My preference may be for MIJ, over MIA in the mid to high end, but i absolutely cannot deny Mexico are turning out some tremendous guitars for the money, and i think they're very much starting to encroach on the upper levels of fenders midrange stuff..
Wonder will they do a drastic restructure when they realise people who could be buying MIA stuff are buying MIM stuff.. They couldn't really do what they did with Japan and make them for home market only because Mexico isn't as geographically isolated, or, potentially, as high end a market.
The pawn shop series is a great, if hit and miss. And i only say that because instead of sitting down and thinking these guitars out, it's almost like they're pulling random features out of bowls and running with them. That strat/tele mashup is really nice, but for every 1 like that there's mebbe 3 or 4 other models that don't work.