Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company?

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JediTricks
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by JediTricks »

This is such spurious nonsense, you are trying to whip people up into a frenzy over some goofy fantasy in your head because you have an incomplete understanding of things. What you're posting is possibly libelous too, I am considering cutting bait on this thread altogether to avoid that trouble, but I'm trying to keep it from getting to that point.

And PS - this isn't some anonymous company run by some stranger, it's RIK FUCKING ALVAREZ, we all know him from his time at Hasbro under Archer. Give me a break.
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Almighty Unicron
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Almighty Unicron »

JediTricks wrote:This is such spurious nonsense, you are trying to whip people up into a frenzy over some goofy fantasy in your head because you have an incomplete understanding of things. What you're posting is possibly libelous too, I am considering cutting bait on this thread altogether to avoid that trouble, but I'm trying to keep it from getting to that point.

And PS - this isn't some anonymous company run by some stranger, it's RIK FUCKING ALVAREZ, we all know him from his time at Hasbro under Archer. Give me a break.
Maybe I should forward this thread to Rik just to shut Tigs up for a bit.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Tigermegatron »

JediTricks wrote:This is such spurious nonsense, you are trying to whip people up into a frenzy over some goofy fantasy in your head because you have an incomplete understanding of things. What you're posting is possibly libelous too, I am considering cutting bait on this thread altogether to avoid that trouble, but I'm trying to keep it from getting to that point.
Sorry, It was never my intent to be disruptive in this thread. I was just stating my honest opinion on the matter.

I'm done replying in this thread.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by BWprowl »

Okay, so more pictures have been coming out, you can see what they've got here, and...yeah, turns out they're pretty blatantly just making unlicensed 'homages' to the G1 Pretenders. So yeah, I put a recall on my former enthusiasm, these guys can eat all the dicks in the world.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Tigermegatron »

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transform ... st-14.html

These guys running this 3rd party PWTT company are asking fans to help fund this project through kick starter donations funds .

I have yet to see any fans for fans TF kickstarter programs reach it's goal to help fund the project for a mass production.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Onslaught Six »

On the flip side, seeing those badass new versions of Blood and Skullgrin got me all excited in parts that don't normally get excited over toys. Granted, this is probably 100% because of Masterforce, and the distinct probability that we will never get new toys that look like those anime characters. If they're cheap-ish, I might go in for them.

Now do Metalhawk.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by BWprowl »

Onslaught Six wrote:On the flip side, seeing those badass new versions of Blood and Skullgrin got me all excited in parts that don't normally get excited over toys. Granted, this is probably 100% because of Masterforce, and the distinct probability that we will never get new toys that look like those anime characters. If they're cheap-ish, I might go in for them.

Now do Metalhawk.
See, this is exactly the problem! They're pandering, getting people interested in their shit not because of their own design work or ideas or concepts, but because they just happen to be dudes that look like some dudes you like.

These guys are (former) professional toy designers, they could have made anything they wanted (hilariously, they espouse this belief in some of the blurbs on the site, claiming that one point of the company was to let their designers' imaginations run wild...then they just turn around and make the G1 Pretenders). Instead, NOPE, fuck creativity, lets just turn out plastic slabs that look like things somebody else owns. The people buying them don't even CARE about the toys themselves or what they do, just "It looks like Landmine, guess I want it!". Why even HAVE original toylines?

This is the entire problem with third-party producers. They're just opportunistic panderers exploiting fans' interest in other people's properties, without an ounce of effort or creativity on their own part.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Onslaught Six »

Yeah, because that multi-billion dollar corporation over there *really* cares about the artistic integrity of its designs...Get off your high horse about it. I don't buy third party stuff because 95% of it is overpriced and I don't trust the people who make it to know what they're doing beyond things like new heads or extra guns. Meanwhile, these guys are literally the same guys who made TFs for the last several years, doing (essentially) more TFs. Can't argue with that--the only thing that I could argue with is price, depending on how much these end up going for.

I mean, let's face it, the brand's "integrity" is barely important anymore, it shits out things like Transformers Angry Birds and most of the AOE line with costcutting measures, and tends to go to this very weird place of "not collector stuff but not really for kids either" and subsequently is shitty for both.

