The Energon Pub

this is retorical of course but in the last year i can honestly say ive been much more excited about the third party products. from xovereign to fansproject to MMC to you name it. weve gotten steam/coal powered trains, a magnificent update to "springer" a "masterpiece" not-rodimus as well as a near perfect bruticus. and with the new year a massive representation of devastator as well as a continuation of the HOS line including the insecticons and shockwave. this is truly becoming the year of 3rd parties no longer being on the sidelines but becoming an active part of the collectors comunity(on the level of hastak). yes i know it sounds crazy but with the ability to mass produce in todays world and the ability to market online the possibilities are endless. for me with the exception of generations/rts iv purchased almost only 3rd party products and this year ill probably skip the movie line all together. i cant be the only one to feel this way.

They're FAR from being on the level of Hastak. For one thing, they can't produce near the amount a large company can. For another, without being available at mass retail, they're relegated to being a niche section of an already niche market.

We may be 3rd party target market, but we're not Hasbro's, and that makes an enormous difference. Hasbro can continue to thrive(even with Transformers) without any of us.

Midnight_Fox wrote:They're FAR from being on the level of Hastak. For one thing, they can't produce near the amount a large company can. For another, without being available at mass retail, they're relegated to being a niche section of an already niche market.

We may be 3rd party target market, but we're not Hasbro's, and that makes an enormous difference. Hasbro can continue to thrive(even with Transformers) without any of us.

i didnt mean right now. when i said retorical i meant of course not. not right now at least. but none of us can say for sure 10 or even 20yrs down the road what will happen. i guess the point im trying to make is that the days of collectors going into a store and buying an entire line are coming to a close. the quality were finding in 3rd party products is approaching hastak levels one needs look no further than the KO seekers circulating now to know this. and hastak is fully aware of it. for example oftcc normally uses molds that are not in use but this year theyre using the rodimus mold for not only sideburn but theyve also released him in a 2 pack not once but twice as well as the three pack. coincidentally to go along with the release of protector. long story short all im saying is i agree theyre a niche market as it stands now. but if ive got to choose between a movieverse shockwave and a 3rd party release that movie fig better blow me away. or ill go with the other guy.
sorry didnt mean to ramble on

That the days of collectors going into a store and buying an entire line are coming to a close? That's non sense. Plenty of kids(parents) and collectors, myself included still buy most of what HasTak releases. I am guessing that HasTak sales dwarf all 3rd parties put together. 3rd parties will be long forgotten one of these days and HasTak will continue to put out quality Transformers.

You also mention KO. Of course there will always be KO. But KO wouldn't exist if not for the original product. If HasTak goes away so do the KO. Most KO are crap and non of them would be any good without the hard work they reverse engineer from HasTak. It wouldn't be worth their time to come up with their own molds. They are just in it to make a fast buck. They would be making cheap random transforming robots that sit in discount bins or niche stores.

Maybe if a company came up with something original instead of "not-xxxxxx" then they might stand a chance.

But until then they'll just be riding the coat-tails of Hasbro and TT.

it's rhetorical, but you want to discuss it with us?

Yeah... I love some of the third party stuff, but by and large I mostly buy Hasbro's stuff, Takara only when I have to.

Burn wrote:Maybe if a company came up with something original instead of "not-xxxxxx" then they might stand a chance.

But until then they'll just be riding the coat-tails of Hasbro and TT.

Bingo. Right now all they're doing is making modern style G1 figs that we've been clamouring for, or characters from lines that will never see a toy (Hearts of Steel). There's been very little character ingenuity in 3rd parties, just copies and new design work.

If HasTak decided to dump all their engineering and production into their TF line and let the others languish and made every single character true to their G1 character, 3rd parties wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

All I can say is thank goodness that HasTak continues to innovate and move forward, even if us old grognards aren't 100% happy with everything they make, and least they're being creative.

Mkall wrote:

Burn wrote:Maybe if a company came up with something original instead of "not-xxxxxx" then they might stand a chance.

But until then they'll just be riding the coat-tails of Hasbro and TT.

Bingo. Right now all they're doing is making modern style G1 figs that we've been clamouring for, or characters from lines that will never see a toy (Hearts of Steel). There's been very little character ingenuity in 3rd parties, just copies and new design work.

