are U interested in 3rd party toys for other Robot toy lines

[Tigermegatron]

are you interested in 3rd party toys for other companies robot toy lines?

examples: Voltron,power rangers,1980's machine robo-gobots,Brave,etc...

I'd love it,if some 3rd party companies created super poseable robot modes that transformed into individual robots for the following:
(1)Lion Voltron,Imagine 5 robotic lions that each transformed into individual super poseable robot modes. then all 5 robotic lines combined to form a super poseable voltron combiner robot.

(2)Imagine super poseable robot modes for some Brave toys. like all those repainted TF victory,battle stars,zone & masterforce toys. imagine a super poseable shadow maru. imagine a super poseable dinogesit robot mode. imagine a super poseable fighbird robot mode.

(3)Imagine bigger sized toys for some machine robo/gobots 1980's toys. imagine getting voyager or ultra sized super poseable robots for leader-1 & cy-kill that can transform into their alt modes.

(4)How cool would it finally be to get some super poseable power rangers combiners & seperate super poseable robots. I love to see & buy a super poseable thunder Tiger zord robot that transformed into ultra size tiger alt mode. love to buy a super poseable thunder dragon zord that transformed into a voyager or ultra sized dragon mode. love to see some power rangers zords get individual super poseable robot modes then they'd combine to form super poseable combiners gestalts. love to buy a super poseable stealt bomber zord robot mode that's voyager or ultra sized. and the list goes on...

[Onslaught Six]

Not really interested, especially if they go for the same outrageous rape prices the TF ones go for.

[Tigermegatron]

Not really interested, especially if they go for the same outrageous rape prices the TF ones go for.

FWIW,3rd party TF toys prices are the same exact high outrageous prices that TFCC/fun pub charges for their repainted TF toys

Personally I'd rather spend the high outrageous prices on brand new molds than glorified TFCC repaints.

It's worth a serious mention. the reason why 3rd party TF toys cost so much. is because their made in much lower volume units than the liscensed Hasbro/Takara TF toys.

[Onslaught Six]

Yeah, but there's still a fair amount of profit involved. The cost of making my CDs was something like $3.50 a CD--that includes all the printing, the CD, the case, everything. But I sell them for $10. I'm making almost triple profit on these. You can't tell me that the third party companies aren't at least doubling the amount of cash they got.

[Shockwave]

Yeah, but there's still a fair amount of profit involved. The cost of making my CDs was something like $3.50 a CD--that includes all the printing, the CD, the case, everything. But I sell them for $10. I'm making almost triple profit on these. You can't tell me that the third party companies aren't at least doubling the amount of cash they got.

Yeah, but imagine if you actually had to produce the cds themselves to record the albums on. That would suddenly be a huge increase to your cost and would massively cut into your profit margin. Suddenly you would have to sell a lot more cds to make up that difference. That's essentially what happens with these 3rd party companies. The cost of the mold is pretty high and the production runs are pretty low. The cost of the plastic itself is negligablem but the cost of the materials to create the mold are quite expensive. Especially when you get to the metal molds at the factory level which I'm assuming most of these companies operate.

[JediTricks]

I don't like 3rd party for the most part, I like my figures to be able to stand up to use, to have a certain level of quality which 3rd party manufacturers aren't trustworthy with. I also don't like paying a fortune for the figures. And stuff like Voltron, the sculpting is generally wrong in official products but otherwise they have been delivering fairly good quality designs the past 15 years - I have a 9" transforming one that's really nice, and I think Mattel is doing a new series of super poseable lions, although I believe that's a high-priced subscription service. To me, 3rd Party is only viable when there are no more alternatives, when fans have so much demand and companies have so long ignored that demand that fans get enough passion together to mold their own stuff. When it's just about sharing the passion for the product, that I can understand although I rarely get behind it. But some of these 3rd party TF vendors are just blatantly stealing IP now for their own profits, using fan passion to fuel their coffers rather than to deliver what they themselves are looking for, and takes any vaguery out of the line - what once was easy to understand becomes about making money, and that's just stealing. Yes, Hasbro's neglecting a customer subset, but they're the only ones who get to make money off their ideas, and that's the same for any other brand.

