Third Party Transformers Thread

[Toph]

I think there was another one announced. However, nothing's been said about it for a long time, and these third party companies are notorious for announcing figures and never going through with them, for whatever reasons.
I remember Fans Project once announced a combiner based on plistocene animals, showed off inticate concept art, and then never said anything about it ever again.

Hedgemon does tempt me. Dispite thinking Gun Megatrons are the stupidest idea in the franchise. There is something appealing about him to me.

[Shockprowl]

Well. Hegemon has taken a back-seat for now. My C.O.C.K. earned me more than I expected. So I've decided to go for it, and get me a Not Devastator!!!

Freakin' dream come true, baby!

I've gone for the Maketoys version. Yes indeed! Not the larger TFC version! See, size isn't always important to me. The bulk of TFC Hercules was appealing, but he's 100 squids more than Maketoys, and Maketoys is almost as big! But overall, Maketoys just looks the superior of the two. I prefer the styling of Maketoys- individual robots and combined.

I'm so excited I may just climax.

[Dezzeh]

Green or yellow? Not-Devvy that is, not your err... climax.

[Shockprowl]

Green, baby! G1 green.


The Not-Dev. My climax was normal coloured. Green climax? Wow that would mean it was...






RADIOACTIVE!!!! Radioactive climax! Just imagine the possibilities!

[kayevcee]

Jul 19, 2012 19:52:37 GMT Shockprowl said:

Radioactive climax! Just imagine the possibilities!

Such as? I think Betty Ross' life story would serve as a lesson in why that's not a good thing.

-Nick

[glaug]

There's a Spider-man story where that kills Mary Jane. :/

As for Not-Devastators, I have to say, the thing that stopped me trying to snag Hercules on ebay for 200-odd quid the other day was mostly the fact that he'd be so much taller than my Fansproject Bruticus! If Green Giant is allowed at Auto Assembly, I will be looking for one.

[Jaymz]

Yeah, I got Hercules and it's too big, would much prefer Giant, but don't want to pay out again.

[The Huff]

Just to confirm - will there be third party toys allowed at AA this year?

I do hope so.

[Shockprowl]

Jul 19, 2012 21:25:10 GMT kayevcee said:

Jul 19, 2012 19:52:37 GMT Shockprowl said:

Radioactive climax! Just imagine the possibilities!

Such as? I think Betty Ross' life story would serve as a lesson in why that's not a good thing.

-Nick

I was think more along the lines of an army of radioactive killer children, assisting me in taking over the world, but you've a good point. One mustn't forget, that with great responsibility come great power. I just made that saying up, by the way. I never seen it or heard it anywhere else before.

[Shockprowl]

I'm so excited about Giant I may... what's beyond climaxing?

[The Doctor]

Jul 20, 2012 10:27:03 GMT The Huff said:

Just to confirm - will there be third party toys allowed at AA this year?

I do hope so.

Yes and no. There was a press release, but it made little sense to me.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

Yes, there will be third party toys allowed. However, some of the ones that are quite blatant infringements of Hasbro's ip will not be allowed on sale.

Andy

[Shockprowl]

That seems very fair.

[The Huff]

Right. I think.

So do you think that means straight knock-offs (ie Funtastic Wheelie & those MP IGear Strike Planes that are practically the same molds) are not allowed whereas original toys that don't have a Hasbro equivalent mold-wise like the Igear Minibots will be allowed at the 'con?

Or is it a little more blurry or supposed to be kept low key?

Personally I quite like some of this stuff.

[The Doctor]

Personally, I think the policy is utter nonsense. Have a blanket ban or not. A half-way house is too confusing and ripe for sillyness on the day.

-Ralph

[glaug]

According to the AA statement:

all igear products

all KO Toys products

all products from Impossible Toys

unofficial versions of “world’s smallest” Transformers eg. WST Dinobots and similar toys

produced by Justitoys

unofficial replica Transformers (ie – direct or slightly tweaked copies which purport to be
originals)

unofficial duplicates of Transformers or Knock-offs of existing toys, either reproduced at their original, reduced or over-sized

unofficial replica Transformers boxes (which can be used to trick attendees)

So, off the top of my head, we're still allowed:

Maketoys
Fansproject
Junkion Blacksmith
Crazydevy
Whoever makes Hegemon
Perfect Effect
Beelzeboss
BTS

At least.

iGear mostly made modified KOs of Has/Tak stuff until recently so that's fair enough, but I'm curious as to why Impossible Toys are on the shitlist. As far as I know all of their products are entirely original sculpts. Shame about Rager, Hench, etc, as they seem like nice, original sculpts, and are small/cheap enough that I'd have been interested in grabbing them on the day but I'm not exactly shedding tears over here.

