Onslaught Six wrote: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.
This is somewhat true, TF is not a brand intended to solely look backwards. They've done a lot of it in the past 6 years or so, but they've also moved forward at the same time. Not EVERY figure has to get an homage. Then again, TM is right that we really haven't gotten a good Devastator ever, and it's not a minor thing, it's certainly a bigger element to the brand than Octankor. Of course, the concept gets stuck in limbo for being very expensive, requiring a lot of heavily-engineered design, and yet has zero entertainment support and not a powerful grab at the larger casual consumer market that drives the brand, so Devastator is also understandable why it doesn't get made. I can thus understand why a 3rd party one would exist, there is heavy demand and no real way for Hasbro to deliver on it. I can also see why stuff like Dr Wu accessories, and new PCC limbs, stuff that Hasbro simply doesn't want to touch but there is demand for and it's not horribly abusing IP, and some of it isn't even G1-related. But at the same time, there's entire companies now just releasing new G1 figures, some even directly stealing engineering from other Generations figures. There's a lot of shades of gray going on here, it's not as black and white as you suggest.
(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.)
I don't buy that argument, the drone prototype they were referring to has MUCH smaller engines and bigger landing gear, those things are scaled to Scourge being a very large vehicle moreso than the windows. Plus, the small drone was intended to be a testing prototype for the larger vehicle, IIRC. So Scourge is meant to be a big thing, not a little thing.
Plus, Seaspray's bed could hold smaller figures (and I think one of them was even specifically designed to do this--Breacher?).
Yeah, that's the one.
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.
Are they really such significant characters that they can survive entirely outside the combiner concept though? I had a hard time with that, only buying your namesake. Releasing a Silverbolt or Onslaught as a Voyager but unable to combine is like renegging on a promise.
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.)
I don't understand this point, it's a confusing message.
Tigermegatron wrote: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.
Hasbro barely tries to deliver on the promise of a larger world of TF right now though. Sideshow's line isn't a good example, Sideshow has horribly overinflated the pricetags on those - if they had held around $70 they'd be pretty awesome, but instead they go to a higher premium tag and it makes a big difference. Hasbro hasn't done a really big item that could satisfy kids and adult collectors in a while, nor have they done many mid-size above-deluxe things. Hasbro lately has been excellent at giving excuses but poor at delivering the wider world experience for TF - canceled products people wanted, missing accessories and features, half-delivered concepts, that's where Hasbro is being embarrassed, and where 3rd party picks up the slack. But the line is being crossed more and more lately from picking up the slack to just plain stealing IP and it makes it hard to support.
What do you think of Reprolabels? I have never seen a single person concern themselves with the IP theft going on there, do they get a pass because it's printed?
BWprowl wrote: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'm not way into the other forums, but are they really on a pedestal because they're 3rd party? It'd seem to me that they'd be on a pedestal because they are bucking the trend of letting Hasbro step on collectors' interests. If Hasbro delivered more to that market base, I think those fans would eschew 3rd party every time.
Also, "good basics" Hasbro hasn't been doing a lot of that either, "good" has been taking a back seat to "ok" and "bare minimum" and even "incompetent".
I dunno about your take on FOC Bruticus. That figure is likely to cost $75, Onslaught is a very shabby-looking deluxe (look at the back of Bruticus, yuck), there's a lot of compromises, and then the GOOD coloring is a convention-exclusive boxed set. Hasbro did an ok-looking job but not a 3rd-party-killer the way you're suggesting.
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.
I think it's about Hot Rod being a character that was always meant to become Rodimus Prime, and when you release a Generations figure with only Hot Rod, some fans are going to look for the other half of the character. I personally don't see Protector being mind-blowing either, especially at that price, but I understand the drive. City Commander I don't think looks as bad, the big gun is a bit much, but the idea is what's important - fans really want something to make Ultra Magnus into ULTRA MAGNUS rather than just White Optimus, they wanted bolt-on armor from a trailer, and Hasbro flat-out refuses to address those demands. Fans came out of the woodwork for that idea, old-school fans who were barely a speck of interest talk to me about it all the time.
