Repaint

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A repaint is a toy that was created entirely from a mold that had been previously made available in a different set of colors. This toy has been re-released in new colors to maximize sales potential from that mold. Since molds can be expensive to create, this is often seen as a comparatively inexpensive way for a toy company to make many different toys available in a cost-effective manner. Repaints differ from redecos in that repaints do not alter the actual placement of paint applications while redecos do.

Frequently, repaints are used to make more than one character out of a single mold. This happens frequently in the Transformers toyline, amongst others, even going back to Generation One. For example, the original Red Alert was a repaint of the Sideswipe mold. The repaint process has only grown in recent years, with many repaints representing a power-up for a character (e.g., Jetfire into "Powerlinx Jetfire" in Transformers: Armada).