[Tigermegatron]

I don't like 3rd party for the most part, I like my figures to be able to stand up to use, to have a certain level of quality which 3rd party manufacturers aren't trustworthy with. I also don't like paying a fortune for the figures. And stuff like Voltron, the sculpting is generally wrong in official products but otherwise they have been delivering fairly good quality designs the past 15 years - I have a 9" transforming one that's really nice, and I think Mattel is doing a new series of super poseable lions, although I believe that's a high-priced subscription service. To me, 3rd Party is only viable when there are no more alternatives, when fans have so much demand and companies have so long ignored that demand that fans get enough passion together to mold their own stuff. When it's just about sharing the passion for the product, that I can understand although I rarely get behind it. But some of these 3rd party TF vendors are just blatantly stealing IP now for their own profits, using fan passion to fuel their coffers rather than to deliver what they themselves are looking for, and takes any vaguery out of the line - what once was easy to understand becomes about making money, and that's just stealing. Yes, Hasbro's neglecting a customer subset, but they're the only ones who get to make money off their ideas, and that's the same for any other brand.

I agree/disagree 50/50.

I agree that these 3rd party TF toys are extremly exspensive. I can't afford them all. So I pick & choose which ones I really like.
I can only afford to buy one or two a year 3rd party TF toys.

Hasbro & Takara seem un-capable of making proper G-1 homages. if we do get them,then most of the time 9 out of 10 their in the wrong size scale/price point. Example that 3rd party Swindle & Blastoff that combine with energon/ROTF Bruticus. it's been 28 years,hasbro keeps giving us all these non-combiner 1980's combiners that can't combine into gestalts.

Hasbro/takara is simply unable to give us awesome TF stuff. that 3rd party protector for classics rodimus & that 3rd party city commander for classics 1.0 ultra magnus are pure awesome.

Hasbro/Takara getting the wrong size scales/price points really upset me. giving seaspray a voyager when he should have got a basic or generous deluxe. 2.0 ultra's onslaught & silverbolt should have been deluxes. 2.0 galvatron & cyclonus should have been ultra sized as their high ranking faction leaders & were shown big in the cartoons/movie & toy line. thunderwing seemed like a waste because he should have been at least voyager sized,that drone should have been a minicon sized inner robot that tramnsformed into the front jet nose for a super jet combined mode.

We've literally had half a dozen new mold constructicon. homage toys & they all failed to capture the designs & essence of the 1985 Constructicons. 3rd party hercules & giant are excellent homages.

Personally,I feel 3rd party TF companies are awesome. for the sheer fact their embarrassing hasbro/Takara to no end. by releasing TF toys that hasbro said was impossible to do,their was no market for them or no one would buy them.

I look at it this was,I'm 27 years old & i'm not getting any younger. I simply can't wait any more decades for hasbro/takara to finally release TF toys designs,I like & prefer. I kinda want to be still young enough & decently functional to enjoy these TF toy designs I prefer.

[Onslaught Six]

Except (regardless of what was said in the Prowl vs. Nostalgia thread) Transformers doesn't exist solely to recreate the past exactly. Everything gets reinvented in some way and sometimes it's better off that way. Somebody on Hasbro's food chain has thrown forth a (relatively) big requirement that most (not all, but most) toys should be in a relative scale with the vehicle they are. Seaspray was huge because the boat he turns into is huge. (Someone will surely point out Generations Scourge here, but Scourge isn't actually a huge plane. He's an unmanned drone that's designed to look like a huge plane. Seriously. The vehicle Scourge turns into actually HAS fake, tiny windows on it.)

Plus, Seaspray's bed could hold smaller figures (and I think one of them was even specifically designed to do this--Breacher?). Silverbolt was huge because he turns into a huge plane--they made Onslaught in the same scale because pitting two (former?) combiner team leaders against each other is a good idea. Galvatron's best equivalent for an enemy would be Classics Rodimus, who was a Deluxe (as he should be) and thus, he was scaled pretty appropriately to that. Besides, that toy was shitty--you really want to make it bigger? I'd rather they made a big, new Galvatron that was truer to the original design. (I'd rather he turned into some neat tank that was more of an update to old Civil War-style wheeled cannons, since that's basically what Galvy is.)

Personally,I feel 3rd party TF companies are awesome. for the sheer fact their embarrassing hasbro/Takara to no end. by releasing TF toys that hasbro said was impossible to do,their was no market for them or no one would buy them.