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.
Those PCC limb guys are indeed cool, although the designs themselves are not terribly risk-taking ones for their robots. But in a way, it can't even be Hasbro's existing IP because Hasbro didn't make the PCC limbs into robots, they didn't deliver anything much like these 3rd Party ones, and they mangled support for the PCC line pretty badly so there was no hope that they'd ever do something like that -- so the only IP one could really say is being infringed is the ability to interlock with Hasbro's PCC commanders, in other words, those crappy blue cube attachment points.
Design isn't that hard, it's coming up with the story medium that drives characters and scenarios that makes it possible. There's too much design talent, not enough storytelling talent, so they stick with existing media like Transformers.
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.
Be fair now, Seaspray was not movie-styled at all and riffed directly on the G1 character. I can give you the movie Constructions, or even movie Sideswipe, but that Seaspray doesn't deserve a pass.
Shockwave wrote: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.
Agreed. Although I do understand the desire to have minibots be mini when the characters were mini, there is some appeal to the concept from a character perspective.
Onslaught Six wrote:Looks like Deathy edited this bit in while I was responding:
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.
I have to wonder how much time you think you have left. Scourge, JT and Dom are, what, early-mid 30s here? ShockTrek and Anderson are inching towards 40 if I'm not wrong, and they don't really show signs of quitting. (Actually, ShockTrek is, but that's another story.) It's not like we're all somehow in danger of randomly dying, or anything.
I mean, realistically speaking, it's not wrong to expect oneself to continually buy toys (in some fashion) until we either die, lose interest, or it becomes a financial problem. (I'm pretty sure Dom has chosen to stop buying toys as of this year because of the financial strain, and I'm not far behind.) Those are the only options I can think of. So unless you anticipate yourself doing any of those, there's no real reason to stop buying them. I dunno if you expect to suddenly become frail and deathly so that you can't...play with plastic robots, I guess? I mean, seriously, do any of us really do much with the toys once we open them and throw them on a shelf? The most interaction my toys get is when I pull them down so I can rearrange the shelf.
I'm mid-to-late 30s actually. And we're all in danger of randomly dying, the human off-switch is surprisingly random. But that shouldn't change the fact that a brand cannot SOLELY cater to its older fans if the brand wants to remain viable - we can't just all buy the same stuff we did as kids, there has to be something new to it. How we use them, whether as shelf-bound totems or as imagination-fuelers or even just toys, the issue remains that being 27 isn't the end of the road, there's always a chance for more and better later on.
Dominic wrote:But, i can see TigMeg's point. If Hasbro does not want to produce/sell something, they really cannot complain that somebody else doing so is stealing business from them. And, if a custom toy is superior to Hasbro product (assuming said product has been made in the first place), well shame on Hasbro for not doing better.
-honestly wonders if Hasbro is tired of selling toys on some days.
Well, they can complain, and sue, and take broad action, but they shouldn't be terribly SURPRISED that it's happen when they actively ignore a small but financially-powerful subset of their market.
Hasbro definitely is tired of selling toys, hence all the movies. If Fansproject could muster up the cash and resources to run the TF brand and went after a license, I'd give odds at 1:8 that Hasbro would actually pull that trigger. DC almost sold out to Marvel in the late '70s or early '80s because they were sick of publishing.
BWprowl wrote:I disagree! Look at it this way: If a fan of Transformers buys, say, one component of Hercules, that's like $60 they just dropped on a Transformers-related purchase. That's five or six Deluxes worth of money that they could have given to Hasbro, which rightfully belongs to Hasbro since they own the license, that Hasbro didn't get. Most fans don't specifically have their money allocated for 'Devastator' or 'Insecticons', they just have it for 'toys', and when companies that didn't pay Hasbro any money for their license use that IP to sell things, at Hasbro's loss, to fans of that license anyway, then that is, in my opinion, wrong. A fan who just bought sixty bucks worth of not-Transformers can no longer give that money to Hasbro for real Transformers. That is stealing business.
