More Thunder

[mr. x]

i know i may be beating a dead horse, but has anyone done a non-biased comparison of the TTT thunder and the j-t thingy ? i now see the j-t silver thunder on ebay for 50 bucks no reserve. and a whole lot of 80 dollar brown j-t-schyllings. i remember a few posts from tesla, but alas those posts seem to have vanished. fyi, packs of six thunders from schylling wholesale, pretty cheap.

[zzrobot]

is there any difference between the Joy Toy Thunder and the Schilling Thunder, i assume they are the same, if not , thats another set of Thunder robots this anal collector will need to get...........

[David Kirk]

I saw the silver JT down in NY last week. It was under a hundred dollars. I had paid $300 dollars for my Tom Toys silver thunder, and though I thought the paint job on it was pretty crummy for three hundred, now that I've seen the JT, I'm extra glad I have it. When the JT goes down to twenty or thirty bucks, I'll buy a few for experiments, but for a toy for my robot shelves, I won't bother with it. It's a cheapy and it has that damn smell. It isn't nearly as nice for instance as a Rocket USA R1.

[David Kirk]

Sorry, I realized I didn't explain why the JT was poor. The paint was chipped and uneven and generally bad looking. That could vary from toy to toy, but the fit on the metal pieces on the face was bad too. The eye and mouth tabs are sloppy and show in a twisted ugly way. The mouth is poorly sculpted. The arm plastic was hard and an ugly gray color. There may be other stuff, but that's all I remember. On the positive side, the legs and feet were pretty nice.

[Alain]

Sorry, I realized I didn't explain why the JT was poor. The paint was chipped and uneven and generally bad looking. That could vary from toy to toy, but the fit on the metal pieces on the face was bad too. The eye and mouth tabs are sloppy and show in a twisted ugly way. The mouth is poorly sculpted. The arm plastic was hard and an ugly gray color. There may be other stuff, but that's all I remember.

You're right, there are more bad points, in fact IMHO there are ONLY BAD POINTS about the so-called JT Thunder. I actually bought one to see what the fuss was all about, big mistake and big regret.

I won't waste my time doing a comparison.

There's a page on TTT's INSIDER listing all the obvious external differences, it seems a lot of people have been hoodwinked into believing that the TTT and JT Thunders are the same! (Blind people?)

On a point of interest, and unverified, apparently the person behind JT is just a middleman with a "first dibs" agreement with the factory, hard selling to any and all dealers and individuals willing to pay his $55 per piece price. The original $160 retail price was a big farce. The Schylling deal finally exposed this scam, but I wonder how many people got suckered?

[robothut]

Actualy the JT Thunder has a few good points. As the cost comes down it becomes a great robot experiment on and make new versions. Also the gear ratio in the JT thunder is better than the TTT in that it has more power, it does run slower but at leat it can lift it heavy solid pastic arms and the gun flashhing happens at just the right speed to realy give a nice effect. The arms being solid plastic make it real easy to repaint them as well. The biggest problem with the mechanics is the bell cranks that make the legs move does not have enough bend in them to realy make the legs move a good stride, so they are poor walkers. But as the price falls on them its still and excelent robot to experiment with.

[mr. x]

john, so you are pretty convinced that the two repro's are from different sources ? i guess i will have to break down and buy the schylling thunder, which i guess is the j-t factory. i would really like to see that thunder in copper, and also candy apple red. i'm hopeful you will come up with some always interesting variations.