See, in my mind, the more direct musical equivalent of what I’m talking about would be cover/tribute bands. Whole bands assembled with set lists purely dedicated to just playing particular songs by a particular artist that people want to hear. Guys who don’t play their own music, who are paid to show up because people want to hear the Beatles, or whatever.
The stuff you do, the fan-stuff inserted into your music, well that’s no different than any other nods or references that any creator puts into their work. Del the Funky Homosapien, my favorite rapper of all time, has multiple songs where he drops references to King of Fighters and other video games, or even whole tracks dedicated to such a thing. But they’re there as elements of who he is, and what he likes and wants to make music about. And your stuff is similar, the fact that it’s ‘unofficial better alternative soundtrack to Mass Effect’ or something isn’t a selling point, it just starts based on Mass Effect because that’s something you enjoy as part of your life, but is your own thing, own creation through-and-through. It’s clearly a ‘fan’ thing, and not a cynical grab at what you know people are desperate to get their hands on, not caring who it actually comes from (You made a whole concept album based around an *imaginary* John Capenter movie! That’s brilliant! And the album itself is friggin’ magical to listen to, btw. I swear I’ll get off my ass and buy your other shit off bandcamp or whatever here soon. I’m a terrible friend.)
Can't you ask yourself the same question of every Transformer, or every licensed toy? "Do I want this Death's Head toy because it's objectively a great toy, or do I just want it because it looks like Death's Head?" What does a corporations stamp of approval have to do with it?
That is the difference, though, in that the official toy knows exactly why it exists, and I know why it exists, and why I want it. Marvel let Hasbro make a Death’s Head toy so I could buy it. Kickass, I like Death’s Head specifically *because* of Marvel (and to an odd tangential extent, Hasbro too), I’ll let them kick a toy of him my way. But some random dickhead with a Chinese factory contact and a handful of dudes trying to start something up? I get cynical. “You have nothing to do with why I care about that character, you just saw an opportunity to make a buck off of my interests in something that somebody else cultivated. Try harder.”
Like, in my fanart example: Earlier this year at Fanime I met Sarah Stone in the artist alley, and one of the things I bought from her was a lil’ print of Chromia, because fuck yeah, I didn’t even give a shit about Chromia until Stone drew her for TF: Windblade earlier this year. I can happily buy TF art from Sarah Stone because I absolutely know that I love TFs as drawn by her, specifically. (Of course, I also just love her art in general, as evidenced by the fact that I bought her artbook there as well.) Anyone else? I would want to buy something that was ‘theirs’, not just something that happened to be a picture of something I liked.
But I'm digressing--the main point I'm trying to get at is, as a collector and a dude who likes toys, the two things that matter most to me are:
1) Is the toy itself cool enough to justify spending the current market price of the figure?
2) Is the toy of a character that I even remotely care about (or part of a franchise I care about)?
3) Is the toy easy to get?
And here's the thing, in a lot of ways, 2 is going to trump 1 every time. You could have the absolute objectively coolest Kamen Rider OOO figure (for example) that is the best toy ever made, period, by any company, but because I don't care about Kamen Rider or OOO specifically, I will have pretty much zero interest in it. Likewise, these guys could make objectively great 6" figures with cool designs and interchangable shit, and if they're at a good enough price (read: a price that is WELL below most third-party TF style shit) and I MIGHT be interested on a pure toy-design style level. BUT, they are no longer characters or part of a franchise that I care about, and consequently suffer from that. You could argue that I'm shallow in that regard, but I could just as easily argue that I'm frugal.
And this is one point where we strongly diverge. I *will* buy some random fuckoff toy of something I don’t know if it looks cool enough. I saw
this thing in a magazine and thought it looked incredibly badass, so I tracked it down and bought it. I bought Mugenbine toys for the same reason (I don’t know if those things even have context). Hell, going to your Kamen Rider example above, several years ago when I was just getting into the franchise, I’d only seen W and I think some of Den-O. But when I was at a convention and buying my first Figuarts in the line? Yeah, I bought W, but I also bought
Dark Kiva because look at him, he looks badass! I still haven’t watched Kiva the show (and from what I hear, it’s not very good), but I still wanted that excellent figure of a kickass design because…it was an excellent figure of a kickass design.