If HasTak decided to dump all their engineering and production into their TF line and let the others languish and made every single character true to their G1 character, 3rd parties wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

All I can say is thank goodness that HasTak continues to innovate and move forward, even if us old grognards aren't 100% happy with everything they make, and least they're being creative.

I couldn't agree more.

Plus, some of the quality control is questionable, and as a result I'm really not a big fan of 3rd part pieces.

Mastermind Creations are using Hastak designs of unproduced toys.

Fansproject's best stuff is add-ons for Hastak toys.


So... no. 3rd parties are not going to replace mainline anytime soon. Which is, of course, good. 3rd parties are often best at filling in gaps.

I'm pretty sure the op gets it by now.

Hasbro's not going anywhere, yet.

We've all made posts like these at one time or another.

No point in rehashing "wrong, you're wrong" etc, over and over again.

Yeah, I'd have to agree. There's just no way the 3rd party guys will ever eclipse HasTak.

The 3rd party guys are making some neat stuff .... some of them anyway. But it's all derivitive of Hasbro / Takara's work. And good quality KOs are just copies of HasTak's work and wouldn't exist without it. Moreover, not all 3rd party products are great. Fansprojects usually hits the ball out of the park, but others, like iGear don't. Moreover, Hasbro has some really great stuff coming out. The best Wreck Gar possible and Kup among the ones I'm most excited about.

I don't think the 3rd party guys will go mainstream until they get their own original products out. But then I wouldn't be interested. So it'd kinda lose / lose for them.

Hasbro's biggest target is to sell their products as toys. The third-party toymakers target the smaller collector audience, people who are the ones who are on the internet reading, learning, and seeking these figures and add-ons. Collectors are probably the most vocal fans, but they're not the largest grouping, not by a longshot. Thus, Hasbro and Takara will always reign supreme, while the third parties skulk in the darkness and hope cease and desist orders don't start coming their way.

And on that last note, Hasbro and Takara own the licenses for Transformers, which will always make them "official". It'll be a cold day in hell before they give up the rights to such a huge moneymaker.

WeatherManNX01 wrote:And on that last note, Hasbro and Takara own the licenses for Transformers, which will always make them "official". It'll be a cold day in hell before they give up the rights to such a huge moneymaker.

ahhh but what's stopping another company from creating their own line of transforming robot toys?

Admittedly it would already have to be a firmly developed company and not one of these 3rd party places (unless they can finance the capital needed to expand to a major mass producing stand point).

They'd also need to give kids a reason to buy this brand, and that sort of marketting is done through movies or cartoons.

So the chances of any third party company getting to that point, even a few decades from now, are pretty slim I feel.

Burn wrote:

WeatherManNX01 wrote:And on that last note, Hasbro and Takara own the licenses for Transformers, which will always make them "official". It'll be a cold day in hell before they give up the rights to such a huge moneymaker.

ahhh but what's stopping another company from creating their own line of transforming robot toys?

There have been some over the years. Obviously GoBots early on, and the toys did occasionally come across as better than some TFs, but the supporting media wasn't anywhere near as polished.

Roadbots is the last one I can think of that came vaguely close to seeming like more than a KO/Cash-In, but there's been transforming toys in other lines as well. Power Rangers has it's Zords, there's been Digimon and stuff like that where they've not been strictly transforming robots, but transforming things of a sort. IIRC weren't there Marvel transformers in all but name before Hasbro took over the license?

Yes the third party guys can sometimes come out with stuff we collectors have specifically wanted, or things that they manage to sell to us anyway, but at a basic level, I can't think of many non-Transformers transforming toys that have worked as well as Hasbro's. I'm honestly not 100% sure why another big company doesn't try their hand at the transforming robot/vehicle concept(Mattel would be the obvious one, or maybe Playmates, or one of the younger companies. I think all the rest I remember from childhood have been absorbed into other corporations since).

It's not like most every other toy line or cartoon doesn't have at least a few similarities to competing brands, and it would be interesting to see if anyone else could come up with anything as good. The third party companies have shows us that there are other people out there who can make good transforming robots. Whether all of the ones we've been snapping up over the past few years would be so beloved if they'd been through various alterations to fit within the regulations they'd need to comply with to sit on toystore shelves is another matter. One I'm not qualified to speculate on.