This is a flawed argument, it's used to show how badly movie and music pirating affects those industries, but it ignores the fact that the average consumer who bought that 3rd party figure did so in part because they would NOT have bought official product from the license-holder since the license-holder refuses to put out product at a market quality the market actually wants. In Hasbro's case, there aren't 5 deluxes Hasbro makes that would make up for the purchase of a Hercules limb because there's none that do anything remotely like what the Hercules figure as a whole does - FOC Bruticus certainly doesn't with that sickly Onslaught in the middle - and there's very little hope these days that there ever will be a Hasbro Transformers licensed product that will deliver on the consumer's yen. So the 3rd party guy's gain is not Hasbro's loss because Hasbro doesn't have a comparable product that would have been bought otherwise.
I have $300 in the bank with which I want to buy a big, well-articulated, well-sculpted gestalt figure; I want it to remind me of my G1 favorites but bigger and better. How is anything in the Prime line or even the Generations line going to fit that $300? Hasbro is not only currently ignoring my interests, but also has shown a past pattern of generally ignoring the entire market subset I am affiliated with, and shows no signs of changing that policy in the future. I am not going to buy Generations Shockwave, TFP RID Bulkhead, and a bunch of other random new and coming stuff with that same money if it doesn't fill my larger interest. And seeing more images of FOC Bruticus, I can already see that their best efforts have come with chilling compromises that don't suit my needs well-enough. So what's a fan to do, just keep buying Hasbro TF product because it's a brand name even though it's not remotely what they're looking for? The gray area is that these 3rd party companies are catering to a market that Hasbro isn't, and in doing so they are keeping those fans' interests in the official TF brand alive to a degree, and those fans really wouldn't be giving that money to Hasbro; if these were fans not making a penny off these things, they'd be hailed as heroes, but the problem is that there has become a very significant cottage industry around that market now and it does look like it's more about exploiting that fan market's desires and frustrations in Hasbro for profits. Of course, that's only a perception, for all we know these 3rd party items are all sold by fans who aren't making a profit at all, but now that it's an industry they have overhead and infrastructure they have to pay for so it LOOKS like it's for-profit.
Onslaught Six wrote:No, I get that, but let's take me for example. Hasbro makes tons of stuff I really do like. They don't always make things I like (Prime is one of them--sorry guys, I got burned on Animated, I'm not taking that risk twice) but for the better part of the last decade, I've looked forward to buying new stuff from them.
So I don't understand this whole "Hasbro isn't catering to meeeee" thing. It's the same exact thing as the gay Tim Drake thing from the other thread. But those fans are Bad People and rewarding them for their behaviour by producing Gay Tim Drake comics would be horrible. And yet the geewunner third party cocksuckers are using the same exact attitude and somehow Hasbro is the bad guy?
(For the record: "cocksuckers" isn't directed at anyone here, it's mostly directed at some of the ridiculous posts from TFW I've seen. I should post some examples.)
Tim Drake is gay? Or is that just a badly-used "gay as adjective" thing? I haven't been following the other thread, but I liked Tim Drake back in the day and he was hetero back then.
BTW, "tuns of stuff" you really like? List the stuff you've REALLY liked from the past 12 months, I don't think you'll find there's all that much, especially if you're entirely divested of Prime.
Hasbro markets their brand off its history, they don't make any bones about that, they are moving forward but on the foundation of G1. They are using the pop-culture recognizability of G1 to move Transformers forward in the movies and other areas that the toys wouldn't normally touch - like licensed statues and car accessories, that's a good example. By releasing new Transformers branding into the world using fans' G1 interests as that foundation, there is going to be heightened interest in G1-related product from those casual consumers who used to be hardcore fans before. So to hold Hasbro blameless when they then turn around and say to that exact same market "no, we're not going to address your wants except maybe 1 token release a year, now here's new product that doesn't measure up so buy it or screw off", that's unrealistic - Hasbro is certainly reaping what they sew when they pull that stuff, and when they consistently and obviously and loudly do it for 5, 6 years at a stretch it's not entirely surprising that a whole cottage industry has cropped up to serve the market Hasbro refuses to.