[Toph]

I think they're getting at exact or altered knockoffs, such as iGear's MP coneheads, and "Classics Updates" such as Herculese, Crossfire Bruticus, and Giant being banned.
Things that follow original designs (Such as this Heartmaster thing FP is doing), and accessory sets are allowed.

Basically, anything that infringes on Hasbro's IP and Likeness copyrights is out, be it a completely new tool (Hedgemon), or a not-so-clever-knock off (Not-Thrust).

Don't know where that leaves products that need a Hasbro toy, like City Commander (A glorified accessory set), and new designs that only vaguely look like the hasbro character it homages (FP Insecticons)

[legios]

Jul 22, 2012 10:15:30 GMT glaug said:

Shame about Rager, Hench, etc, as they seem like nice, original sculpts, and are small/cheap enough that I'd have been interested in grabbing them on the day but I'm not exactly shedding tears over here.

I would suspect that it is their strong likeness to the Sunbow animation models, which I believe are also Hasbro/Tomy IP, which takes them across the suspect line.

I can see the arguement for just making it a blanket ban - it would certainly be a lot easier to police, but I guess that the AA committee are trying to split the difference in terms of how they manage the crackdown.

Karl

[glaug]

Jul 23, 2012 18:27:51 GMT Toph said:

I think they're getting at exact or altered knockoffs, such as iGear's MP coneheads, and "Classics Updates" such as Herculese, Crossfire Bruticus, and Giant being banned.
Things that follow original designs (Such as this Heartmaster thing FP is doing), and accessory sets are allowed.

Basically, anything that infringes on Hasbro's IP and Likeness copyrights is out, be it a completely new tool (Hedgemon), or a not-so-clever-knock off (Not-Thrust).

Don't know where that leaves products that need a Hasbro toy, like City Commander (A glorified accessory set), and new designs that only vaguely look like the hasbro character it homages (FP Insecticons)

Not quite... As far as I can tell, the Fansproject stuff is all still in, be it City Commander or even the Bruticus guys, who are fairly obviously meant to be Swindle and Blastoff, as are the Not-Devastators. There's just a blanket ban on all iGear products because of apparently ongoing legal action, if the statement is to be believed.

Rager/Hench/etc only suffer for being iGear products... if they were made by another company, they would be okay for sale, according to the statement we have.

[The Doctor]

Every third party toy is an infringement of IP, whether it is image rights, character rights or the design of toys. It would make more sense for any convention to either let them all in or ban them all.

-Ralph

[Toph]

Jul 24, 2012 17:00:55 GMT The Doctor said:

Every third party toy is an infringement of IP, whether it is image rights, character rights or the design of toys. It would make more sense for any convention to either let them all in or ban them all.

-Ralph

I completely agree with this.
When Botcon banned them this year, so many people bitched and whined about it. Even a close friend of mine was saying how unair it was not to allow the things that don't directly infringe (In his argument, City Commander and Battle Tanker fell into this, dispite stealing hasbro's likenesses).
Basically, trying to set up guidelines of what is and what is not allowable is just rediculous.
It really does have to be all or nothing, because of that. If you allow one thing in over another, then you're going to start all kinds of trouble over why one thing is allowable, but not other things. On top of that you're going to have to write out and research a list of every piece of "3rd Party" product out there.

I honestly think the only thing that would be okay to sell at a hasbro related event should be accessories, be they armor or weapons. And those because they are completely worthless without an actual official hasbro product. And even that is just personal opinion.

Anyone that tries to sort out any kind of list of what's okay, and what isn't is just creating a massive headache.
Either way, I hope they do a better job of enforcing the ban than FP/Hasbro did at Botcon. That was a joke. People were handing out fliers for upcoming third party product, showing off things like Yellow Giant, and selling if you knew how to find them. And when patrons and volunteers alike reported these incidences, FP wouldn't even bat an eye at it.
Basically it's going to be out of control next year.

[The Huff]

In a way, is there such a big difference between selling the third party products and toys that aren't Transformers at all - like He Man or Gobot toys - neither are made by Hasbro.
The event is a Transformers event isn't it? Not a Hasbro event. So shouldn't it be anything Transformers related that's allowed to be sold? From the third party inspired stuff to sketches by artists or signed photos by voice actors - could they be seen as infringements on Hasbros properties?

[Jaymz]

I think the main problem is that if they ever want Hasbro's participation in the convention then they need to keep them happy.