It’s just how I am. I am that guy who will grab a random manga off the shelf at Barnes & Nobles and plunk down ten bucks to check it out because the art looks nice. If you don’t randomly try out new things, then how would you get into new things?
And here's the thing, you could turn this around in a thousand different ways, and almost all of them revolve around those three things. I got into Christopher Nolan as a director because I loved Batman Begins--he was the director of a new Batman movie that looked objectively great, was cheap to see, and easy to find. Likewise, once he moved away from point 2 (franchise I like) and did Inception, I could see that movie for about the same price I paid to see his Batman work, and it was just as readily available. No harm, no foul. I was able to enjoy his "original" work just as easily as his "licensed" work, because I knew it would be quality and I knew it would be cheap and easy to get.
Now, okay, let's move it to comics. I haven't read much of Costa's Cobra run, but I know Dom likes it enough to continually push it and I did like what I did read. So, for the sake of argument, let's say I really like it. Now, I know (because Dom is a big fan) that Costa has done some original, non-licensed comic work. I'm not particularly interested in this because I didn't really see anything from it to excite me. Despite this, I'm sure it's equally as available as his Cobra stuff (which is actually semi-difficult to get just on its own) and can't be that expensive, because the comics industry is pretty standardised. (I can't think of a publisher with the balls to charge more than $20 for a standard 6 issue trade.) So the only roadblock for me is that he's working on a franchise that I don't care about, in this case, an original property. It's harder to get me to separate myself from my money based on the idea of just the people involved.
So why are comics so different from movies? You have no problem checking out an ‘original’ film from Nolan, but an ‘original’ comic from Costa is harder to pull the trigger on? Why?
I can do this with writers, by the way. I’m reading Chris Yost’s New Warriors and his Amazing X-Men, despite not having overt particular affection for either franchise, because Chris Yost is a kickass writer and I want words by him on my eyeballs.
But on the other, previously mentioned side, I started buying Ms. Marvel and Inhuman, despite not giving any fucks about Captain/Ms. Marvel or the Inhumans as franchises, despite being completely unfamiliar with the creative teams behind them, simply because the books themselves and what they were doing looked neat.
I *will* check things out just because they look cool. You shouldn’t have to dress it up like something I already like to make me care about it, that’s overly narrow.
It’s like, it’s one reason I *hated* all the ‘guest characters’ that got added to Soulcalibur in the later installments. SC, you don’t need to add Star Wars and God of War and Assassin’s Creed to make me care about you, I *already* thought you were cool because of *you*. And the people who ARE buying the game JUST to play as Ezio or whatever, they’re only doing it for that, and not because they actually have an appreciation for the game as it is.
Now, to bring it all back around, let's say that these guys were actually doing 100% original designs for these figures, okay? Now to get me the least bit interested, they're going to have to be a) relatively cheap (at 6" scale I'd have to say easily no more than $20 each TOPS) AND be readily available--and I don't mean "You can get it on BBTS" available, I mean, "buy it at Wal-mart" available. Because at BBTS, I have to actually actively go out of my way to find and buy these things. I can't walk into Wal-Mart with $20 and say, "I'm leaving with a toy," and leave with Warbot Defender. But I can do that with a TF, or Marvel Universe, or a GI Joe (if this is 2008! *rimshot*).
Now, mind you, just based on the pedigree, if these were entirely original designs and were sold at that sub-$20 price point, even on BBTS or Amazon or something, I would actually probably pull the trigger on one just to try out the line. Really, if post-Kickstarter prices for these aren't around $35-40, I definitely won't be buying any, TF lookalikes or not. (I say "post-Kickstarter" because any Kickstarter-reward-level figures for any project like this will almost always be $10-15 above what a "production" level figure's pricing would be. That's just how these things go.)
