get really redundant to have the sprue pic in addition to each individual piece off the sprue. So many duplicates. It seems simple having a sprue part is the easiest solution, and I don't see the downfall to doing it that way.

[engledogg]

Isn't there a way to add secondary pictures for an item? I would say the pic of the full sprue would be good as a pic like that.

Sure, we can put up as many photos as we want for a part or an product record.  I guess what needs to be looked at is, if we don't go the "sprue gets a part record" route, is where the photo of the intact sprue would go.  At the moment , there are three options.  We could assign a photo to either:

1.  Product Record (clunky as we would have a photo(s) of sprue(s) just hanging out with the front and back photos of a sealed product)
2.  Figure Record (also clunky as we would have a a photo(s) of sprue(s) just hanging out in the gallery of a related figure)
3.  Each part record found on the sprue (very clunky as we would have a ton of redundancy/repetition with the same photo showing up on every part record found on the sprue)

If there was a way to assign a single photo to multiple parts, that would be ideal, but as far as I know, we can't currently do that. 

So, considering the above, perhaps the best option is to go with each intact sprue getting a "gestalt-part" record as that would only require one photo and that photo wouldn't be awkwardly-placed or repetitive. 

When things get tagged with the "gestalt" label, they appear normally in the database (you can see them when viewing the database and show up as part of the contents of a product) but don't count as a "real" figure or part.  For example, there are five figures in the Superion gift set, but we include Superion as a "gestalt-figure" in there so people can see the combined form, and since he's a "gestalt-figure", he doesn't count as a sixth figure. 

As spliff mentioned earlier, he said something about adding them only to things that come in "kits".  That's an idea...ZOIDS are nothing but sprues when you first open em up (and a couple loose motor/battery pack parts not part of any sprues).  Perhaps maybe that's the initial tactic we should take?  Do this kind of stuff with model kit type things only?  I don't know...

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

So, considering the above, perhaps the best option is to go with each intact sprue getting a "gestalt-part" record as that would only require one photo and that photo wouldn't be awkwardly-placed or repetitive. 

It seems simple having a sprue part is the easiest solution, and I don't see the downfall to doing it that way.

Agreed. This will all make more sense in shmax 2.0 (I am working towards it daily, now), when we'll have a beefier mold system, toy templates, all that kind of stuff. In the meantime, handling this kind of thing the way Engledogg and Spliffdizzle advise will make porting the data to the new system later, easier.