I mean, pandering is pandering, but if it's going to be pandering, I'd rather it be pandering to things that I actually want from people I know have made things I like in the past. I have no problem with these guys trying to make a buck or two from an IP they clearly love enough to try and do it illegally after they're fired from the real line (which was, more than likely, not for their abilities as designers). When I didn't directly recognize that most of the toys in this were Pretender remakes, I gave zero fucks about it. Absolutely zero. So, y'know, that's just how it is.

I don't have any problems with someone who isn't Hasbro trying to make toys of Transformers. I really don't. The problem I have is that most third-party designs are shit and are way too expensive. This already has curbed half of that problem for me, and could easily curb the other half if they do it right. (Also, if they were smart, they would make at least one design based on one of the monsters from Inhumanoids. I vote for D-Compose but will also take Tendril.)
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by BWprowl »

Onslaught Six wrote:Yeah, because that multi-billion dollar corporation over there *really* cares about the artistic integrity of its designs...Get off your high horse about it. I don't buy third party stuff because 95% of it is overpriced and I don't trust the people who make it to know what they're doing beyond things like new heads or extra guns. Meanwhile, these guys are literally the same guys who made TFs for the last several years, doing (essentially) more TFs. Can't argue with that--the only thing that I could argue with is price, depending on how much these end up going for.
That's not so much what it's about (though if I'd spent zillions of dollars making a particular brand and characters popular, I'd likely be a little perturbed by people trying to make a buck off that cultivated popularity without my consent). It's like... Okay, I go to anime conventions a lot, right? And at most conventions, there's an 'artist alley', where artists professional and unprofessional, wildly popular or with only small followings, can all set up booths and sell prints and commissions and custom-made keychains and buttons and shit. Thing is, 90% of the stuff they sell is fanart of shit that is popular and they KNOW will sell regardless of whether it's their art or not. People aren't buying that Zelda print because they really like the artist's technique or what they're doing in the piece or are a fan of the artist in general, they're just buying it because it's a picture of Zelda and they like Zelda. That...completely defeats the purpose of buying art from an artist to support an artist, and cheapens the point of having a whole room of booths where you can interact with these people and see what they can do when all you're doing is buying Madoka keychains and My Little Pony buttons and Pokémon postcards in a room just over from the dealer's hall, not to mention shortchanging the people who actually ARE selling original artworks, because none of these idiot weebs are going to look twice at them because they don't have a picture of Naruto or whatever.

THAT'S my problem with these third-party startups, this one included. They have the potential to make some amazing toys, to really show me what they can do and craft something new and interesting and carve out a niche for themselves. There actually are a handful of original designs in there (the new heads, mostly) that look like they could be awesome! But instead they went the easy route of "Well, people gobble up things that look like Transformers like there's no tomorrow, let's just do that!". Just slap some joints into the Pretender designs and call it a day. No thanks, I don't want to buy your stuff just because it looks like something else, from someone else, that I happen to like for different reasons. That's dishonest on both our parts.

I have a very difficult time justifying buying anything in an artist's alley, because I second-guess myself every step of the way. "Do I actually want this because it's a nice piece of art and I like the artist's style and what they're doing? Or do I only want it because it's a picture of a Transformer?" It's the same thing here, these things might look nice as action figures, as cool toys, but I'd just be too unsure of "Do I really want these because they're cool toys made by a new company, or just because they look like Blood and Lander?"
When I didn't directly recognize that most of the toys in this were Pretender remakes, I gave zero fucks about it. Absolutely zero. So, y'know, that's just how it is.
Conversely, I was super-interested in this like when it initially looked like they were going to be doing their own thing, creating their own original, unique designs and toys. When it turned out they were just going to be squirting out Pretender rip-offs because Transfans Are Easy, well, here we are.
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Re: Former Hasbro employees have created a 3rd party company

Post by Shockwave »

Y'know, I'm actually kind of with Prowl on this one. I mean, Hasbro already gave us an updated version of Skullgrin, and they also gave us Straxus, so really, I'm inclined to think they could do anyone at this point, given enough time. But it's like 3rd party companies aren't willing to wait until Hasbro makes official updates or doesn't trust that they'll be done "correctly" and so we wind up with a kajillion different knock off versions of the Dinobots and Predaking. Honestly, I was also looking forward to something new and different from these guys and am aslo disappointed that this has degenerated into "we're to fucking impatient to wait for Hasbro to do certain TFs so we'll do them our damn selves".
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