It’s another fundamental difference, I guess. I buy shit online *all the time*, so this wouldn’t be a significant roadblock to me. As I said, when the news first hit and we were getting early looks at some of their original designs, I couldn’t wait for these things. The price and availability of them didn’t perturb me, if you want it, you can get it. But now I feel alienated. “These aren’t for people who just want cool toys, these are specifically for people so desperate to have a Landmine on their shelf that they don’t actually care what it is or where it comes from.” I mean, jeez, for *Landmine*? I don’t need that, and I especially don’t need it from a company that claims to be wanting to make their own unique, imaginative, interesting toys, then just goes and makes plastic lumps to Look Like Dudes on Shelves for people that are *really* desperate for some Masterforce action, apparently.
Side Note: Marauder Inc. is a company that started off doing original resin weapons primarily for GI Joes. You can't really give them any shit for this since they were only ever making weapons, and they worked for pretty much any 1/18th scale figure--GI Joe, Star Wars, Marvel Universe, whatever. Recently they had a Kickstarter where they're starting to make full-on figures--sound a little familiar? Of course, they aren't making "not-Firefly" and "not-Destro" because Hasbro won't do them (or, I guess the equivalent characters for GI Joe would be something like "not-Overlord" and "not-Robo-Joe"), they're just doing some generic-looking dudes with facemasks and camo and shit. But the figures look good! But they're really expensive. So I didn't get one. Also, they're only on their website. So, yeah. There's that.
This leads me to another interesting side-note that has ALWAYS bugged me about this third-party world we find ourselves in: Why the fuck do all these guys do Transformers? Like, there’s no one making $60 super-detailed fake GI Joes (are there?). I never see anyone on /toy/ posting anything about, like, off-brand Star Wars alternatives or fake Back to the Future action figures or stupid high-end Voltrons or what have you (actually, why the fuck has no Third Party company made some hugeass amazing transforming Dino Megazord?). Is it just because TF is the only franchise that’s proven that the fandom is desperate enough to create a market for this, so it’s the only thing these opportunists feel is ‘safe’ to jump on? No other franchise has had the absolute explosion in available unofficial product occur, and is it just because that market exists and now everyone and their dog wants to make a not-Devastator to get a slice of that pie?
Last thing: Have you considered that these guys are starting with some TF crank designs so they can raise some initial capital, before venturing off to do different stuff? I mean, they're obviously gearing up for some big-level stuff, I assume they intend to stick around with a little longevity, and there's only--what, a dozen Pretenders they can do, if they do the Classic Pretenders, plus Metalhawk and Grand? (Were there any UK-exclusive Pretenders?) If they want the company to last more than a year, they're going to need to do original work to survive, and it'll be interesting to see how many people stick with them. (My dollar will rely entirely on how much I like the initial offerings, assuming I buy any, and on how cool the "new" designs really are.)
That doesn’t mean you have to be shady and opportunistic on other people’s interests about it. 4 Horsemen does their own toylines (which look amazing and I can’t believe I haven’t bought any. I should have gotten in on the Kickstarter for those Ravens), but they also do DC and MOTU stuff for Mattel to help pay the bills. But they’re contracted for that work, it’s licensed, it’s legit, it’s not just them squirting out their own He-Men because they know it’ll turn a tidy profit with little effort.
And if the masses, the ‘fans’ are only going to buy things from a new company if they look like otherwise-unrelated things that they happen to like, then that’s a problem with that market. Don’t make toys for those jerks that don’t care who you are, make toys for people who will legitimately appreciate your work, regardless of if it’s pandering to their interests.
Bringing this all the way back to your initial example: Would you really want people listening to your music just because you mention Transformers and the Dragonzord? Or do you want them listenting because they like Onslaught Six and Onslaught Six’s music in general? The references, the homages, those are there as a facet of you, of who you are and what you like and what influences you when you make music, it’s not there as a cheap selling point for people that don’t care about the actual music.
And looking like Landmine shouldn’t be the primary selling point for an ‘original’ toy being designed by a new company specifically claiming to want to do new imaginative things.