BWprowl wrote:Shockwave wrote:Which is all well and fine for stuff that Hasbro is actually producing, but for stuff that they don't, it actually works the other way. Like the City Commander armor. The only reason I would ever have to buy Hasbro's Ultra Magnus would be to supplement it with the City Commander armor. Otherwise that's a sale I wouldn't be giving to Hasbro. So in that case, the 3rd party product is actually helping Hasbro sell toys that they otherwise would not have sold.
That's why I tend to be more okay with stuff like that. I bought the iGear Kup heads, after all. Paying for upgrade kits like that is more like buying suped-up Reprolabels.
It's the whole new figures of guys that Hasbro owns the rights to that bother me, especially when they *are* directly competing with Hasbro's product. Warbot Defender came out around the same time that Universe 2-pack with Springer as a repaint of Evac came out (and you know what? I think Hasbro's repaint made a better Springer than Warbot Defender). There was also that not-Powerglide that hit about the same time Cyberverse Commander Powerglide was on shelves.
Hmm, that's a pretty damned thin hair to split. If you want a Springer figure and he's a triple-changer with 2 Cybertronian modes and a sword, that Evac reuse ain't gonna cut it. Just because YOU accept it, does that mean it fits the bill for every fan? I mean, he's in recent comics and it's not that Evac figure, is it? This is the gray area where you find Hasbro's work good enough, but I can see how some fans wouldn't and they are the ones who have no recourse whatsoever except to just hope and then walk away. I do agree with you that Powerglide / Not-Powerglide was a tipping point against what I'm saying, but at the same time, while I'm satisfied with Movie Powerglide and even Universe Powerglide, I can see how some fans wouldn't be, there is that gray area, but it's slid further down the scale.
You may not be 'obligated' to spend your toy money on Hasbro's products, but this stuff is still going to be a factor either way. Say you just dropped $150 or whatever on that tiny not-Reflector. You're now down 150 bucks, so if you walk into Wal-Mart to buy some hookers and blow, even if you *do* see some of Hasbro's Transformers you were wanting on shelves, you'll be less-inclined to buy them since you just dropped 150 on the other guys' "Transformer". Perfect Effect took business away from Hasbro, and they did so using Hasbro's own IP as a selling point.
That assumes they were ever notably inclined to invest in the TF product in the first place though, that's a speculative interest rather than a real one. MAYBE they would, but considering what they are interested in versus what's on Hasbro's shelves and how little of it would cater to them, it's a pretty dodgy chance that they'd get that cash. Just because I listened to a Lady Gaga song on Youtube once doesn't mean every time I pass her album at Target that her label is losing money. Or look at it another way, I like Batman quite a bit, I have plenty of figures - all of which are from Mattel, and zero of which are from DC Direct, every time I buy a Mattel Batman figure it has little bearing on my chances of buying a DC Direct one because even though they're of the same franchise (Batman) and they're technically the same thing (action figure), they are not both catering in relatable amounts to my interests. (That example would have been better had Mattel not recently gone insane with their pricing raise and quality drop.)
Dom wrote:What I find annoying about Hasbro is that they complain about other companies effectively tapping in to a market that Hasbro has no apparent plans to exploit. Hasbro has not apparent intentions of making a G1 looking Devastator, despite sustained interest from the fans. Thus, Hasbro cannot complain about losing money when somebody else makes and sells a more marketable toy.
Morally, perhaps; but legally they have every right to starve the market when it's their brand.
BWp wrote:Here's something: I pre-ordered CM Corps' Gutto Kuru Minverva figure. That's something I wanted (high-end action figures of human characters from TF fiction) that Hasbro themselves probably wasn't going to get around to making. What sets CM Corps and what they're doing apart from TFC or Perfect Effect or whoever? The Gutto Kuru figures are *licensed*, they are *approved* by Hasbro and Takara. CM Corps actually went to Hasbro/Takara, said "We want to make this", got Hasbro's permission, *paid them for the license* and worked with them on this. Hasbro still gets to collect on something that they might not make themselves, but they see "Oh, it might be worthwhile to give these other companies permission to make this stuff" so there's higher chance that we could see *more* figures like this from CM Corps for me to buy. Everybody wins.