This is the part that gets me about this "third party supporter" mentality. Hasbro says that it's hard to support a large-scale high-quality product for them, and in a lot of ways they're right. Look at the GI Joe 12" line that Sideshow's been doing--a lot of the sales aren't doing too hot. (Some of the figures are still available months later, which is apparently a bad sign for this kind of line.) That's probably because they're freaking huge and come with 40 guns that're all bigger than an individual 4" Joe figure. And I suspect that a lot of that probably pertains to concern about price--a big company like Hasbro "should" (in the eyes of consumers) be able to sell things way cheaper. Hell, the GI Joe Movie line is going up in price to like $9-10 in some places and that's really making me want to cut down on how much of the line I'm going to buy. (Thankfully, I don't really want to own tons of versions of figures I already own, like Snake Eyes or Storm Shadow, so I'm pretty safe for about half the line.) I see them and think, there's no way that's worth $10. But that's how low Hasbro can sell them for (and still turn a decent profit) so there you go.

Hasbro isn't being "embarassed" by these companies. In a lot of cases, they're making stuff I'm not even interested in, or doesn't look up to some of the standards Hasbro has set.

[BWprowl]

Sometimes it seems to me that the third-party stuff gets put up on a pedestal because it’s third-party, when it’s hardly perfect and would probably get customarily savaged by fans if it was made by Hasbro (because that’s just how the fandom operates). The Crossfire set looks neat and all, but they just look like *good* Basics that can partsform hands and feet to attach to a Bruticus made up of other components that aren’t nearly as ‘faithful’ updates to the G1 guys as Munitioner and Explorer are and over a hundred bucks for that hardly seems worth it, especially realizing that if Hasbro sold these things in stores for like eight bucks each, fans would instead be bitching and moaning over them not being the right shade of brown or whatever, not to mention bemoaning that they partsform. Just seems like a double standard, is all (seriously, just look at the vitriol FoC Bruticus is getting: Hasbro releases a huge, awesome, new Bruticus with integrated merge parts that can do the Scramble City thing and will cost inside of $60 for the whole thing, and the same ‘fans’ that plunked down hundreds of dollars for two Basics just bitch and bitch and bitch about everything they can think of about it).

I flat out don’t see the point of Protector. $150 to neuter your Rodimus’s ability to transform and make him a bit taller? …why? That trailer/armor/upgrade thing for RTS Laser Prime makes even less sense. And I’ve always thought Warbot Defender looked like a terrible toy and didn’t work all that well as Springer anyway. City Commander looks doofy as hell and had to include that big useless gun just to get the trailer-partsformation to work.

All that said, those OC robot-to-vehicle PCC limb guys that are coming out actually look pretty cool. They kinda straddle the line between an upgrade to an existing Hasbro figure (which I’m okay with on principle, see the iGear Kup head, which is awesome) and whole new toys that riff on Hasbro’s existing IP (which I’m not okay with), though the fact that they’re totally new characters who even have their own unique unifying theme going on mitigates that a bit. This gets into my other thoughts on these third-party guys: They’re clearly talented designers, I’d love to see the sort of product they could turn out using their own concepts, rather than riding the nostalgia of fans of some other brand. I wonder how the guys doing the designs and engineering on these feel about the fact that they pretty much have to put all their effort into remaking stuff from a single line from twenty years ago if they want to be able to pay the bills for this craft.

Oh, and just btw:

giving seaspray a voyager when he should have got a basic or generous deluxe.

We've literally had half a dozen new mold constructicon. homage toys & they all failed to capture the designs & essence of the 1985 Constructicons.

You *do* know that the ROTF Contstructicons and Seaspray were meant to be movie-style new guys, not direct updates of the G1 characters with the same names, right? Right? That’s like hating on Armada Red Alert because he doesn’t look anything like G1 Red Alert.

[Shockwave]

City Commander is the only reason I ever bought the "Ultra Magnus" White Optimus Prime that Hasbro put out. Without it, he's white Optimus. I've ranted enough about this on concept that you all know how I feel about it. The Protector armor doesn't nerf the transformation and even gives Rodimus better arm articulation in bot mode (by virtue of using the 3rd party parts as limbs rather than using the Hasbro designed arms). As for RTS Seaspray not being an homage, I have to kind of disagree here at least based on context (where's Dom when we need him?): ROTF Constructicons and Devastator were specifically released under the movie line while RTS was contextually ambiguous at best. Saying Seaspray wasn't meant to be an homage also means that, by extension, RTS Jazz and Tracks weren't either and I think we all know they were (in spite of Jazz's wings ). So yeah, I would say that Seaspray was meant to homage the original character, but I still have to disagree with Tigermegs regarding scale. He has a bigger alt mode and should be bigger. Cyclonus should not have been an ultra since he's a jet which is in scale to other jets in his line. And the original Galvatron and Cyclonus toys weren't the same size anyway.