3rd Party Masterpieces - Just expensive fakes?

[Hellboy]

3P Companies have the freedom to create what they want without worrying about the retail chain input. There are some excellent 3P "Transformers" out there that I wish I could bring myself to purchase but I'm sticking to the official route for collecting. I know they look like my favourite figures and are often better than the givings from Hasbro and Takara but the names on the boxes are wrong and the official symbols are missing. They just don't count as Transformers to me.

[OLDMR]

MPs are great but for me the title goes to whomever has the best design and while some 3Ps are just ok, I don't think MP could best FP Soar or BC Brawny.

[wedge1021]

With the way Hasbro is going with quality these days, a lot of their mainline toys seem like the fake knock-offs to me. I've pretty much dropped all mainline collecting in favour of Masterpiece - both official and 3P. Hasbro has lost me as an automatic customer - it's quality and overall design that will win my money, regardless of which company produced the item.

[monishb]

Honestly who cares which company makes them. In the end it's all about money to them, and happiness for you.

[mrluthor]

Collect what you like not what you think something will be worth in the future. It's your collection not someone else's collection. Knock offs are not the same as third party figures. The third party companies are recreating the joy of having a character that probably would never see or officially ever get produced. KOs are copies of the Hasbro/Tomy molds they are fakes. Sometimes the KO's are better than the originals. I'm waiting for a KO MP Exhaust hopefully with the original design.

[alternatorfan]

We love these things no matter who makes them!!!!!!

[Mega-Prime 316]

Question...If Takara releases a MP figure, lets say MP Prowl, for example, and sells it at retail for $89.99 and 6 months to a year later Hasbro releases the same figure at a cheaper price, does that make the Hasbro any less of an original, or is it a KO of the original Takara one??

As far as 3P stuff I collect it, and i think there is a strong market for it. Like those before have stated I will more then likely purchase official over the 3P, but in the meantime to fill out the ranks they make great stand ins!! And the quality of most of the "big ticket" offerings have equal or better quality then official releases.

[down_shift]

Me personally, I'm not fond of calling any third party figures "Masterpiece". They are highly detailed with lots of options, sizes, characters, price points, ect but they just aren't Masterpieces. Some come pretty close, but in the end they are a separate entity.

Most fans enjoy mixing them in with their official MPs, others like them to fill in the gaps on their Classics shelf. Others just want a figure that has always been their favorite character to stand stoic on their work desk.

I always compare 3P & official product to Lexus & Toyota.

Toyota is a reputable and reliable brand that has a proven track record. They make an affordable product that most can afford, and with that affordable price comes affordable features. That's not to say they are boring, but they could have more to them, right? Well that's where Lexus comes in and blows the Toyota side out of the water. They do everything Toyota does but they do it better but with that comes a higher cost. You pay more for the nicer things, and that kind of the same with 3P.

Another good example are rims. You can put an awesome looking set of After Market rims on your whip that make it look amazing, but that doesn't mean your putting a cheap knock off on your vehicle. You're just exercising a different option.

If Takara makes a Masterpiece Warpath I'll pick it up, but in the mean time I'll be happy taking in a highly detailed homage to that character in Wardog.

[CanBot]

This topic comes up every once in a while. I hope that my opinion doesn't piss anybody off, but it is what it is and I have to stand by my values.

The Transformers were created, as we know them, by Hasbro and Takara. Rather than get too deep into that sentence and argue semantics, it is their intellectual property...all of it. The characters, the toys, the cartoons. They are the ones responsible for our hobby, in my opinion.

3rd party products are not fakes, and I think it was adequately explained elsewhere in this thread why that is.

But they are all infringing on intellectual property of Hasbro and Takara. That, to me, is theft pure and simple. Why Hasbro doesn't put a stop to it by protecting their IP is really beyond me. Cease and desist orders are put out for far more frivolous things, yet somehow 3rd party manufacturers carry on. So I can't blame them for Hasbro not protecting their vested IP rights.

But I don't support what they do or the products they sell. To do so would go against my idea of right and wrong; very much a value issue.

The problem when talking about this is that it divides the fandom into an 'us and them'. That's not cool. I personally don't agree with 3rd party, but why should I judge someone who doesn't? Again, Hasbro is the one who should be doing something to stop their IP from being used illegally.

Those who support 3rd party just want the toys they want that Takara won't (or haven't) released, I get that. I can't think of many fans here that I've seen collections of that don't have more official product than 3rd party...and also replace 3rd party with official product when it's released. And does it really matter to Hasbro that this guy or that gal buy a "not-Menasor" or some other product?...only if that same collector doesn't buy a Hasbro product because the 3rd party product is something they'd rather own.

It's not a cut and dried though, as are many things in life. I don't agree with 3rd party, yet I have to be honest: I picked up a straight up knock-off Ratbat last year on ebay because I didn't think it was fair that I have to buy Soundblaster (a character I do not wish to own) just to get Ratbat (a character I want). So I went with a knock-off. And I can justify it in my mind, but after reading what a few others had to say on the topic, I've decided to go the official route and just sell Soundblaster. Why?...because the quality isn't that great in comparison, and ultimately it's because that purchase went against line of thinking. But again, it's a matter of a few bucks vs a lot of dollars. Yes, it's hypocritical, but we all draw our own lines in the sand.

If 3rd party products really stood up on their own, they wouldn't need to use established Hasbro Transformers property to sell. They could come up with their own robots, their own fiction, their own whatever. But they don't. They outright steal from existing designs and target their marketing to Transformer fans. This is wrong, IMO.

But just because I think it's wrong doesn't really matter much. These days, it seems like if you hold true to an ethic you're just as likely to be scorned than praised. I liken it to downloading music or movies or whatever: that's theft, no matter how you slice it. Do the big companies deserve to have their IP stolen for any reason? Of course not. But people still do it.

Anyways, those are my thoughts and my viewpoint. You won't see me slamming 3rd party products, but I don't bring attention to them either. I basically just ignore them. But I don't ignore the joy they bring to others. I ultimately hope that Hasbro listens to the fans and brings them what they want so that they don't have to go to 3rd party companies, but people are entitled to spend their money how they like.

But these companies should, at the very least, be paying some form of royalty to Hasbro. Some kind of license, if that were possible. Hasbro has shut down a lot smaller ventures that crack at their established IPs, so again...I really don't see why they haven't yet. TFs are a major global brand. Who knows?...maybe in the near future they might make a move against these companies, and those who support them will have valuable and rare 3rd party products.

Just my two cents, in any case.

[CanBot]

One last thing: this idea that interpreting someone else's products is not infringement...that is exactly what infringement is. The Lexus vs Honda thing doesn't hold water: you buy one or the other, Honda corporation still makes money. This doesn't happen with 3rd party TF toys.

If I sell a guitar that has a Fender headstock, I get sued. Same with Gibson. Or if I made a car and put a Chevy logo on it and it looks just like a Camaro.

It's great to buy what you want, but at least recognize it for what it is: you're buying a product from a company that is not paying for the right to sell that product. If you're ok with that, then that's ok. But don't make excuses for it or try to justify it.