One thing Hasbro cannot touch is a toy line that glorifies more mature story themes. I would love for FansProject to invest in a division that handles its storytelling. It was the storytelling division of Hasbro that wove the fabric of the fiction that has been retold the last 25 years (one that has become quite boring to me personally). I feel Hasbro is trapped in its money making machine; telling the same PG story with the same PG characters. I think FansProject is on the verge of something... inspirational. When you think of the Causality line, the Warbot line, and even the Parallax line, one hardly gets a sense of a PG Transformers Prime type of story. Maybe I'm biased because I just don't like humans in my Transformers stories, but I like where FansProject is heading with their comics that come with the toy. Maybe Hasbro will never go out of business and that most of its fandom will loyally stick by them with their nth iteration of Megatron and Optimus Prime, but this transforming robot geek is willing to stick by FansProject when they eventually release Causality. In that sense I will be the first to say that hastaks days are numbered at least in my collection.

Skyfire-5 wrote:Maybe Hasbro will never go out of business and that most of its fandom will loyally stick by them with their nth iteration of Megatron and Optimus Prime, but this transforming robot geek is willing to stick by FansProject when they eventually release Causality. In that sense I will be the first to say that hastaks days are numbered at least in my collection.

As good as Fansproject is, they will not be around forever. In that sense maybe it's not Hasbro but your collection whose days are numbered.

Yes, perhaps. Forever is a long time after all.

WeatherManNX01 wrote:The third-party toymakers target the smaller collector audience, people who are the ones who are on the internet reading, learning, and seeking these figures and add-ons. Collectors are probably the most vocal fans, but they're not the largest grouping, not by a longshot. Thus, Hasbro and Takara will always reign supreme, while the third parties skulk in the darkness and hope cease and desist orders don't start coming their way.

Don't forget, there is a segment of collectors that doesn't buy third party stuff simply because it's not Has/Tak.

These companies aren't going to be taking over any time soon.

SJ21 wrote:

WeatherManNX01 wrote:The third-party toymakers target the smaller collector audience, people who are the ones who are on the internet reading, learning, and seeking these figures and add-ons. Collectors are probably the most vocal fans, but they're not the largest grouping, not by a longshot. Thus, Hasbro and Takara will always reign supreme, while the third parties skulk in the darkness and hope cease and desist orders don't start coming their way.

Don't forget, there is a segment of collectors that doesn't buy third party stuff simply because it's not Has/Tak.

I did forget that, and I used to be one of those people. It was seeing the photos of the Superion add-on kit that turned me on to FansProject, and I've not regretted it since (well...I have in terms of my bank account ). Actually, I used to be a Hasbro-only guy, but the recent releases of G1 figures like Predaking have turned me around on that.

First: all the 3rd party stuff is expensive. All I've bought myself thus far was the Superion add-on kit. Plus, y'know, I had to buy Superion to get the most of that, no?

Also, we're just a bunch of nerds and not anywhere near the majority of buyers of the toys. A nice chunk, yeah, but I'm pretty sure parents are still going to buy a buttload of Bumblebees and Optimus Primes for their kids.

Actually we don't even make up a nice chunk. IIRC they've stated we only make up about 12% of sales. 3rd party companies will never displace Has/Tak. As others have mentioned they basically ride on the coat tails of Has/Tak's success.

about 12% is still a nice chunk. Not many companies would be happy to just throw away 12% of their sales. Then again, not many companies produce Stealth Force Mostly kidding.

I can see Hasbro wanting to keep adult collectors on side, and honestly I'd say they've probably been trying more so lately (or it's entirely coincidental that they've chosen to extend copyright or trademarks on a number of much requested characters) but they're also not afraid to do things that we'll all completely hate. Which is fine if it makes them money and keeps me in Generations/Classics updates of my favourites.

craggy wrote:about 12% is still a nice chunk. Not many companies would be happy to just throw away 12% of their sales. Then again, not many companies produce Stealth Force Mostly kidding.

Agreed, but I think a lot of collectors overestimate our market presence.

El Duque wrote:

craggy wrote:about 12% is still a nice chunk. Not many companies would be happy to just throw away 12% of their sales. Then again, not many companies produce Stealth Force Mostly kidding.

Agreed, but I think a lot of collectors overestimate our market presence.

Eric Cartman wrote:That's what I've been saying all along.