Except that they had an existing in, they made product for a convention TF 5 years ago, they didn't exist in a vacuum. And if not for the proven marketability of 3rd party, would CM Corps have ever even tried to go after that product?
And this sort of thing has been going on for a while. Those statues Hard Hero and the like made of TF characters? Officially licensed. Ditto any of the obscene amounts of ancillary merchandise prepared for the Movies. Hell, Yamaguchi produced all those licensed Revoltech figures of TF characters. Fun4All got the license to make keychains from Hasbro's old molds. This is the *right* way to go about this sort of thing, and it's clearly not that difficult. But this new wave of third-party guys, apparently approaching Hasbro and actually asking for their permission to use their characters, and actually paying them for the license (and really, doing all that to make this stuff official would only have *helped* their sales) is too hard for them to do, and yet we're supposed to support them and be all ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER when they steal Hasbro's IP out from under them to turn a tidy profit off of the fanbase that they built up? Bullshit.
Aside from the keychains from Hasbro's minibot molds, that's apples and oranges as none of it is TF figure-related product, Revoltech was nothing more than Optimash Prime, licensed character in someone else's line. And the current push on 3rd party didn't come out of making product at all, it came out of WANTING product, not wanting to MAKE product, so there was no business model to follow with Hasbro because there wasn't a business in mind. Now there is, and Hasbro has made clear that they will never work with any of those 3rd party people ever ever ever (although I bet you anything they'll work with their friggin' factory vendors if they weren't already, you betcha, China's manufacturing has been like that for decades now - your bitterest rival can be made on the same line as your product because that factory will work with anybody).
Hey, no one's disputing this, it's the concept the third-party market is founded on. My point was that, if they want to make these things, obtaining license from Hasbro to do so *legally* should be how they go about it, instead of sneaking around with generic names and copyright-dodging, with people cheering them on like they're fucking Robin Hood or something.
Some of them are Robin Hood, and have no means to go after an official license because they didn't know where they were going - they contacted a Chinese factory in the hopes of getting a small run of a product that they wanted to see, the factory was willing to steal manhole covers to build the molds (this is a common thing there) and then those guys got their items and there was no reason to not do more runs for their friends and for the friends of their friends. City Commander is I believe an example of that, nobody had the money, resources, or connections to go after a Hasbro license with that piece, and if they had tried they had no business model to follow through, they had no drop-testing or quality control info to hand Hasbro, and once on Hasbro's radar they would be at risk of being sued simply because their custom item was made in a Chinese factory rather than carved at home.
15 years or so, Hasbro's going to be up shit creek anyway, the 3d printing revolution is going to make 3rd party into pure designers without manufacturing who are impossible to track down or prosecute because they'll just be sending CAD files out so the person can print their own City Commander at home. What then? It'll be like the MP3 revolution, nobody will bother buying CDs when they can just download similar ideas and realize them at home.
This goes to another one of those double standards I was talking about (though it doesn't so much apply to you, since you don't buy either official or unofficial): Hasbro releases G1-style-update stuff like Generations and Reveal the Shield, and the fans start screaming and bitching if the price so much as goes up by a dollar and they have to pay over twelve whole dollars for their toy. But Perfect Effect can sell Mini-Con size Reflector knockoffs for eighty bucks, and these people slurp it right up and praise them for doing so. Everyone just *knows* Hasbro is ripping them off, but it never occurs to them that these great and wonderful third-party companies might be trying to maximize profits as well.
Well, you're talking about a Hasbro run of 50k units making profit margins to fill the overhead at Rhode Island vs a run of 100 items, they are not remotely the same economics. I know people in manufacturing, bulk runs are wildly cheaper per unit than small runs, a 5x cost increase is not unheard of. If you sell a deluxe-sized figure at $50 that Hasbro would sell at $10, but they sell 50,000 units and you sell 500, there is still a 100x discrepancy there.
I think it's interesting that the harder some folks defend Hasbro, the easier the slide away from that position becomes for others.
