Good question..I'm leaning towards a new product.
This (the subject of reissues) is something that has been a topic of conversation for a while...to me, if the original and the reissue are released YEARS apart, that reissue should probably be a new product, especially in this case as there are new contents and the packaging seems to be different, albeit slightly.
Regarding reissues in general, I know that people think that if two parts look identical, they're the same part, but that's not really true.
As a hypothetical example, handed a single part with no other context, someone might not be able to tell the difference between an original G1 Optimus Prime roller tire from 1984 and one from a recent 2012 reissue because they look physically identical (they may have the same dimensions, weight, color, type of plastic, sprue marks, etc.) but they're certainly not the same part and shouldn't be shared between the two products. Now, with this example, the time between releases spans decades and toylines, but what about stuff that like the MP reissues?
Like I said, it might boil down to time between releases and production runs...for Convoy, it's unlikely that the contents of these items are part of the same production run, with half of them released on schedule and the rest stored in a warehouse somewhere on the off-chance they'll be released years down the road, right?. I'm assuming that there was a second production run for the reissue.
I have no doubt that some reissues are planned exactly as I described above, with a portion of parts held back for a planned "near-future refresh", but for something like this, with the reissue coming out years later, I'm not so sure.
So, what do we consider a significant amount of time between releases is? Months? Years? Should separate products be tied to production runs no matter the time gap?
Like I alluded to earlier, this stuff is trickier than it looks, so feel free to opine.
MIKE
engledogg