[Toph]

Jul 24, 2012 20:54:23 GMT The Huff said:

In a way, is there such a big difference between selling the third party products and toys that aren't Transformers at all - like He Man or Gobot toys - neither are made by Hasbro.
The event is a Transformers event isn't it? Not a Hasbro event. So shouldn't it be anything Transformers related that's allowed to be sold? From the third party inspired stuff to sketches by artists or signed photos by voice actors - could they be seen as infringements on Hasbros properties?

Actually yeah, there is a difference. While Hasbro sees no money through the sale of he-man, TMNT, or even gobots (Which hasbro now owns), at a TF convention, they also don't see any money from sales of any second hand older generation TF, either.
When it comes to the third party items, ALL third party companies are infringing on hasbro's personal copyrights. Any time iGear sells a "faith leader" that is hurting Hasbro's net profits and worth, hurting the franchise as a whole, and there is another unapproved, unofficial, and potentially dangerous toy using Optimus Prime's likeness on the market.
It's one thing for a dealer to sell a Heman toy made by a different company. It's quite another for a dealer to sell an Optimus Prime toy made by another company without Hasbro's expressed permission to use that likeness.
I wouldn't hesitate to say that ALL "third party" items are outright theft (Save for maybe the weapons sets only). I've never seen an argument to protect them that has any kind of validity or strength behind it.
It's really that simple. They're breaking international laws when they make a toy that's modeled after an existing hasbro character.
Hasbro's done a lot of turning the other cheek, which has only encouraged the worst of the lot to get even more blatant. *cough*igear*cough*

As for the fan art, yeah, they're within their rights to crack down on that too. And they tried to this past botcon, and that blew up in their face. I'd say fanart is a different beast, since it's fanart, unlike "third Party companies" isn't profiteering, but is more of an expression of love for the franchise in it's purest form.
Not to mention it keeps older elements of the franchise alive during down periods. (It kept G1 alive through BW, and RiD. It's keeping BW and Animated alive while we have to now suffer through this endless cycle of Geewun Reimagined).
A ban on fanart would actually hurt Hasbro, by alienating it's fans. A ban on Third Parties will literally only strengthen hasbro.

[shadowynne]

"I wouldn't hesitate to say that ALL "third party" items are outright theft (Save for maybe the weapons sets only)."

does this include completely original characters? like the new fp steelcore? as far as i know the only similarity he has is the transforming gimmick which isnt hastak's ip.

i do otherwise agree with you though, as much as i love some 3rd party products i think the only way it can fairly be managed is an all or nothing ban.

[The Huff]

First off, I'm not defending the third Party toys here - just looking at a broader picture.
For instance, taking the 'Third Party' items I've purchased in the last year or so:
Igear Huffer, Seaspray & an Arcee (by I think Impossible Toys). All are cartoon accurate versions of these three characters. Hasbro have no equivalents of these - so (from me) they haven't lost any money. If Hasbro ever do make these characters in this style (which I doubt they will) I'm sure the fans would still buy them anyway.
It's always said that as a franchise, the range makes most of it's profit from children anyway so is the small minority buying third party items really taking much of a percentage of this away?
As I said - not saying I think it's 100% right, but just looking at the other side of the argument.

[Shockprowl]

Jul 26, 2012 22:33:12 GMT The Huff said:

It's always said that as a franchise, the range makes most of it's profit from children anyway so is the small minority buying third party items really taking much of a percentage of this away?

This is a really good point.

[Shockprowl]

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k2FGV08HrqI



Check out this video review of the upcomming Hexatron Sixshot third party figure. Looks pretty awesome to me!

[Toph]

Jul 26, 2012 21:56:15 GMT shadowynne said:

"I wouldn't hesitate to say that ALL "third party" items are outright theft (Save for maybe the weapons sets only)."

does this include completely original characters? like the new fp steelcore? as far as i know the only similarity he has is the transforming gimmick which isnt hastak's ip.

i do otherwise agree with you though, as much as i love some 3rd party products i think the only way it can fairly be managed is an all or nothing ban.

That's a very fair point, and one I'm honestly fairly passionate about!
I definately do not think that the third parties producing their own concepts, and their own original characters is infringing on hasbro or takara in any way.
Its just they do it so rarely that I often forget about it.

I wish they did it more often, as there are some increadibly talented people working for many of these groups.
I've been increadibly dissapointed that FP never materialized that iceage combiner. We need a lot more of that, IMO.
I don't care for the heartmaster much, from what I've seen of it, but I do feel it's a step in the right direction.

[Jaymz]

Alan posted up a stop motion video of TFC Hercules [Not-Devastator], which is worth a looksee:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=noMJXt7OdxE