Gauntlet101010 wrote:Oh, I agree it's ironic. Fully aware that a discussion on artists' rights in the 3rd party forum is inherently ironic. Bear in mind I'm not saying we should boycott UT ... it doesn't make me angry. I just feel that, given that UT has made a unique toy here, they could have made their own unique artwork as they had with the Sharkticons. It's just lame, that's all.
IP theft is often discussed here, but it's usually in legal tones with a lot of high handed opinions on both sides.
Anyway, I went ahead and found Philips and let him know. Here's his response:I was not aware of this, Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
It's actually kind of flattering to be honest. But def. bootlegged and they even drew their robot (a Gobot clone it seems) in the same style.
But if they are fully producing unlicensed transformers/Gobots toys it would probably be hard to get them on swiping a design for the packaging.
I'll let AcidFree know about this, but honestly I'm not too miffed, there's a long history of bootlegging toys and appropriating often unrelated artwork for the packaging.
Cheers,
Jesse
Well that's that. I really didn't want to defend UT. In fact I don't even like UT or KFC or Xtransbot (all the same company) they are basically KO companies getting into making third party stuff. So them doing something like this is kind of their "style"